[For this year’s post-Valentine’s non-favorites series, I wanted to continue exploding some foundational American myths. Leading up to my favorite crowd-sourced post of the year, so please share your own non-favorites—in every category—for that collective airing of grievances!]
On one way to challenge
a foundational myth and one way to reframe it.
First things
first: I believe it’s important to say that I’m by no means a hater of the
Massachusetts Pilgrims/Puritans. To put it most simply: anyone who visits the recreated
Plimoth
Plantation site (now part of the renamed Plimoth
Patuxet museums and historic site) can’t help but feel just how isolated
and frightening that space would have felt to this community of exiles as they
emerged from a
horrific Atlantic voyage and tried to survive in this new home. Of course
they were significantly helped in that effort by
Tisquantum, a fact that William Bradford himself acknowledges in his
chronicle of the community Of Plimoth
Plantation and that to my mind adds to the
inspiring elements (if, as I write in that post, not only them) of this
early American cross-cultural
community. All of which is to say, if we remove the mythologizing pressure
of “America’s
Hometown” and just think about what this community experienced, there are
plenty of reasons to see the Massachusetts Puritans as an impressive part of
early American history.
The problem is,
that “America’s Hometown” label and all the related mythologies of the
Pilgrims/Puritans as a collective
origin point has endured and continues to operate in our
national narratives. One of the central elements of that mythos is that the Pilgrims/Puritans
journeyed across the Atlantic in search of “religious
freedom,” thus originating that essential element of America’s ideals. They
certainly were looking for a place where they could practice their own extreme Protestant
religion without being persecuted, but it’s just as accurate (and when it comes
to these myths more important) to note that said practice depended precisely on
persecuting those who didn’t adhere to their beliefs. Don’t believe me? Just
ask Anne Hutchinson, or Roger
Williams, or Thomas
Morton, among many others. For those of us who would agree that the
protection of religious freedom was one of the most
radical ideas found in the U.S. Constitution and
framing, it’s just not the case that we can look to the Puritans as an origin
point or embodiment of that principle.
However, to
repeat the final point from my first paragraph, if we can set aside that false
and destructive mythos of the Puritans as America’s originating community,
there are indeed inspiring histories and stories there, including those around
cross-religious relationships. One of the best scholarly books on that latter
topic is my colleague and friend Michael
Hoberman’s masterful New
Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America (2011). The
relationships Hoberman traces in his book weren’t simple or solely supportive,
but neither were they anywhere near as divisive or discriminatory as the
treatment of Hutchinson/Williams et al. Indeed, one of Hoberman’s main
arguments is that, perhaps despite their own instincts or intentions, many
Puritans did learn about religion, spirituality, culture, and more from their
encounters with Jewish Americans throughout the colonial period. That’s a
history, rather than a mythology, of religious tolerance well worth
remembering.
Next
non-favorite myth tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other non-favorites, myths and everything else, you’d share?
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