OSC logo

Winter Reporter 2008
(Click here to access color, illustrated version in PDF file format)

Old South Church
Boston MA 02116
http://www.oldsouth.org

What's inside? (Text only version)

COMPLEXITY, FAILURE, & HOPE
IN INTER-RELIGIOUS RELATIONSHIPS
by Mark S. Burrows
Excerpts from the Lecture Series:
Getting religion right: beyond stereotypes and statistics.


THE LARGER CIRCLE: FRIENDS OF OLD SOUTH
by Michael Fiorentin
 . . . After thinking about why I am a Friend of the Church, I asked other Friends to explain why they have also moved into this category . . .


WIDENING
OLD SOUTH’S WELCOME
by Joanne Herman
Yes, as a transgender woman, I wondered if any church would accept me. There were lots of stories circulating in the transgender community about parishioners in various denominations who had been cast out of their congregations upon disclosing their transgender status. Regardless, I felt I needed to try...


PART II (CONCLUSION):
MOHAWKS, THE GREEN DRAGON & THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
by Liz Rice-Smith
For several years before the events of the Boston Tea Party, some colonial activists were advocating for Americans to use what they called a local “Indian tea” instead of the British variety imported by the East India Company . . .




COMPLEXITY, FAILURE, AND HOPE
IN INTER-RELIGIOUS RELATIONSHIPS

Excerpts from the Kickoff Presentation
of the Old South Lecture Series (Oct. 21, 2007):
Getting religion right: beyond stereotypes and statistics.

by Mark S. Burrows, Theologian in Residence at Old South Church

How, then, shall we begin to speak of the story of inter-religious relationships, without confessing at the outset that this is mostly a story of anger, violence, and anguish. But I hasten to say mostly, because there were and there are breakthrough moments of acceptance and even celebration of difference in this narrative, exceptions however which prove the general rule.

Indeed to write the history of constructive inter-religious engagement between Christians and “others,” at least until the beginnings of modernity, would yield a fairly short book. It might make a good chapter of reading, nestled in the midst of a much longer story of hostilities, confusions, and misapprehensions, but not much more than this. Christianity has too often taken up the sword against its adversaries – or, those who found themselves standing outside the church’s boundaries. Jesus’ words, in this case taken out of context, came to fuel the fires of this intolerance: “If you are not for me, you are against me.”

And yet this is by no means a peculiarly Christian problem, this demand of uniformity characteristic of such a “totalizing system.” It is the inheritance, for better or worse, of a deep chord in the ancient Hebrew scriptures which point to God’s fierce partiality – and, as a result, of their special privilege as a people chosen by this jealous God. In shaping their life in terms of this ancient tradition, they wondered how God could possibly love those “others” whose worship, whose belief, whose acts were so alien to their own. How could the one jealous God make room for those others? So the psalmist cries out, “Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call on your name!” (Ps. 79. 6). And, in the chilling words from the Fifth Book of Moses (Deuteronomy), which recounts God’s desire for the destruction of all the peoples in “the land which [he] gave them”: “You shall annihilate them – the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites–just as the Lord your God has commanded. . .” (Dt. 20. 17 ff.).

All of this sets, in sober realism, the context of our consideration of an alternate path, one of dialogue and engagement rather than of mutual suspicion, hostility, and vengeance.

First of all, then, we must say clearly at the outset that Christianity largely failed for much of its history to develop capacities for creative engagement of others and of “otherness” – viz., those who were considered “infidels” (i.e., not sharing the fides, or faith), and the “heretics” (i.e., those who made a false haeresis, or “choice”).

Largely, but not entirely: because there are, in the midst of long and dark nights of incomprehension and abuse, remarkable moments of light breaking forth. Sometimes, these occur among the ranks of bishops and theologians, those officials charged with maintaining the “tradition” of Christian discourse. Sometimes, these involve communities offering refuge, comfort, and shelter. But more frequently, we find them to be voices at the margins – mystics, visionaries, and prophets – and, indeed, some of the so-called “heretics,” who carved out a different room, and found a different grammar of engagement that opened them toward otherness.

