The First Thanksgiving by Robert Tracy McKenzie

Author:Robert Tracy McKenzie [McKenzie, Robert Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2013-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

Pilgrims, Not Patriots

Before concluding, there’s one other Pilgrim trait we need to consider for a bit. I’ve saved it for last because I think it’s the most important. It’s also the easiest to overlook, precisely because it is so familiar to us. Here it is: it’s likely that the Pilgrims thought of themselves as “pilgrims.” It may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but the truth is, the powerful message now contained in that word is mostly lost on us. We speak of “the Pilgrims” without thinking about the term, using it as a kind of shorthand title for the group that came over on the Mayflower and played a role in the founding of America.

Literally, the word pilgrim refers to a person on a journey, often to a place of particular religious significance. When Americans first began to speak of “the Pilgrims” in the 1790s, this meaning was still understood, but even then it was common to mistake the group’s destination. In annual commemorations of the landing at Plymouth Rock, orators repeatedly described the Pilgrims as religiously motivated but worldly focused. We’ve seen this already in Daniel Webster’s famous speech in 1820. The Pilgrims, as Webster remembered them two hundred years later, had come intentionally to “plant a new society,” to “begin a work that shall last for ages.” In Webster’s telling, as the Pilgrims stood huddled near the storied rock, they peered with eyes of faith into the future, and there they saw the fulfillment of their vision in a new country built on Pilgrim principles.35

Toward the close of the century, a popular magazine employed a similar rhetorical convention to make the same point. This time it was the Pilgrims’ elder William Brewster who stood alone on the rock and prophesied:

Blessed will it be for us, blessed for this land, for this vast continent! Nay, from generation to generation will the blessing descend. Generations to come shall look back to this hour . . . and say: “Here was our beginning as a people. These were our fathers. Through their trials we inherit our blessings. Their faith is our faith; their hope is our hope; their God our God.”

Countless politicians, preachers and writers echoed the point: The tiny Pilgrim band had forged the “nucleus of a mighty civilization.” They “were among the main foundation-layers of our Great Republic.” They brought with them “the germ of our national life.”36

In this view, still common today, the Pilgrims’ journey ended when they reached the shores of America. The future United States was their Canaan, their promised land. It can be inspiring to remember their story that way. According to both Bradford and Cushman, however, that’s not how the Pilgrims themselves saw it. Certainly, they were searching for an earthly location where they could perpetuate proper worship and earn a better living, but to the degree that the Pilgrims thought of themselves as pilgrims, they meant that they were temporary travelers in a world that was not their home.

This is clear from the context in which Bradford famously used the term in Of Plymouth Plantation.

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