The origins of Salem, Providence, Philadelphia
Some maps for orientation
Noord-Westkust : Massachusetts):
ZOOMED
The cities mentioned in the text: red circles
Life on the Northwest coast of America was hard. Until the arrival of the Puritan emigrants, there were only a few small settlements, which had mainly served as a base for pioneers who tried to earn a living and survive by fishing, beaver hunting or forest clearing (much more was not possible for the colonists). . After difficult negotiations with the government – logical, given the reason for their emigration – the first group of Puritan emigrants, often referred to by the romantic (nineteenth century) term Pilgrim Fathers , succeeded in giving their ‘settlement’ an official character. and be recognized as a ‘colony’ by the government. As a basis for society, they drew up a kind of ‘social contract’ in which they made agreements to arrange internal government themselves as free citizens. This is called the Mayflower Compact , named after the boat they crossed with. The list of signatories coincided with the list of those who were members of the Church: 41 men, free citizens, out of a total of 102 persons. Through this ‘compact’ they formed a ‘civil body politic’, which would make valid decisions by majority vote on how public life should be organized. The body social, the body political and the body of Christ coincided again here, just as in the Middle Ages in Western Europe and then divided by region. No matter how small-scale, they did not want to do half work. The community would literally function on a biblical basis. Only in this way could their lives be pleasing to God. They felt like ‘God’s people’ living in the land that God had given them, a ‘new Israel’. The ‘elders’ carefully monitored what was taught in the church and the governor (elected from among them, but recognized as such by the King of England) was mandated to maintain order on the basis of their ‘Compact’.
In October 1621 everything was settled and the colonists who survived (less than half!) had a big party. In it they thanked God for the great privilege they had been given to build their lives here completely according to the Bible, Thanksgiving. In order not to make the mistakes that ‘Old Israel’ had made, there was a lot of Bible study, long sermons, introspection and an attempt to keep the entire community on the right path through fraternal admonition. Only through this form of self-discipline, it was believed, could the standard they had set for themselves, that is, that they had applied to themselves from the Bible, be achieved. Gradually, more religious refugees arrive. New settlements are emerging, which also regulate themselves through ‘compacts’. This administrative form of self-organization is, moreover, based on the ecclesiastical regulations that were in vogue in the Presbyterian churches of England, that is to say, they were civil variations on the church order that had come to the mind of the French lawyer, Jean Calvin, almost a century earlier. had sprouted. He thus gave the religious communities an organizational tool to function without episcopal supervision.
We are still a long way from universal religious freedom here. That is clear. These Puritans are only interested in freedom for their own religion. They create space in America to express their vision of how God should be served in complete freedom. That is why they left England and they now want to realize that: uncontaminated and pure. Church discipline concerns the whole of life, both internally and externally, about faith and morals, private and public. It is democratic in form (majority vote) but theocratic in content (God’s will is law and that law is the basis of all human legislation). Theoretically, this was also said in Europe, but there the centuries-long practice of human society with its endless tug-of-war between secular and spiritual authority had led to a complicated division of power and legislation, in which church law itself was also highly formalized. As long as these communities in the New World (around Plymouth) were small (and they were), people lived in village-like settings and social control was sufficient, with the exception of serious cases. However, the system was put to the test when in 1629, when the king dissolved Parliament and, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury, assumed all power, large groups began to leave England in search of ‘the promised land’. ‘ across.
Salem, The Puritan Experiment
To prepare for this great exodus, some far-sighted minds in and around Massachusetts had made a pact with the settlers there to incorporate the existing settlements into a new colony, with a new charter. The Massachusetts Bay Company was founded and the largest settlement that had previously borne the Indian name Naumkeag was renamed ‘Salem’, the Latin form of the Hebrew word ‘shalom’, also short for ‘Jerusalem’, the holy city where God had lived among his people during the time of the temple. You already understood. A group of wealthy Puritans in England financed the entire operation and ensured that the colony’s charter was ratified by the king. It wasn’t too early. In 1629, the year that the king dissolved parliament and started to rule completely autocratically, including over the church, the great wave of emigration started. Large groups of Puritans gave up hope that the ‘Church of England’ would ever be truly reformed. They wanted to leave ‘Egypt’, to a country where they could serve God in freedom. The call to ‘leave the house of bondage’ and embark on the journey to the ‘promised land’ sounded from many a Puritan pulpit. The Massachusetts Bay Company chartered 11 ships in Southampton. A first contingent of Puritans left in 1629, the largest group waited until the spring of 1630. They left in April. This is called The Great Migration in English history books. On the day of departure they were waved goodbye by a large crowd. Emotions were given free rein. Those who stayed behind were often in doubt as to whether they should go as well, those who went in uncertainty about what awaited them, also afraid of the dangerous journey and the ‘wilderness’ that awaited them in America.
