The "Ideal" Community of Christian Charity

“Where there is a vacant place, there is liberty for the sons of Adam or Noah to come and inhabit, though they neither buy it nor ask their leaves.” With these words, John Cotton bid farewell to the brave aboard the Arbella that were to set sail for a new beginning (“The Divine Right”). One of the brave, John Winthrop, was delighted to leave the persecution due to his Puritan beliefs in England. Born in England, he found himself to be in disagreement with the ecclesiastical courts and, like his fellow Puritans, wanted more plainness of rituals and preaching unlike various Roman Catholicism practices of the time (Wood). Granting a charter to set out to find a colony, he gave a sermon called A Model of Christian Charity to the settlers explaining the future ideal life of “a city upon a hill, [where] the eyes of all people are upon us.” As Winthrop describes the harmony that will pursue in the colony due to faith and love of each other and God, it’s hard to think of such a world as nothing more than a fairytale in today’s terms.

The beginning of the sermon gives reason to why there is wealth and poverty in the world by stating that this diversity and shared struggles within the community create a setting in which God may be honored which is a necessity to society (Wood). It also explains that God would rather that humans do good deeds for each other and therefore allows the rich to give charity to the poor. Although making logical statements, it is when Winthrop indulges on the topic of charity in more depth that the dream transforms into more of an ideal rather than an actual reachable goal.

Ironically, while many in the history of the Americas came here for personal economic gain, Winthrop describes his economic society revolving around the ideas of “sharing the wealth.” In this society, it is pertinent that “every man afford his help to another in every want or distress,” or in other words, one must lend money to another without the intention of a payback and avoid the temptations of selfish economic enterprise. These actions and attitudes, though very generous and loving, seem to clash with normal human behavior. As historian Paul Seaver explains, this creates tension and anxiety between ethical values and the Puritans actual behavior displayed during that time (Seaver). Historian Bernard Bailyn also agrees with Seaver and explains, “To be both a pious Puritan and a successful merchant meant to live under what would seem to have been insupportable pressures,” (Seaver).

It is this conflict between extremes that was present within not just the Puritan society but many different religious societies all over the world. It is a natural principle that when you push an idea or belief upon a people, it has a tendency to push back just as hard. This was seen throughout the Puritan society as they slowly slid their way into Atlantic commerce, and later on in history started using their economic gain for selfish means (Seaver).


Reuben, Paul P. "John Winthrop (1588-1649)." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide. 26 Jun 2009. Web. 30 Aug 2009.

Seaver, Paul. "The Puritan Work Ethic Revisited." The Journal of British Studies. Vol 19. (1980). p35-38. Web. 29 Aug 2009.

"The Divine Right to Occupy the Land." Faith and Freedom Foundation. (1998). Web. 30 Aug 2009.

Wood, Andrew. "Summary of John Winthrop." Web. 30 Aug 2009. <http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/149/149syllabus5summary.html>.

A Model of Christian Charity- A City Upon a Hill

When the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company first came to the New World, they were read a sermon by John Winthrop called A Model of Christian Charity before they had landed in their new home. In the sermon, he had implored his fellow puritans to act as though they lived in “a city upon a hill.” He knew that the Puritans living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony would be under the close scrutiny of others looking on the New World. The belief that the Puritans should act as though they were the model of the perfect colony helped shape the America that became the one it is today.

John Winthrop was born in 1587 in the town of Groton, Suffolk, England. After an unremarkable childhood, he graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1605 and became a Puritan with a natural talent for law. He wrote A Model of Christian Charity while on the Arbella to warn his fellow Puritans that should they fail to set a good example, they would bring shame to their God and faith. Winthrop often looked to the bible for wisdom, but occasionally he looked to Thomas Aquinas’s discussion of charity as a need for love and friendship in this close-knit community (Schweitzer, p.4). Once Winthrop became govenor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, he used this influence to assert his idea of “a city upon a hill.”

The need for the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company to be the model for their fellow Puritans was essential for the influence they held over the other immigrants to the New World. If they had failed in their goal to be the perfect society, they would have been lost to history as a failed social experiment. John Winthrop’s need for his Puritan society to be flawless led to the further settlement and eventual creation of our nation.


