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Britain's William Laud had spies listen to pastors' sermon to see if they said anything against the King's ordinances. If they did, the pastors were arrested. Decisions to punish political enemies of the King were made in the secret "Star Chamber." No witnesses were allowed in these arbitrary and oppressive inquisitions. Though started with the intention to cut through the red tape of bureaucracy, Britain's Court of Star Chamber usurped power. It became a political weapon for auditing, intimidating and punishing opponents to the King's policies, similar to modern-day IRS audits or partisan secret special counsel investigations. Individuals were subject...

Of 102 Pilgrims that landed on the shores of Massachusetts in November of 1620, only half survived till spring. In the Spring of 1621, as recorded by Pilgrim Governor William Bradford in his Of Plymouth Plantation: "About the 16th of March, a certain Indian came boldly amongst them and spoke to them in broken English ... His name was Samoset. ... He told them also of another Indian whose name was Squanto, a native of this place, who had been in England and could speak better English than himself ..." Samoset's initial visit to the Pilgrims was recorded in Mourt's...

When I was a child, Thanksgiving was simple. It was about turkey and dressing, love and laughter, a time for the family to gather around a feast and be thankful for the year that had passed and be hopeful for the year to come. In school, the story we learned was simple, too: Pilgrims and Native Americans came together to give thanks. [SNIP] As Peter C. Mancall, a professor at the University of Southern California, wrote for CNN on Wednesday, Gov. William Bradford would say in his book “Of Plymouth Plantation,” which he began to write in 1630, that the...

The story of how the Pilgrims arrived at our shores on the Mayflower—and how a friendly Patuxet native named Squanto showed them how to plant corn, using fish as fertilizer—is well-known. But Squanto’s full story is not, as National Geographic’s new Thanksgiving miniseries, “Saints & Strangers,” shows. That might be because some details of Squanto’s life are in dispute. The important ones are not, however. His story is astonishing, even raising profound questions about God’s role in American history. Every Thanksgiving we remember that, to escape religious persecution, the Pilgrims sailed to the New World, landing at Plymouth Rock in...

SEPTEMBER 16, 1620, according to the Gregorian Calendar, 102 passengers set sail on the Pilgrims' ship, Mayflower, with the blessings of their separatist pastor, John Robinson. Their 66-day journey of 2,750 miles encountered storms so rough the beam supporting the main mast cracked and was propped back in place with "a great iron screw." One youth, John Howland, was swept overboard by a freezing wave and rescued. His descendants include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Humphrey Bogart, Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush. During the Pilgrims' voyage, a man died and a mother gave birth. Intending to land in Virginia, they...

On NOVEMBER 21, 1620 (NS), the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact and began their Plymouth Colony. Of the 102 Pilgrims, only 47 survived till Spring. At one point, only a half dozen were healthy enough to care for the rest. In the Spring of 1621, the Indian Squanto came among them, and showed them how to catch fish, plant corn, trap beaver, and was their interpreter with the other Indian tribes. Governor William Bradford described Squanto as "a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation." Bradford added: "The settlers ... began to plant their corn, in...

When we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I will give thanks for property rights. Property rights allow each individual or family to do what we want with our small piece of the world without having to answer to the whole community. On Thanksgiving, we'll probably be told to think of America as one big family -- and for some people, government is the head of that family. That idea warms the hearts of America's new "democratic socialists." But thinking like that nearly destroyed this nation before it began. The Pilgrims at Plymouth didn't share a feast with Indians after arriving in...

Do you see the Pilgrims as folksy people in funny hats? The true story of the Pilgrims’ great journey to America was one of courageous faith, daring escape, and tenuous survival. Theirs is the story of refugees who fled intense religious persecution. Bible Gateway interviewed Jay Milbrandt (@JayMilbrandt) about his book, They Came for Freedom: The Forgotten, Epic Adventure of the Pilgrims (Thomas Nelson, 2017).As a lawyer and historian, how have you joined those two elements in writing this book?Jay Milbrandt: A lawyer is a storyteller. It’s our job to understand and explain the facts. I see my role as...

The title is somewhat misleading. This essay is specifically written for young black Americans who believe or have absorbed the message that the ghetto and life on the margin are their destiny, that success is unattainable, and that dreams are only for white people. Before you are halfway through the essay, many of you will be condemning and ridiculing me as simplistic, unrealistic, idealistic, and naive. I agree. But you ignore my message at your own peril. It is very demanding. Anything worth having is very demanding. Your friends may ostracize you and ridicule you as "trying to be white."...

This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to make a new start in Plymouth, Massachusetts. What is less appreciated is that Thanksgiving is also a celebration of the birth of free enterprise in America.They wanted to erect a New Jerusalem, built on a foundation of communal sharing and social altruism.The English Puritans, who left Great Britain and sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower in...