Farewell address of Rev. John Cotton
Among those departing was Rev. John Cotton of Boston (Lincolnshire, England). This celebrated Puritan minister, Master of Arts and Bachelor of Divinity of Cambridge, had, contrary to the express command of the Archbishop, laid aside the Book of Common Prayer , hung the surplice in the wardrobe, omitted the genuflection at the altar, and own reading schedule. He wanted to encourage the emigrants. And he would not be a true Puritan if, in his Farewell Address, he had not addressed the sailors seriously on the basis of the Bible, admonishing and encouraging them. He stated that they should not hesitate about their decision. It was God himself who sent them to the new world. He would certainly bless their ‘plantation’, as the settlements were called. He gave them the promise from 2 Samuel 7:10. There the prophet Nathan speaks on behalf of God and promises to David that his kingship will have no end and then continue [word of the Lord, I quote it in English because the link with the journey is immediately clear]: Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more. In the typical sermon style of that time, divided into points and sub-points, full of rhetorical questions and answers, he unfolds the idea that the plantation that the migrants are planning is not so much their work is, but God’s work. That means a great responsibility, but also an enormous certainty, because ‘no one will be able to root up what God has planted’. Their only task is to ensure that what they do is based on God’s commandments. After a humble request not to forget ‘our Jerusalem’ once they arrive in Salem (‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem…’, Psalm 122), he sends the passengers away. They may behave in all their actions knowing that they are blessed by God. The sermon soon appeared in print under the title God’s Promise to His Plantation . Cotton was – I have to say – good friends with the big man behind this exodus, John Winthrop, one of the driving forces of the Massachusetts Bay Company , who also embarked on the journey with his family.
John Winthrop: A Model of Christian Charity
Winthrop was also an alumnus of Cambridge (master of law). Although a layman – but that was of course one of the striking differences – he repeated Cotton’s sermon again, probably just before disembarkation. That text was also immediately published, but was thought lost for a long time. Since it was rediscovered in 1830, it was almost immediately included in the ‘canon of American culture’: A Model of Christian Charity . Many a president in good and difficult days has referred directly or indirectly to passages from Winthrop’s sermon. In this sermon, Winthrop dreams of a whole series of new ‘settlements’, each of which would be a ‘city of God’, populated by men and women who would hold each other in joy and sorrow, as if they were one whole ( knit together as one). man ). The bond that binds them is Christian love (caritas): ‘We must find joy in each other, take care of each other, rejoice together, mourn together, toil together and suffer together, always keeping in mind that we form a community, members are of one body’. The last comparison refers to Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, chapter 12, in which he describes the church of God as ‘the body of Christ’, of which every believer is a unique and indispensable part. In this way, the cities of the Puritans would each become a ‘city on a mountain’, which cannot be hidden, a light for the world (after an imagery of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount ). “At the same time, we must be aware,” he urges the colonists, “that the eyes of all peoples are on us.” Should their mission fail, not only would they become the risée of the entire world, but God would certainly withdraw his support from the project. At the end of the speech, Winthrop even completely steps into the role of Moses, who has arrived with the people at the border of the promised land and who reminds them one more time how much they have been blessed by God and what God then does. expected of them. ‘I have set before you life and death. Therefore choose life, that you may live in the land which the Lord God is giving you, you and your children after you” (Deuteronomy 30). Winthrop repeats these words, but now addressed to the Puritan emigrants standing on the border of their promised land. You cannot increase the demands or expectations much higher.
By the end of 1630, all 11 ships had sailed and more than 1,000 Puritans had landed at Salem. From there they moved on to found a new city, Boston. A few years later there are more than 5,000 of them, numbers that in our view are small, but by the standards of the time this is a mass immigration, a real tidal wave, especially when you realize how sparsely populated New England still was at the time. Winthrop became governor of Massachusetts Bay and tried to maintain control over the individual communities that were founded. That was not that simple, because the ‘non-acceptance’ of any hierarchical authority was one of the essential characteristics of the Puritans. Winthrop turned out to be a strict but fatherly leader, who was re-elected as governor for years without any problems.
Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams
Soon, however, the identitarian instability inherent in church communities built on the principle of Scripture also began to become visible in the ‘closed cities’ of the Puritans. For example, in 1634 Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston with her family. In Boston, England, she was a follower of Rev. John Cotton, the man from the Farewell address, who had also emigrated to Boston a few years later. Anne – understandably – thoroughly enjoyed the freedom that prevailed there. Finally she could live the way God wanted, and speak out when it mattered. Anne appeared to be gifted with rhetorical gifts and had leadership qualities. She organized women’s meetings and sermon discussions. The latter in particular attracted great interest, including from some ministers and city administrators. Anne’s analyzes were sharp. The local preachers were regularly criticized for valuing the letter of the law too highly and expecting too little from the spirit of the gospel. Governor Winthrop couldn’t help but laugh. Anne caused unrest and sinned against the biblical command that everyone should ‘honor their predecessors’. She defended herself by repeating that she was simply telling the truth and that the Bible proved her right, after which she used her Bible knowledge in a way that occasionally left even educated opponents speechless. Even during the formal process that followed, she appeared not to be shy. According to her, civil law provisions were always subordinate to God’s Word and – when asked about her own authority – she let slip that God also spoke to her and that she even literally felt called by him. She had heard God’s voice. And that inner voice in the heart is what it ultimately came down to, regardless of whether this is a man, a woman, a pastor or a shoemaker. This was too much for the early fathers of young Boston. Anne was banished from the colony. She moved with her husband and six children to Rhode Island, an area outside New England. There was room for people with different opinions, because there was no law and no church. Yet there was no anarchy and it was no longer a no man’s land. A particularly idiosyncratic Puritan preacher had settled here after he had bought the land from the Indians. Then he purposely did n’t have onechurch, but he had decided to wait and see how Christ himself would put things in order in the New World, while welcoming everyone who would join his territory, regardless of origin, creed, sex or race. With this man, Roger Williams, and his private free state, we have arrived at that part of the world that will become the cradle of a form of religious freedom that will deeply define the Western world. He called the settlement he founded Providence , referring not so much to a difficult theological concept as to a deeply felt personal conviction, namely that you should not get in God’s way, but have faith that He will know how. it has to be done, even if you don’t know it right away. God will ‘provide it’.
Providence, Roger Williams and the wall of separation
With Roger Williams we meet once again an English Puritan educated in Cambridge (indeed a hotbed of Puritan theology at the time). He had experienced firsthand how the king had taken all power to himself and, through the Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted to control everything in the church area as well. As a ‘jack of all trades’ he had assisted the great English lawyer Sir Edward Coke, who in the 1620s had turned against the king’s usurpation and used all legal means to counter the king. In vain. Even after he became a minister, he remained at home in Parliament. When the king put parliament ‘on hold’ in 1629, he too took his chances and left England. He arrived in Boston in 1631. His fame preceded him and of course Governor Winthrop knew him from England. The Boston church did not hesitate for a second and offered him a pastor’s position. To everyone’s surprise, Williams thanks him for the honor. When asked about his motivation, he explained that he felt that the Puritan Church of Boston was lacking in its devotion to God, not pure enough. He was not referring to a theological issue, nor to religious or moral zeal, but to a fundamental organizational deficit. The Puritan churches in the New World had not severed their ties with the state. They still relied on support from the civil government. Williams found that inexcusable. That link with state power was precisely the English disease that had ravaged the church in the mother country and why they, the Puritans, had ultimately been able to do nothing but flee that country. Had they not seen how detrimental government interference in church affairs was for the spiritual life of believers? Williams was convinced that a church can only truly become ‘church’ if it resolutely cuts all ties with the government. Only then is she free to serve the Lord, with heart and soul and with whatever other abilities she may have. According to Williams, the government should therefore keep away from anything that has anything to do with the human relationship to God. And the church should not allow itself to be taken in, even if the government is well disposed towards it. She must not be opportunistic in this. That will cost her her soul, Williams thought. With this, Williams hit a sensitive point. The Puritan project in Massachusetts, so carefully laid out by Winthrop and Cotton, was based precisely on the cordial cooperation of the secular and spiritual authorities. This is the only way the ‘city on the mountain’ could shine so brightly.