Sources Cited:

Schweitzer, Ivy. "John's Winthrop's "Model" of American Affiliation." Early American Literature 40.3 (Nov. 2005): 441-469. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. King Library, San Jose, CA. 31 Aug. 2009 .

William Bradford

Seminar blog

William Bradford

The William Bradford short biography is important to American Civilization because His background as one of the people on the Mayflower is one of many. Each person on that has traveled to the America's has a story and a reason for the trip. And those reasons have shaped the America's.

William was an orphan child at a young age. Both his parent dead he was shunted from one relative to another never staying in one place for too long. By the age of twelve William became fascinated with Puritan faith and the lack of formal ceremony. Without the death of his parent's and traveling from place to place it is unlikely that Bradford would have come across the Puritan church.

The Religious persecution of any other religion other then the Church of England in England is what lead many people to the “New world,” including William Bradford a devout member of the “Church of Ancient Purity,”. Bradford was very devout and lead the church during Sunday mass as their spiritual leader. Since most of the people that came on the Mayflower were Puritans, they gave the most power to their spiritual leader, making Bradford the First Governor of Plymouth. Bradford had much power in Plymouth because the governor over saw many important thing in the settlement, making sure that they were done right. Bradford had this position for 30 years until his death. HE had much influence over Plymouth during the first thirty years of it's existence.

The existence of the Puritans to the Church of England was a blasphemy Any other religion even the a splinter from it's own beliefs must have been purged. (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=5&sid=a66c370b-5592-4310-bac7-b3a758dd0c04%40sessionmgr11)

William Bradford's account of his experience of the America's is the seed from which others can see the growth of millions of ideas coalescing into American Civilization.

Gould, Philip. Drexler, Michael. “William Bradford 1590-1657”

Kelso ,Dorothy. “ WILLIAM BRADFORD” http://www.pilgrimhall.org/bradfordwilliam.htm

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=5&sid=a66c370b-5592-4310-bac7-b3a758dd0c04%40sessionmgr11

Of Plymouth Plantation - A Religious Aspect

The Pilgrims came to the New World with on thing in mind: Religious Freedom. Religious freedom to able to practice Christianity in the way they see it should be practice and not in the way the Church of England tells them it should be practice. And so they fled to the New World. Among them was William Bradford who became a great governor for the young settlement and also the man who wrote Of Plymouth Plantation, a book documenting all of the stuggles the settlers were forced to encounter. The Pilgrim's belief in religious freedom helped shaped the America we know today and greatly influenced American Christianity.



William Bradford's early childhood was what sparked his religious fervor. He was an orphan adopted by his uncle who is farmer. Due to William Bradford's fragile health, the young Bradford spent much of his time reading the Bible. By the age of twelve when he heard the sermons of a nonconformist minister Richard Clyfton, Bradford was absorbed into Christianity. In his book Of Plymoth Plantation, Bradford constantly refers to how a certain action "pleases God" or how the "Spirit of God" sustained them. He writes the documentary in a similiar style to the Old Testement.



Upon arriving in the New World, the settlers were forced to face a dilemma. How to create a church different from the old one? But it was through the struggles of defining the church laws and the shaping of the church to fit the outside world and the Puritan cultures many that the Plymouth Church was able to contribute to one of the greatest religious movement in America. Not only that , but the book Of Plymouth also tells about the roots of a core American belief. Aside from enriching the Christian culture, it also became the starting pebble of what would become a cornerstone of American Rights: The right to practice any religion and the right to practice it in a way they choose.



---



Sources Sited:



"Church and Religion." Ed. Mayflowerhistory. Web www.mayflowerhistory.com/History/plymoth7.php



The Plymouth Church and Evolution of Puritan Religious Culture. 66.4 (1993): 570-59. JSTOR. Web.

Introduction and Blog

Welcome to the blog for the American Civilization to 1865 seminar, a lower division American Studies course at San Jose State University. My name is Prof. Ormsbee, and I'm the professor for this seminar section and the moderator of the blog. Please find below a rules for posting on the blog and a description of the contents of the course.