The Pilgrims (dubbed “Separatists” by the Church of England), and the Puritans who followed them, believed that the America was their spiritual destiny. Aboard the Mayflower were 102 passengers, fewer than half of whom were of Pastor John Robinson’s Separatist flock. On November 11, 1620, after a grueling two-month voyage, they dropped anchor at Cape Cod, and heeding the advice and wisdom of their pastor, the Pilgrims drafted a compact that would embody the same principles of government upon which American democracy would rest. It read: In the name of God, amen. We whose names are under-written…Having undertaken, for the...

America's history of rendering gratitude to the Almighty Detail of the 1914 Jennie Brownscombe painting “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth.” The Pilgrims fled England because of religious persecution and lived in Leiden, Holland from 1609 to 1620. Each October, Leiden, Holland, celebrated an annual day of thanksgiving for the end of the bloody pillaging, called “Spanish Furies” committed by Spain’s “Iron Duke” from 1572 to 1589. Leiden also had a Jewish population. Spain had driven out the Muslims, who had occupied their country for seven centuries, but then they forced the Jews out, with many fleeing to Holland. The University...

The Pilgrims gave thanks for a change in weather, but didn’t thrive until they changed, too. Every American schoolchild learns a version of the first Thanksgiving, a story half-legend and half-history: After the Pilgrims spent a freezing first winter in Plymouth, friendly Native Americans helped them learn to harvest the bounty of their new country the next year. The story gets more interesting when we look at the first mention of an actual “thanksgiving” at Plymouth. Less than two years after that 1621 feast, the colony faced drought and famine. Advances in paleoclimatology, the science of reconstructing past climates from...

Americans readily accept two opposing ideas about the first Thanksgiving — one bright and highly idealized, the other gray and somber, but closer to the truth. Jean Leon Gerome Ferris captured the first idea in a painting completed in 1915, some three centuries after the actual event. In his First Thanksgiving 1621, we see prosperous, black-clad Pilgrims in the company of new-found friends — bare-chested Indians in feathered war bonnets (one of several historical inaccuracies). The “thanks” here are for a bountiful harvest and the early realization of America as a land of milk and honey.But how could it have...

When we point out that neither Socialism nor Communism have ever worked, its supporters simply smile indulgently and say, “Well, that’s just because the right people haven’t tried it yet.” On that count, they are just plain wrong. Communism had its purest test in the earliest days of American history, and was an abysmal, abject, utter failure. And it was tried by a small group of people who were committed to each other, devoted to God, and were hard-working and industrious. If this crew couldn’t make it work, nobody’s ever going to make it work.

In the middle of March 1621, just as the Pilgrims were coming out of the devastatingly harsh winter, a guard alerted his comrades with the cry of “Indian coming!” Wearing only a loincloth as he walked into the Pilgrims’ camp, Samoset astonished the English onlookers with a hearty “Welcome!” Then speaking surprisingly clear English, he followed his friendly greeting with a request, “Have you got any beer?” The Pilgrims informed their friendly guest that they were out of beer, and offered him brandy instead. After a hearty snack of brandy, biscuit, butter, cheese, pudding, and roast duck, Samoset was ready...

The 400 year history of Thanksgiving as a holiday of thankfulness for God’s mercy to our founding forefathers and Natives has been replaced with a new motif on our omniscient college campuses: Thanksgiving is Racist! This new postmodern narrative says that Thanksgiving represents racism, crimes against Native Americans, exploitation, evil colonization, theft of native lands, and genocide (with no examples of course). Adherents even maintain that there is no evidence that the Thanksgiving story actually occurred (despite libraries of evidence written by men and women who were there). Yes, this all knowing generation has taken the mantle from their omniscient...

Americans are often surprised to learn that the pilgrims experimented with a communist system when they first arrived in what would later become the United States. This needs to go far and wide this holiday season! The pilgrims learned a tough lesson - that capitalism feeds far more than socialism. You've probably never heard this part of our country's history! Read and please share at http://resistancefeed.com/2016/11/22/the-real-story-of-the-first-thanksgiving/

Thousands of Catholic pilgrims thronged to the French shrine of Lourdes on Monday for Assumption celebrations held under tight security after the murder of a priest, the latest victim in a series of jihadist attacks. The gathering at the sanctuary in the foothills of the Pyrenees is the first major Catholic event in France since priest Jacques Hamel was killed by two jihadists who stormed his church during mass on July 26 and slit his throat. Groups from across Europe, the Middle East and Asia traveled to Lourdes for the occasion, one of the biggest in the Christian calendar. "We've...

A new $5 million Anglican Centre is to be built in Spain in Santiago de Compostela, the end of the world-famous Catholic pilgrimage route the Way of St James. The Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain, which is part of the Anglican Community under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is to begin fundraising with the help of Trinity Church, Wall Street in the United States. The new Anglican centre in Spain will have instant and enormous appeal to Christians from through the Anglican Communion worldwide. Santiago de Compostela is believed to be the burial site of the disciple James,...