The Wordy Shipmates

I recently read The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. She’s a contributor to NPR’s “This American Life”. To preface with her point of view, she’s a part Cherokee Okie who lives in and loves New York City. She was raised Pentacostal, going to church every time the door opened but has since become Atheist, although she appears to have great regard for Christ and the New Testament. She’s very liberal and loves history.

So The Wordy Shipmates is about the Puritans who came to North America after the Pilgrims. They were led by John Winthrop and landed north of Plymouth and started Boston. The book is a rambling through the first 30 years or so of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, lingering on such characters as Roger Williams, who thought that any lands wanted should be paid for and that the Indians were fellow men, to Anne Hutchinson, who **gasp** started preaching on how a person can be indwelt with the Holy Spirit and that works do not signify salvation. (Both were banished from the colony.) There is also evidence of Winthrop’s tolerance (not sending another banished person out into the wilderness in the dead of winter: “He did not receive a death sentence.”) and intolerance (rejoicing in the wholesale massacre of the Pequot tribe by burning them all, men, women, and children in their palisade despite the pleadings of other tribes, who happened to be enemies of the Pequots, to spare the women and children). The scene is so horrific that the tribes who had been allied with the English against the Pequot switch alliances. The English guessed that 600-700 Indians were destroyed.

This book has really made me think lately about my own faith. Here were the Puritan people, who were much more dedicated to Godliness and being pure than I, yet they do these horrific things believing that God helped them in it. I do realize that I am looking at them through the lens of 400 years in the future. Did they get it wrong? Were they in the right? If I truly believe that the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, and that all who sincerely seek Jesus Christ and His truth will receive it, then how can I reconcile it to what evil has been done in His Name by those who are sincerely seeking him. If people like Winthrop, who from his writings and correspondences seemed to really be trying to live a Godly life can condone and rejoice in such evil; if he can know his Scriptures better than I and commit such a hateful act, how can I know that what I believe and practice is really what is right and true? How can I believe that the Holy Spirit WILL lead into all truth?

A friend of mine who is very much a believer in Christ and is quite knowledgeable about the Old Testament talks about the concept of Hashem (I don’t know how to spell it) that was carried out on Jericho and other inhabitants of the promised land. It’s the idea that certain populations are so evil that they need to be wiped out entirely and are so “dedicated to God” through death. I’ve recently read a section where the women and children of a city were spared by the Hebrews and Moses himself was angry and commanded the slaying of the the non-virgins and male children. (Numbers 31:13-20) I can’t help but look on that with horror. I keep picturing A watching me and 3-year-old L being slain in front of her and being left alone in the world, since Brad would already be dead. I have a hard time believing Christ would approve. This makes me question what God really told Moses and Joshua about the conquest of Canaan and what was from their own belief in a tribal-type god like the lands they passed through. Did God have to reveal himself somewhat falsely because by being too different, they wouldn’t have a clue what to do with Him? They already couldn’t manage the few things that He commanded them as far as being a separate people.