To tell this story, even in the barest of outlines, we would have to include both of these: the atrocities of violence toward the vulnerable “outsiders” in the repeated pogroms throughout the Middle Ages directed at Jewish communities; tensions toward Muslims that finally erupted in the crusades during the late 11th century and continued sporadically during the next seven or eight generations; and, the militant suppression of those “insiders” who found unorthodox expressions of faith and life and were suppressed by inquisition and various forms of harassment and discrimination, torture and capital punishment.

This is not a story to be proud of. It is also not a story we can afford to ignore, or forget since it is part of how Christians are perceived by those religious communities who have had to bear the burden of this violence, with the scars and absences which such a history has left behind. We can only shudder in reading Saint Celan’s short, anguished:

In rivers north of the future
I cast the net you
haltingly weight
with stonewritten
shadows.

My reflections shape themselves not so much as an historical retrospective recalling these narratives of violence, but rather as in order to suggest what went wrong – and, what continues to go wrong – underneath such atrocities that allowed for and even condoned such actions.

Here, we will need to think about: scripture; God, at least as conceived in diverse forms of theological expression; and, ethics.

Scripture. This is not an easy story to tell, since at the heart of the Bible which Christians share with Jews is a portrayal of a jealous and, in some accounts, vengeful God. We need only read over the shoulders of the psalmist who frequently calls forth divine judgment against the enemy, or find our way into the long narrative in the Torah – or, at least, in strands of these stories – that tells of God’s privileged calling of some at the expense of the land, property, and lives of those who were already “in the land” or brought armies to bear against the inhabitants.

There are, of course, opposing voices within these books of the “law,” and Jesus is quick to call upon these when pressed to explain what is the “greatest” of the commandments in the law (cf. Mk. 12. 28 ff.): he cites the “shema” (Dt. 6. 4 – 9, 11. 13 – 21; Num. 15. 37 – 41) and a text taken from Leviticus 19. 18 (and, in an echo at v. 34): “You shall love your neighbor [or, the alien, the “other” one among you] as yourself.” Indeed, Jesus stands in this story with the “lawyer” who queried him, in the prophetic tradition, seeking with the ancient prophets to break open the narrowing ideology of nationhood and religious ethnicity, pointing others toward a more inclusive vision of the covenant – his subversive teachings in parables about the coming of God’s kingdom among the “least,” his healing of outsiders, his vulnerability to those in need. The stories of his encounter with the Samaritan or Syro-Phoenician woman and the Roman centurion represent this compassionate opening to those who stood outside the covenant with Israel, those who were to be “annihilated” by the desire and demand of Moses’ God. And, in Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man, he goes on to explain what it means to love the “neighbor” by telling the parable of the good Samaritan – which is one of the important moments of inter-religious encounter in the gospels, because it recalls how Jesus imagined how an outsider to the covenant might fulfill its most central law of compassion for the “other.” And, as you know, Jesus turns the man’s legitimate question, “Who is our neighbor?” to the much more decisive one: “How are we neighbors to others?” (see Lk. 10, 29 ff.).
 
But the narrowing pressures of covenantal teaching, of covenantal history, often exerted a quite different pressure on communities shaped by these biblical texts – not only in ancient Israel, but most pointedly among early Christians insofar as they appropriated this story as their own (e.g., Paul’s notion of election, developed with poignant force in Romans 9 – 11). This is to say that Christians did not so much invent an exclusivist ideology, based upon an interpretation of the divine covenant, as they did appropriate one found in their Bible, in their own fashion – which in the tragic annals of history often meant that they enacted such an ideology violently upon the bodies and against the religious communities of others. Let us be clear, then, about this: their violence finds justification in a deeply rooted biblical theme, even if it is not the only one and one inconsistent with the prophetic witness that characterizes rabbi Jesus’ teaching and life witness.

God. This follows from the first: Which image of God will we take as primary? Which will support us, shape our moral imagination? The God of an ancient people whose life presumed the role of military conquest, forced enslavement of those conquered in battle (e.g., 1 Kg. 9. 20 – 22), and the legislation of separation from those “others”? Or, the same God of this ancient people who sought to protect the vulnerable – the widows and children, above all – and respect the rights of those “others” (e.g., 1 Kg. 8. 41 ff.)?