The trial and the flight
Because Williams did not exactly hide his opinion, there was great unrest in Boston and he had to leave the city after some time. He found shelter in Salem, where he was taken into custody. Although the church did not offer him an official pastor’s post, it did make use of his services as a pastor in an informal manner. When he could not keep his mouth shut there, a lawsuit was filed against him in the court of Massachusetts Bay , which ultimately decided on banishment. The year is 1635. Williams was ill and winter was approaching. The court decided to show mercy and granted a postponement until spring. At the beginning of January, however, it sent soldiers to arrest him – Williams had recovered and had once again been unable to keep his mouth shut. Governor Winthrop foresaw that Williams would then be deported to England where he would likely die. As much as he disagreed with Williams, he didn’t deserve that, and he had Williams warned that the soldiers were approaching. He didn’t hesitate for a second, put on his warmest clothes, stuffed his pockets with dried grain (a trick he had learned from the Indians when it came to food for the road) and left his house. The winter of that year was harsh. Writing about it 35 years later, Williams says he can still feel the pain he felt in his nearly frozen feet. He had neither ‘bed nor bread’ and if ‘the ravens of heaven’ had not fed him with their bread, he would certainly have died. The ‘ravens of heaven’ refer – through a biblical allusion to the story of the prophet Elijah who had to hide from the angry King Ahab and was fed by the ravens – to the Indians who had previously come to know him as a reliable trading partner, and who gave him shelter. At that moment he is in ‘no man’s land’, because Rhode Island has not yet been claimed by any European people. He decides to purchase a piece of land. He negotiates with the Indians he found there until they agree on the price. Feeling that he had been led to this place by God, he named his settlement ‘Providence’ and – he adds – it is my deepest desire that this place will become a ‘ shelter for persons distressed for conscience’ . His family soon joined him, along with about 12 other families, mostly people he had met in Salem and who shared his views on church and state. They also included some Baptists (adult Anabaptists) who had been expelled from Massachusetts Bay because their beliefs had been condemned as heretical.
Separation of church and state in Rhode Island
Williams, in turn, now also embarked on a sacred experiment. He also draws up a ‘Political Compact’ for Providence. He puts the land he bought back into the general pot. Each of the adult men receives a sufficiently large share to cultivate and cultivate. The rest remains public property. He limits the authority of the civil government to ‘worldly affairs’. The most striking thing about Providence’s ‘constitution’ is therefore what it does not say. There is no reference to God whatsoever. The government also has no assignment whatsoever with regard to any church. It must only ensure the maintenance of public order and work for the public interest. By signing this ‘compact’, the citizens of Providence promise that they will be obedient to this secular government. And as if to avoid any misunderstanding, they add that this obedience only concerns ‘civil things’. To almost all his contemporaries, both in the Old and New World, this must have sounded absurd. A government that has no legitimacy outside itself. Everywhere else in the Western world, the government legitimizes itself by referring to a divine institution (usually symbolized in a royal house that rules ‘by the grace of God’). The Puritans had also done something similar. They had been given the mandate from the Bible to build a ‘city of God’. Cotton’s sermon in which he dismissed the large contingent of Puritans from Southampton in 1630 spoke volumes on this point. The foundation of the new ‘Plantation’ was seen as an assignment from God. This was their mandate and the legal basis of their ‘Compact’. Williams reasons that the legitimacy of any worldly ruler does not rest with God, but with the people he rules, who have granted him that power and can therefore take it away again. He will therefore have to answer for that group. Williams was consistent. Church and state were kept completely apart. Just like God, the concept of ‘church’ did not even appear in the ‘Compact’. When a few years later he has to defend the independence and legitimacy of what has become ‘Rhode Island’ in England – the armies of the Puritan colonists from Massachusetts have overrun his territory and claim the territory, he takes a fierce stand against his former supporters. He accuses the Puritan colonists of being hypocritical and self-centered. They themselves fled England because they did not want to conform to the state church, but now they demand that everyone who comes to settle in their country conform to their church. He then comes up with an equation that has become world famous. “The true church of God is like a beautiful garden, undefiled and pure. It looks like the Garden of Eden. Life in the world, on the other hand, is like life in ‘the wilderness’. Every time people have made a hole in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God has broken down that wall, taken away the lampstand (biblical image of God’s presence), etc. and gave up his garden to the wilderness’. Williams argues that if you allow the state to somehow interfere in the affairs of faith, the church will end up as just another worldly institution. He succeeds in winning his battle and can return to Rhode Island with an official ‘charter’ signed by the king. InProvidence Plantations allows him to experiment with popular sovereignty, while officially remaining part of the English state. There is no trace of the ‘Church of England’ in that charter. We do read: “No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion, in matters of religion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of our own society.” Hear how far ahead of his time Williams was!