GENERAL BLOG RULES: The purpose of this blog is to create a forum for students to explore in more depth the topics of the course, and to open up the possibility for engagement with other readers. Because the primary purpose of the blog is educational, I will carefully moderate to ensure a learning environment and experience for my students.

• Students are required to maintain a degree of anonymity on this blog for obvious reasons. They may use nicknames, screen names, or just their first name without any identifying markers. I am not anonymous, however, and my faculty web page can be found here.
• Student posts and comments are meant to follow a high standard of argumentation. They will be striving to introduce criticism, analysis, argumentation, and evidence to the conversations about these topics. They are being graded on their participation.
• This is not a free speech, anything-goes, free-for-all blog. All participants should consider two key ethical concerns: a) mutual respect and consideration for participants on the blog; and b) objective and fair treatment of the issues and cultures treated. Note: Objectivity does not mean that posters will not be critical; rather, it means that their analyses and criticism will be based in evidence and argumentation.
• Non-students may comment, but will be carefully moderated to maintain the blog as an educational space. Ad hominem, vulgarity, personal attacks, and hostile comments will be deleted.
• Disagreements are welcome, but should be presented in respectful and constructive ways. Both tone and content should be carefully composed before posting.

THE COURSE: American Civilization is an American Studies approach to the cultural history of the United States. We use the methods of many different disciplines across the humanities and social sciences and even biological and physical sciences to understand the cultures of the people of the United States. Rather than a traditional historical approach, focusing on major events and personalities of the past, American Civilization focuses on the beliefs and practices of Americans of all races, ethnicities, religions, and regions, from family life to notions of individuality, from democratic theory to economy. We attempt to hold in our heads the contradictions between the ideals of the United States and the way people actually lived during the period we study. The course is divided into two class sessions: In lecture, we explore in depth a particular cultural issue or phenomenon in a large group, rotating among three professors; in seminar, we break into smaller groups and conduct in-depth studies of important literature, philosophy, poetry, and political documents from America's cultural history. In AMS1A we begin before European contact with the Western Hemisphere and build our understandings of American pluralism (it has never been homogeneous) from these early contacts; we end with the Civil War. This blog is for Prof. Ormsbee's seminar section, where we are doing deep-readings of key American cultural texts.

Key Themes:

1) Democracy and Nation: What is the American conception of democracy? Why did it arise as it did? How has it been modified? What is the relationship between democracy in theory and in practice in the American context? How do Americans deal with the tension between freedom and equality? How do Americans deal with inequality of all kinds, but especially racial and gender?

2) Capitalism: How have Americans organized their economy and why have they done it this way? How have Americans built their identities around economic categories? How has capitalism and the quest for capital shaped American culture? What kind of people are created by American capitalism? How has American capitalism affected non-Americans around the world?

3) Pluralism: Americans have been culturally plural since the beginning. Over the centuries, they have come from nearly all indigenous cultures of North America and

most major cultures from around the world. How has this pluralism affected American identity, culture, and society? How has pluralism been used to create inequality and to distribute power? How have immigration, slavery, Indian removal shaped and constrained the development of American culture and society?

4) American culture: Does it even exist? Are there cultural values, practices, objects that bind us together or are we merely a loose confederation of differences? Is it popular culture? Art? Religion?

Texts for the Seminar (there are other shorter primary readings for the lecture section as well including some Mexican American and Native American texts):

• William Bradford, from Of Plymouth Plantation

• John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity”

• Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

• Jean de Crèvecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer

• Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano the African, Written by Himself, Vol. 1

• Benjamin Franklin, The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin [The Autobiography]

• Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

• Thomas Paine, from The Age of Reason

• Margaret Fuller, from Woman in the 19th Century

• Frederick Douglass, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

• “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852 theatrical version)

• Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

• Herman Melville, Billy Budd [although from 1898, Melville fits in still and content with mid-19th century themes]

• Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass: “Song of Myself”, “On Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”, "Memories of President Lincoln" & “Calamus”

For a detailed introduction to the American Studies program at SJSU, please see the program's MySpace page or Facebook Group.