Study Guide Island Christianity
Table of Contents
Overview
Puritanism
The Mayhews and other early settlers on Martha’s Vineyard brought with them a distinctive form on Christianity: New England Congregationalism, or at it is more commonly known, Puritanism. The Puritans were Calvinist Protestants who wanted to "purify" the Church of England from its Catholic heritage of doctrines, rites, and hierarchical organization. The settlers in New England are often called "Congregationalists" because their churches were independent congregations that were not linked by the type of church hierarchy (bishops, archbishops) that cemented the Church of England. For settlers, the colonies represented a place where they could start anew far from the corruptions of Europe. The colonies would become "a city on the hill," as John Winthrop famously claimed, a light onto the nations.
The settlement of New England was apocalyptic: Settlers hoped that the very purity of the colony would bring about the Second Coming of Christ, which most New Englanders felt was imminent. Dissenters not only were not part of this plan, but they actually impeded the coming of Christ: thus, heretics were regularly expelled from the colonies when they refused to convert or otherwise toe the line. Hence while we tend to think the Puritans came to American in order to have "freedom of religion," they actually just wanted the freedom to practice their religion: Antinomians, Quakers, Jews, and certainly Pagans were not part of the divine mission of the colony: they were deemed scourges rather than purifications.
In contrast, the conversion of Native Americans signaled for Puritans the success of their mission in America and the proximity of Christ’s return. The ability of New England Algonquians to cross the cultural divide from sinner to saint mirrored the great transformation every Christian hope to make and thus reinforced that salvation was truly possible, even in seemingly unlikely places. Native American “praying towns” on the mainland (such as John Eliot’s Natick) attempted to visibly represent the transformation of unsaved “savages” into Christian saints by making Algonquians live, behave, and act like (idealized) English citizens. Just as Boston or Plymouth represented a purified city of God, so too did praying towns physically build an ideal space that could serve as a light unto the Indian nations.
For Puritans, the purification of the English settlements and Indian praying towns occurred on both a communal and individual level. Individual purification reached its pinnacle when the soul was reunited with God (or was saved), though this salvation was not usually evident until one had died. Like Solon in Ancient Greece, Puritans were fairly certain that one could not be truly judged “happy” (or saved) until one’s life was complete. This alone makes sense of why Mayhew only records the lives of those who are dead in Indian Converts. The stories of the dead, in turn, guide the living and provide the living with light and consolation. One should not underestimate the anxiety Puritans felt over their possible salvation or damnation: there is the story recorded by John Winthrop of a Puritan woman who threw her baby down a well just to have the dilemma resolved (Ulrich par. 26).
A large part of Puritan anxiety over their salvation arose from their adherence to Calvinism, a theology which Calvin himself had intended to be reassuring. On the one hand, Puritans believed God had made a covenant (or agreement) with them, much like he had with the Hebrews: the Puritans would follow God’s will and God would made them his chosen people. On the other hand, Puritans could not be guaranteed that God had agreed to the covenant with them personally as salvation was solely by God’s choice. Nothing one did could ensure salvation. Puritans’ understanding of salvation tended to reflect the five primary tenets of Calvinism (easily remembered by the acronym “tulip”):
TULIP
Total Depravity. All man's sense are flawed. His will is imperfect and he cannot will himself to salvation.
Unconditional Election. God chooses certain individuals for salvation.
Limited Atonement. Christ dies only for the elect.
Irresistible Grace. The Holy Spirit extends to the elect a special inward call to salvation. The external call, which is made to the saints, cannot be rejected. The Spirit graciously causes the elect sinner to cooperate. God's grace cannot fail.
Perseverance of the Saints. It is impossible to "fall" from grace.
Although Mayhew deviates slightly at times from strict Calvinism, he tends
to follow these assumptions. Mayhew’s attention to the “total depravity”
of Wampanoag converts attests to the greatness of God in choosing and elevating
such souls. Yet Mayhew’s subjects seem to “fall from grace” not once but
repeatedly: thus, one might well ask, if grace is so “irresistible,” are
they truly saved? This question would have plagued Puritan readers less
than us. For Puritan readers this falling and returning was a normal pattern
that was performed regularly in autobiographies and conversion narratives.
Even the mother who threw the baby down the well might have been saved if
she (1) were chosen by God and (2) turned herself around. Salvation was
always a struggle, even for the greatest of men: it involved a cosmic battle
between the Spirit and the Flesh. As for earlier Christian writers like
St. Augustine, attention to one’s sins only reinforced the greatness of
God when individuals were ultimately saved.
Native Practice
To what extent did the Wampanoag converts on Martha’s Vineyard understand, accept, and practice the version of New England Puritanism outlined above? In addition to Mayhew's Indian Converts, the documents and artifacts included in the archive should help you answer this question. Included are texts used by missionaries to transmit Puritan theology as well as Native American responses and “vernacularizations” of the missionary materials. Most of the Christian texts used by Wampanoags on the island were translated into Massachusett or Wôpanâak by either Experience Mayhew or John Eliot, of Natick. Puritans, like other Christians before them, felt that language was key to accessing the divine: the translation of sacred texts into Algonquian languages was a precarious business. Biblical marginalia helps us understand what Wampanoag readers made of these texts and how they interpreted them. Many of the missionary texts included in this study guide are mentioned by Mayhew in Indian Converts. Meetinghouses and the Sabbath were equally essential means by which missionaries like Mayhew transformed of Algonquian lives and space into Christian territory.
In spite at attempts to regularize Native theology and practice, Wampanoag Christianity on Martha’s Vineyard had several distinctive features that set it apart both from English Puritanism and Algonquian Christianity on the mainland. Some distinctiveness was due to Mayhew’s missionary style: for example, Mayhew did not insist upon sudden cultural change, unlike John Eliot, the missionary in Natick who insisted that converts cut their hair, wear English clothing, refrain from Native mourning rituals, and attend church before they could become receive the privileges of church membership (Rhonda 370-71). Moreover Wampanoag Christianity was primarily Native-run and self-sustaining on the island: as James Rhonda notes, “the day-to-day spiritual lives of Indian Christians were fully in the hands of native pastors, ruling-elders, home-devotion leaders, discoursers, catechists, and musicians” (Rhonda 380). This lay tradition included important roles for women (Rhonda 384). As early as the end of the seventeenth century when the Baptist church was established on the island, Wampanoags had the option of a fully native-led religious community. Rather than acquiescing to white control, Native American conversion provided a way to access new ritual powers that many felt would help combat disease. At the very least, Christianity clearly provided a system for coping with the illnesses that ravaged the island. In addition, Christianity and the education it provided allowed Wampanoags to access new forms of social and political power and to negotiate colonial bureaucracy.
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