The insurance against anarchy lies in William’s view that the state should limit itself to the ‘second table of the law’ (the last 6 commandments, which concern morality and public life) and should not interfere at all with the ‘first table of the law’ (the commandments concerning the worship of the true God, the rejection of idolatry, the worship of images, and the observance of the Sabbath). On these points, Williams believes people can believe whatever they want, because any coercion or obligation in this area leads at best to hypocrisy (outward conformity, but inner absence) and at worst to damage to the soul of the individual. For Williams, ‘freedom of the soul’ and the ‘inviolability of everyone’s conscience’ are the values that prevail above all else. He achieves all this while the civil war between Puritans and the Royalists is raging in England, the 30 Years’ War is entering its final phase in Germany and State and Spanish troops are still fighting each other in the Netherlands. Enforced worship, he states, ‘is nothing but a stench in God’s nostrils’. Yeah, I can’t help it either. Williams speaks the ‘Canaan language’ and it is always very concrete and expressive. This saying was very common for a long time and goes back to the Bible itself: At a sacrifice acceptable to God, the smoke rises as a ‘ sweet-smelling odor’.‘ into God’s nostrils, and vice versa. Forcibly forcing people into a certain religion is a form of religion that does not please God. However, that is exactly what has happened in Europe. Not only recently, says William, but actually since the moment that Christianity became the ‘state religion’ under Constantine. That was the fall of Christianity. And it happens again and again when a ruler in Europe changes religion. He calls religion under duress a ‘rape of the soul’. In his later writings he develops these thoughts further and not only comes to ‘tolerating those who think differently’ (well, go ahead, as long as you keep a low profile), but he advocates complete tolerance, including of what is against enters the general Christian religion. He believes that ‘all people in all countries in the world should be given the right to hold in their conscience the most pagan, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian views.’ He even tries to show that the Bible wants this, or at least that Jesus would have wanted this. His favorite text is the parable of the weeds and the wheat that grow together and which, according to Jesus, should not be separated before the harvest, because grazing the weeds would also damage the roots of the grain. Furthermore, he discusses all the classical arguments for the divine legitimation of state power for hundreds of pages, going through the entire history of the church. In short, he uses the Bible very systematically against ‘Christianity’ (the external form that the Christian faith has taken in history) to expose the latter as a perversion of Jesus’ message. An exercise that is not that difficult and that many have already demonstrated to him (Luther, for example) and still imitate every day. It will have changed few people’s minds. To his contemporaries and former comrades-in-arms, Cotton and Winthrop, Williams was completely out of control and crazy. His colony wasn’t really taken seriously either. It was considered a ‘ragtag mess’, a wonderful collection of malcontents, a refuge for all kinds of religious groups that were not welcome elsewhere. Especially the ‘Baptists’ (the group that believed that you could only be baptized as an adult if you knew what you were supposed to believe), which in those days was about the most hated ‘sect’ in the world. They found safe shelter with Williams. They are also who have preserved his legacy and kept the idea of the separation of church and state for the sake of the church high on their agenda. The Charter of Providence Plantationshas, however, hardly played a role in the further development of the regulation of religious freedom. As popular as Williams is now, he was so marginal in his own time. Not that Cotton and Winthrop (the Puritans) won the argument. On the contrary. From a completely unexpected source, once again a ‘holy experiment’ was set up in New England, in which freedom of religion also occupied a central place, but where the exercise of living together was also high on the agenda. Pennsylvania was the name of that colony, the Society of Friends , better known as the Quakers, are the ones who set the tone there. In the second half of the seventeenth century we are in the first American city built according to urban planning, Philadelphia.
Philadelphia and the Quakers, William Penn’s holy experiment
“On board my company consisted of people from all walks of life. There was a doctor with a wife and eight children, a French captain, a Dutch pastry chef, a pharmacist, a glass blower, a bricklayer, a blacksmith, a wheelwright, a carpenter, a cooper, a hatter, a shoemaker, a tailor, a gardener, and farmers, seamstresses, etc., all together we were about 80 people, not counting the crew. They were not only different in age (the eldest woman was 60, and the youngest child only 12 weeks) and occupation, as I have already indicated, but also so different in religions and lifestyle ([Religionen und Wandels], that I I do not think it inappropriate to compare the ship that brought them here with Noah’s ark, albeit that it contained more unclean than clean (intelligent) animals. Among my fellow travelers there are those of the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the Anabaptist, and the English Church, and only one Quaker.” 1
