In the year 1607 three ships, Godspeed, Susan Constant, and Discovery landed in whats now known as Virginia. A total of 104 men exited those ships looking for a new life. The grounds they began to settle on and create this new life became known as Jamestown.
Thirteen years later a very famous ship, Mayflower, landed in Massachusetts. On board were 102 people looking for freedom and a new beginning. They named their settlement Plymouth, and with these people the land we know as North America had its first two English colonies.
These English settlers known as Pilgrims, came to the “new world” in search of religious freedom. They left their homes and country to flee from the Church of England. They were Separatist and Congregationalist. Becoming sick of the corruption within the Church of England, they fought for the right to join as independent bodies of believers and no longer be under the control of a higher human authority.
These Pilgrims brought with them their deeply held biblical beliefs. Among these beliefs they held close were the Doctrines of Grace, otherwise known as Calvinism.
With very little learning tools, zero technology as we have today, by the work of the Holy Spirit through the reading of scripture, they saw the Ultimate Sovereignty of God over His whole creation, and the utter wickedness of man and his inability to please God in his current state.
Speaking of the Pilgrims, Loraine Boettner (1901-1990) wrote, “Calvinism came to America in the Mayflower… the Pilgrims Fathers were Calvinists in their faith according to the straightest system”.
Although calvinism or The Doctrines of Grace was simply a theological system that dealt with God’s Sovereignty in salvation, this system of belief spilled over into all aspects of the life for the early Pilgrims and eventually into our modern American society as a whole by way of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution.
John Calvin, along with Holy scripture, taught that man is sinful. Man is corrupt and unable to do any good apart from the grace of God. This goes for our civil officials, government as well. Known as “Lesser Magistrates”, Calvin and the early Pilgrims believed that since mankind was fallen and sinful, this included civil officers and rulers. They believed that God ordained lesser Magistrates to intervene in the affairs of the people when a ruler became a tyrant and a despot. This is the theological basis the colonists used to resist Great Britain. After the American Revolution the colonists made it a point to create a limited Government as a shield against the very things the Pilgrims fought against before they fled to the New World.
The vile hatred and sheer ignorance of calvinistic doctrine is definitely nothing new. The Pilgrims were all too familiar with it and were persecuted for it. They were not the first and won’t be the last. I’m sure they could walk one through scripture just as a modern calvinist can, pointing out irrefutable proof of the Doctrines of Grace. But whether or not one holds to these doctrines, they still reap the benefits by living free in a land that was established by those doctrines, brought over by a people who were persecuted because of their belief in those doctrines, and guided by the God who created those doctrines. America nor the world will ever be separated from the Doctrines of Grace otherwise known as Calvinism.
No King but Christ 