MayFlower Compact.....A Religious Statement????

http://www.nationalcenter.org/MayflowerCompact.html

Was this article implying that there should be seperation of church and state or that they were seeking a theocratic state.

came about because those not-quite-as-religious knew by the end of
the voyage that the Puritan folks were pretty much like the religious right today, ie sanctimonious assholes.
I think the wording is allowing for the non-religious to have input in the government.

As I read the Compact, they don't specify. They agree that they are loyal subjects of England's King James, that they come here for religious puposes, they commit themselves to combining together to for a "civil body politic," create a government together, create laws and submit to obedience to those laws that they create. They do not state anything about the religiosity or non-religiousity of that government or laws.

Governor Bradford wrote "there should be an association and agreement, that we should combine together in one body, and to submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose," this says nothing about the religiousity or non-religiosity of the government or governors.

Now, it's important to remember that this WAS a religious group who wrote this so perhaps there was an underlying assumption. Yet they were impelled to come here in order to have the freedom to practice their religion as they chose. Gov. Bradford also mentioned that there were differences and a breaking up into "factions" so this compact was designed to be a unifying document as to how all the factions would live together.

The Mayflower folks were not Puritans but separatists -- people who felt they had to leave England because they opposed the establishment of any religion. They felt that each congregation should have democratic control of its own doctrines and ritual, and saw that as being inconsistent with a government role in religion.

remake the Church of England along Calvinist lines from the inside. Since they recognized the right of the Church of England to exist, the government was fine with them.

The Separatists believed that there should be no state church, so they refused to belong. This was a problem as far as the monarchy was concerned (Catholics, who refused to go along with the Reformation were also in trouble, so many of them left to found the colony of Maryland), so the Separatists first went to Holland, which had freedom of religion.

However, they wanted to be English, not Dutch, and they did not like it when their children began assimilating into Dutch society. That's when they decided that they needed to go to America.

Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America, and it was a business venture, pure and simple. Hell, slaves first arrived in the Virginia Colony in 1619, and even this was before the Pilgrims landed.

The crap that's leveled with this kind of statement is that we were a religious country from the beginning, and that's simply false. We were a country of adventurers and fugitives. Although many people came to escape religious persecution, it still doesn't make us a "religious" country by nature.

Ideological wars are fought with incremental insinuation and encroachment by degrees. First you allow "god" on money, then it's used as proof that we must approve of the concept. Allowing chaplains does the same. By continually inundating institutions with supernatural assumptions, a "precedent" is suggested. It should be resisted publicly and vehemently out of simple respect for history if for nothing else: its incorrect.

that despite their clear religious motivation, the Pilgrims made a strictly civil compact, and their religion led them to reject any church-state connection; and that it is an instance of a literal social contract. We do need that conception of a social contract in America today!

As for Virginia, it imported not only African slaves, but the whole oppressive machine of English aristocracy, along with established religion. At least the Pilgrims were resisting most of that.

(My own paternal ancestors having come as mercenaries, a few steps ahead of the authorities, I take your point about fugitives and adventurers; but those fugitives and adventurers were also Presbyterians.)

and good to see you POE. Don't know if you haven't been around or I just haven't seen you but :hi:

Julie