This is how the German lawyer Franz Daniel Pastorius describes his crossing from Europe to America in 1683. The report is intended for his family, friends who remained in Germany and, above all, for the ‘Frankfurter Land Company’, on behalf of which he bought a piece of land to build a to establish a new community. The salesman on duty is William Penn, Quaker and recently governor and owner of an immense area in the New World, wooded but fertile. More about him in a moment. First, a word about the image Pastorius uses to describe the religious mix of emigrants on board the ship. It’s like Noah’s ark. There, one specimen (m. and f.) of the living beings on earth was saved, so that – once the flood had passed – they could start again, as if it were day one of creation. On this boat are people from all backgrounds, from various professions, and especially from all possible denominations ( Religionen writes Pastorius), even a Catholic. They live peacefully together on the boat and all hope that once they arrive at their destination (Philadelphia) they can start building a new life.2 In a later report, Pastorius gives a brief impression of what church life in Pennsylvania was like. He paints a picture that seems very familiar to us now, but must have been unique at the time. First he mentions the Indians. They have ‘no articles of faith’, says Pastorius, only traditions and customs that they also pass on to their children. He sees little harm in it, although a broader instruction in Christian doctrine might help them forward. He also knows of two Calvinist churches, one for the Dutch, the other for the English. He further notes that the Quakers in Philadelphia are “known to William Penn.” They do not have a strict organization. So he can’t say much more about that. Then there are Swedes and ‘High Germans’, who are ‘Evangelical’ (ie Lutheran) and have their own pastor, called Fabricius, of whom he ‘regrets to report that he is very fond of the drink, but for does not pay attention to the need of the inner man’. He himself has ensured that a small church has now been built in the German mini-town of Germantown, but he attaches little importance to appearances. After all, it is about the people, who are the real building blocks of the church. He concludes by calling on pastors in their home country to consider making the crossing. They should then be more focused on the ‘theologia interna’ than on external matters.3
The recipients of these messages in the Frankfurt region must have been jealous. That that was possible, that these groups of people could just live peacefully next to each other! And that the boss of that country, William Penn, simply allowed it all to happen, and was even proud of it. How different it was in the German areas at that time. The Lutheran church – the only one that was admitted – was at that time torn by a battle between theologians of ‘orthodox and pietistic’ tendencies. And when I tell you that Philipp Jacob Spener, the top theologian of the pietist movement, was senior pastor of the church in Frankfurt, then you know enough. That was also the reason Pastorius moved to America in 1683. Many Pietists had hoped that the ‘reformation of doctrine’ would also be followed by a ‘further reformation’, namely that of the heart. They longed for a more mystical, intimate, collegial version of worship. They encountered a lot of resistance from orthodox quarters, and their own initiatives (coming together in groups) were viewed with suspicion. That is precisely why some of them had founded a ‘Land Company’ and sent Pastorius to prospect to America to buy a piece of land. There, those who wanted to leave the suffocating ecclesiastical atmosphere of Western Europe could lease a piece of land to start a new life. It was William Penn himself who had sown the seeds for this migration when he had traveled through Europe a few years earlier, visiting Holland, the region around Krefeld and Frankfurt.
William Penn
Penn is another strange man, atypical within the environment he represents and makes great. He himself belonged to the aristocracy of England, son of an admiral, personally friends with the king and the crown prince. However, he became the poster boy for a movement that did not recruit from the upper class at all, but found its greatest support among the ‘ordinary hardworking man’. It goes without saying that there will be a break somewhere in his life, a ‘conversion’, which, as is so often the case with conversions, did not come completely out of the blue. During his student years at Oxford he had already said goodbye to the Church of England, after which the university removed him from the rolls for ‘religious nonconformism’ and his father almost disinherited him. After a ‘European tour’ during which he studied in Saumur (France), he returns to England and crosses paths with an itinerant preacher, Thomas Loe. Through his actions he decides to join the Society of Friends , better known as ‘Quakers’. These were people who no longer had any expectations of any established church. Sometimes they had already walked the entire path from Anglican to Puritan to Baptist. This resulted in one of the most underestimated ecclesiastical phenomena in Europe: people who no longer know ‘with God’ and who either hang up the lyre or continue to search desperately. In England, these disappointed people find each other in loose groups that, quite aptly, call themselves Seekers . They no longer expected salvation from any external form of religion. They are ‘separated’, they are outside the church circuit. Sacraments, baptism, the Bible. It’s all fine, Been there, done that, and I’m still spiritually hungry. As Seekerscome together, they say nothing. They wait for God to reveal Himself. Sometimes someone feels, from within, that they have to say something. Then he (or she) takes the floor. This is how they hoped that God would be found. In this movement the realization is slowly growing that every person has an ‘inner light’, and that it is this inner light that directly connects the human soul with God. And that this light can actually do its illuminating work perfectly well without a creed, without a clergy, without the sacraments, yes, without a church. It happens more and more often that people during meetings have the feeling that God indeed wants to say something to them (or better: through them). Sometimes they start to tremble, as is often the case with great