November 25, 2021
PURITAN NATION:
Mayflower Compact or Plymouth Combination? (Bradley J. Birzer, November 20th, 2021, Imaginative Conservative)
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, & c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.My first thought after reading this every January for the past fourteen years is, what incredibly and pugnacious audacity these Pilgrims had. Ruling themselves with a simple agreement, a single paragraph, and a deep and abiding faith--a faith I don't necessarily share but one I respect immensely. Who were these people, and what was their secret?My second thought is that this could never have been composed by anyone but the most Protestant of Protestants.Indeed, even as a practicing Roman Catholic, I have a hard time imagining the same scene being played out by French, Spanish, or Portuguese settlers. No, this is one of the great fruits of Protestantism, and it's probably one we Catholics should take to heart, especially as we continue to struggle over issues of religious freedom and freedom of conscience in our rather fallen world of the 21st century. [...]In their critical and essential study of America and her self-identity, Basic Symbols, Wilmoore Kendall and George Carey argue that one might very well call this the foundational document of America, a creation of the "basic symbol" around which even the Declaration and Constitution revolved and, ultimately, fulfilled.The authors of the Combination, according to Kendall and Carey "merely established a society, not a government, so that their symbols, with the passing of time, will have to be revised in order to provide the relationship between society and government, between the social order and the specifically political order."While I'm sure many historians and political theorists would agree with this assertion, it has a nice logic to it. At least as I understand it.While we could interpret the Combination from a Lockean or a Hobbesian perspective, it would be nothing short of absurd to do so. Hobbes was still thirty-one years away from writing Leviathan, and Locke was age negative 12 in 1620. As our own John Willson has argued emphatically for many years, America is not Lockean. If anything, the influence went the other direction--toward and on Locke from America.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 25, 2021 6:32 AM