Bethany Ellis

11 March 2010

Texts: Columbus’s Letters, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and Thomas Jefferson’s views on Religion

Objectives:

·        To read and interpret Creation and Origin Stories of America, focusing on Puritan and Founding Fathers

·       To make these texts matter now

I remember the first time I learned about Christopher Columbus. I was in kindergarten at Mark Twain Elementary in Houston, TX. It was the week before Thanksgiving and we were preparing for our school-wide Early American History week where we would focus on Columbus, the Pilgrims and Puritans, and the Founding Fathers. Our teachers focused on a white American traditional view of the birth of our nation. One day we went to an assembly where students reenacted the First Encounter. Over the next few days, we got to dress up like Pilgrims or Indians to prepare for the First Thanksgiving. The week we came back from Spring Break, the school focused on the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers. We treated them as demigods for their great impact on the world today. I tell this story because this event shaped my view of the Origin of America. I was taught that Columbus was the Savior coming to bring civility to the savages, that the colonies existed in a state of spiritual utopia, and that our Founding Fathers were all strong Christian men. I was taught wrong.

In Columbus’s own letters upon his “discovery” of the New World, he speaks of the Indians as “far from being ignorant” but with ways vastly different from his own. He admires their ability to navigate the seas, but speaks more as a father admiring his toddler than as a man regarding his equal. He speaks of their strange customs with awe and bewilderment. Even though he is there to completely exploit the riches of the New World, he treats their encounter as the birth of something new and wonderful. It is as if Man is meeting Creation for the first time. This image does not last. In Columbus’s fourth letter, he believes that he and his comrades are cursed with rotten ships. His tone is now one of despair. He begs for sympathy in his statement” “Alone in my trouble, sick, in daily expectation of death, and encompassed about by a million savages, full of cruelty, and our foes, and so separated from the Blessed Sacraments of Holy Church, my soul will be forgotten if it here leaves my body. Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice.” The façade of the second paradise disappeared. Now, Columbus fears inevitable eternal damnation.

Fast forward two hundred plus years, and meet Jonathan Edwards, a devout Christian preacher living in New England. He feared “progressive secularism and loss of the original Puritan community” and wanted to revive earlier Puritan practices. He worried that the Puritan Church was on a slippery slope to Hell. His sermon focuses on the wrath of God and how they lack a righteous fear of the Lord. Jonathan Edwards epitomizes the strong Christian/Puritan man I learned of growing up. He chastised his church community and encouraged the return to asceticism. Sermons like “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” are what fueled the Founding Father’s desire to separate church and State. Edwards encouraged a return to a church centered community. This kind of community breeds division and corruption once the initial zeal wears off. While Edwards’s intentions were noble, and I do believe he sincerely meant what he preached, his doctrine and beliefs may have encouraged the Founding Fathers to stray from a purely religion centered government. Edwards failed to create the America he felt would best serve God.

Thomas Jefferson’s views on religion differ vastly from Puritan thought. He saw religion as a force of disunity. He did not want the country to be ruled by a “religious sect” but rather by Reason. Until this class, I had always thought that the forefathers separated church and state out of political correctness. I, for some reason, had never considered that it was to keep unity. I always saw it as a rebellion to the oppressive religious views held in Europe. One was either Catholic or Protestant depending on their country. The founding fathers did not want that. They wanted to keep a unified America. Men argue over religion (and atheism) perhaps more than any other subject. Jefferson knew and understood the quarrelsome nature of humanity. His opinions still resonate through America today, fueling our political correctness and supposed tolerance. The Reason and Free Inquiry he valued so highly encourage distrust of religion.

 These three texts set the foundation for the America we live in today. They illustrate the varying stages of religious, cultural, and psychological thought in the New World as it morphed into a new nation. Even in its infancy, our nation advocated the belief that all men are entitled to their own views of religion. I find it interesting that over time, religion is the most consistent divider. Some may blame God or the bible for its intolerance, but I am convinced the problem truly lies in the hearts of men. If we were not so quick to judge based on man’s interpretation and preconceptions of religion and rather on simply what God says, the world would be a much simpler place. The forefathers put their trust in the American people to be tolerant. Have we succeeded?

Our origin stories matter because they guide us in our interpretation of what America should be and why She is the nation She is today. I chose the traditional  origin stories because they are so different from what I have always learned. They beg a multicultural discovery of America. Without these texts, our nation would not exist. They serve as the building blocks of religious idealism and thought. We learn from the past and their mistakes. Without the past, we would have no direction for the future.