emotional tension that seeks an outlet. They owe their nickname to it: Quakers. In principle, they do not develop any religious doctrine. A later movement within this movement even begins to sing spontaneously. There a ritual simultaneous dance develops. They are called the Shakers. They like to read the Bible, but even there the inner light allows them to be selective. All external design is pragmatic and basically provisional. It is about coming together, and this always involves shared experience and/or consultation, or they remain silent. They call themselves the Society of Friends. The Quakers enjoyed spectacular success in England in the 1650s, growing to more than 50,000 in just a few years. The Puritans can’t help but laugh at it. The Quakers are persecuted. When the king returns in 1660, nothing changes for the Quakers except that there is now another persecutor and they sometimes share a cell with the former persecutor (the Puritans). They consciously chose a simple lifestyle, otherwise it was Jesus before and Jesus after. If Jesus had said that you should not ‘swear an oath, but that your yes should be yes and your no should be no’, then so be it. They refused to take the oath in court, which resulted in them being imprisoned. They also refused to pay the ‘tithes’ (church tax for a church that is not a church, why would you do that?) and again they ended up in jail. They refused to attend the official church service: go to the cell. They still came together despite the ban, in prison, etc. And, even more strange, when they were caught, beaten and humiliated, they let it happen without offering any resistance. Didn’t Jesus once say something about ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘whoever takes the sword will perish by the sword’? So they suddenly became pacifists. And it gets even crazier: Women were also created by God and, according to one of the most influential Quakers, George Fox, their subordination to men was not something essential, but something incidental, a consequence of the Fall. That sin was expiated by Jesus. Ergo, woman’s original glory has been restored through Christ. They too share in the inner light, and participate on an equal basis with the men within the Quaker communities. Because Quakers saw the personal whisperings of God as being entirely in line with the written record of earlier whisperings, they had great boldness in their ‘God talk’. In addition to the relationship with God, which was preferably very personal and intimate, they were very socially oriented. After all, they also had to love their neighbors. They are not called Society of Friends for nothing .They did not impose anything on anyone in terms of religion, although they of course tried to convert everyone to their views. The criticism of the established church in their proclamation is obvious. They were sweet, but certainly not neutral. So in 1666, William Penn joins this group and promptly becomes their top propagandist, especially when he, the king’s friend, is arrested while preaching on the streets in London and has to appear in court. His trial becomes a turning point in the appreciation of the Quakers. Calmly and smartly, Penn defends what he did, why he did it and why the charges against him are flawed. A popular jury acquits him, while the judge wanted him convicted, a first in Europe. For the first time, lawyers are also starting to doubt whether they are doing the right thing. In 1776 he traveled through Holland and Germany to let ‘his inner light’ shine in so many places and to ignite it in others, or less patriarchally: to bask together in each other’s inner light. He visits the Baptists in Krefeld, the Pietists in Frankfurt and takes special time to visit the Labadists in Friesland. He really wants to speak to Anna Maria van Schuurman, the most intelligent woman in Western Europe, who had withdrawn from the world and lived in a commune in Wieuwerd. What all these different people have in common is that they have separated themselves from the standard church and have therefore become partly outside normal life. During this pastoral propaganda trip by William Penn, the seeds were sown for the crossing of Pastorius and his followers from Frankfurt and Krefeld in 1683, with which I began this chapter.
Philadelphia
Because it soon became clear that the Quakers were ‘unwanted’ in England, many moved to the New World. There they hope to find the freedom to let their ‘inner light’ shine for people, or to help other people also find their ‘inner light’. This works fine in unpopulated areas or not yet really settled areas (e.g. in New York and the like), but when they come to areas with Puritan rule, they notice that the New World there is a carbon copy of the old. The death penalty is pronounced even faster than in the home country, and sometimes even carried out. Then they will be a lot better off in Rhode Island. Roger Williams welcomes them to his colony, even though he disagrees with their views. By the way, he was something of a seeker . Elsewhere they sometimes succeed in having their own settlements recognized, but they only really get the wind in their sails when William Penn starts his ‘holy experiment’. Due to circumstances, a piece of the New World just falls into his lap. The king still had an enormous debt outstanding to Penn Sr. In 1681, Charles II paid off that debt in one go by allocating the son a gigantic area that had not yet been taken into possession. In the charter the king refers to Admiral Penn and also includes the term ‘sylvania’ (wooded area). The name of the new colony was born: Pennsylvania. A little later, Penn receives Delaware from the Duke of York. Penn drafts a constitution, goes to America, negotiates with the Indians living there about how best to arrange property rights, and has surveyors define an area in a favorably located spot on the Hudson River. There he will have Philadelphia built. The frame of governmentthat Penn designs is completely in the spirit of the Quakers. In Pennsylvania – as in Rhode Island – there will be total freedom of conscience. As for the Indians, they are not just paid and then ignored. On the contrary, in a series of treaties he builds up good relations with the Lenni Lenape, as the main tribe of Indians in that region are called. And those who wish can also participate in his project with full citizenship rights. He summarizes his vision of what legislation should be in one sentence: “the ruler should never become so powerful that the will of one person could hinder the well-being of an entire country.” Returning to London, he continues his campaign for religious tolerance, while in Philadelphia his ‘holy experiment’ begins to gain steam. And unlike Rhode Island, Pennsylvania is making history. The whole world hears about it (Penn does an excellent job of propaganda and has ‘agents’ here and there in Europe from whom you can take options on plots of land). Germans in particular find their way to Pennsylvania. Now it’s a neighborhood in Philadelphia, but in the 1700s it was Germantowna household name in Germany and the Netherlands. Franz Daniel Pastorius, who had done the prospecting and arranged the purchase (he was a lawyer by training, and in addition to being a classicist, was also a not without merit poet), was soon elected mayor after its foundation. Baptists in particular (Mennonites, but also the followers of the Swiss Baptist Jacob Amman, the Amish) moved there. Later, the Schwenckfelders (kindred spirits of the Quakers, whose origins go back to the early period of the Reformation) also found their way there. Sometimes they transplant their own church to a foreign country, sometimes they join a related church, but very often they become somewhat ‘diffuse’ in their ecclesiastical outline. The special thing about Pennsylvania is that in terms of organization, everything is allowed, and nothing is required. The term ‘affiliated with’ also loses some of its meaning. The hard, closed group identities, clearly demarcated and distinguished from each other, naturally fade away in a country where legislation does not attach any advantages or disadvantages to them and instead you are constantly challenged about your personal commitment. To this day, Pastorius, who was a Lutheran when he left (with pietistic and mystical elements), remains unclear about what exactly he actually believed and which church or community he had joined. Meanwhile, he had the confidence of everyone and was the mayor of Germantown for many years. He ensured that social life was booming, he practiced pioneering agriculture and horticulture (which was perfectly possible in Philadelphia), he tried to convince German wine growers to come over, he founded schools (wrote the manuals himself if necessary). was), founded cultural associations, opened libraries, hospitals and organized poor relief. In short: he set up everything he thought was necessary and took it upon himself when there was (yet) no one else to do it. In his numerous letters to the home front, which of course also served to attract new immigrants, he was honest about the problems and dangers (unlike Penn, for example, who used to present everything in a very rosy way). At the same time, his letters were full of practical tips for the crossing, what to take with you and what to pay attention to. And his descriptions of the landscape, flora and fauna, the lifestyle of the Indians, not to mention his enormous collection of ‘local proverbs and sayings’ are still a Fundgrube todayfor researchers. We also encounter the same well-known biblical rhetoric with him when he wants to convince people to risk the crossing. Those who are not afraid of the hardships of the crossing, he writes, “can come out of European Babylon in the name of the Lord; but when he leaves, he should not do it like Lot’s wife, who left with her ‘feet’, but who actually stayed in Sodom with her heart and senses (literally: stayed behind with the so bequemlich Hausrath ) and who looked after that, something that, as you know, did not suit her well.”
Penn and Pastorius were pious men, but unlike the Puritans, not at all afraid of people who thought differently or believed differently. Penn did not want Philadelphia to be a ‘city on a mountain’, accessible only to those who are pure in doctrine and blameless in their walk (after Psalm 24), but a ‘ Society of Friends , a ‘brotherhood of men’ (Philadelphia is also the name of one of the seven churches in Asia Minor, to which the ‘angel of the Lord sends a letter in the vision of the seer of Patmos, better known as ‘the revelation to John’, or ‘the Apocalypse’. Of the seven cities, Philadelphia is the only one where only good points are highlighted). Not a closed, but an open city. The Pietists from Frankfurt were welcome, as were the Anabaptists from Krefeld. Pastorius cannot emphasize enough in his letters how much everyone here is truly equal before the law and can count on fair treatment. It is therefore not surprising that in 1688 we see the name of Franz Daniel Pastorius appearing (along with those of three other Germantown residents) on a petition calling for equal rights for blacks. This happens at the very moment when slaves are brought to Pennsylvania from the Caribbean islands for the first time. They want this subject discussed at the monthly meeting of the Quakers. It is the first official document in American history where this is argued in a simple and clear manner. The core text in this petition is a word from Jesus: ‘What you do not want done to you, do not do to others’. The rest is unfolding of this principle. Clear, right?
Because Penn declared the ‘ecclesiastical enclosure’ irrelevant and appealed to each person for his unique humanity (the inner light), the social side of the religious impulse could finally come to light. The mutual connection that religion evokes, but which is usually limited to one’s own group (us-them, in-crowd-out-crowd), could now be unfolded society-wide, in short, the impetus had been given. The reality is of course a lot more unruly.