Are we to take as central, in following Jesus’ interpretation of Torah, the mandate of the “shema” and the equivalent obligation to love the “other” as we love ourselves?

Are we to ascribe to the God of the prophetic witness who interprets the nation as a “suffering servant” (in Deutero-Isaiah) and opens the gifts of the divine covenant to include the foreigner and the outcaste? As “the one who shows mercy” to the rich and the poor, the insiders and those outside, the least and the greatest, and, yes, the Jew and the Gentile alike? What does it mean to take seriously, in the context of Christians’ relationship with Jews, Paul’s insistence that “the gifts and call of God” are irrevocable (see Rom. 11. 29; the Latin text that shaped the medieval, western church’s thinking asserts that the gifts and call remain for God without “regret” or “repentance” [sine poenitentia])? In other words: God has not, does not, and will not change God’s mind about the divine love for Israel. But neither is this election a narrowing one, a least in a manner that would close salvation to “the nations.” Herein lies one of the great themes of early Christian teaching, one which was too quickly inscribed with another pressure of exclusion of other “outsiders.”

Ethics. We are in need of a “neighboring” ethics, one shaped by the showing of mercy toward those we might consider “undeserving” and thus rooted in a sacrificial love for the other. In this sense, one that learns a different lesson from the story of crucifixion: namely, that neighboring love is a gift enlarged by com-passion; that neighboring love finds its purpose in the generosity of welcome; and, that neighboring love is shaped by the vulnerability of respect.

But this is a prophetic path, in ancient days as in our own.

Amid these competing visions of God, and differing strands in the scriptural legacy that grounds our varied faith, lies a profound ambivalence. One historian, Jeffrey Burton Russell, sees in this a profound tension running through the long narrative of Christian history, a complex story always torn by the pressures of the will for order and the demands of prophecy.

The prophetic moment is the moment of breaking through the static, entrenched order, opening us to the “new.” It does not give us eyes to see new neighbors; rather, it is the enlarging of our sense of how we might “neighbor” others. It is the extension of mercy, the widening of gift.

It is thus an example of prophetic imagination, an opening of a new world by the way we see within the familiar world. It is not, in other words, finding a new horizon; it is rather the creating of a new horizon in the old one. “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt. 13, 52).

How is it, then, that we are living out this neighboring ethic in our community? And how might we live this out concretely, in a manner that draws from the prophetic imagination of such an inclusive love, one we see taking form in Jesus’ life and constituting the very shape of his death as an ultimate witness to this love?

Here, let me close with several suggestions, or guidelines, that might inform our constructive engagement of this prophetic witness and shape our own sense of responsibility (i.e., response-ability) in the life we share with others of differing faith traditions.

We would do well to:

1.    Take responsibility for our own God, and not for someone else’s;

2.    Discern how we might be responsible to safeguard the sanctity of others, not as a duty but as one means of discovering what mercy means;

3.    Allow others to interpret our own story – at least, insofar as theirs are intertwined with ours, because they may see it differently than we are able to do;

4.    Recognize that the truth is always larger and often stranger than what we otherwise assume, and our knowledge of it depends on opening ourselves to other stories and different experiences than our own; and, finally,

5.    Engage others in asking how we share a common future, in the midst of our differences.

With others we inhabit but one world; we share diverse histories but are bound by one future as this is etched into the sacred and yet fragile substance of common time and space which we must learn to share generously; and, yes, we find ourselves called to walk that royal road drawn by and to the God whom we know in Jesus as One Love.

* Full text of this lecture can be found at http://www.oldsouth.org/pubs/burrows21oct07.doc

The Rev. Professor Mark Burrows, Professor of the History of Christianity at Andover Newton Theological School, serves as Old South’s Theologian-in-Residence through September 2008 and lectures, teaches, and assists in worship at Old South.
On sabbatical from Andover-Newton, he is also researching and writing on the “renewal of theology as an art, exploring the intersection of poetics as a peculiar (and neglected) form of theological imagination.” No stranger to Old South,
Mark taught one of the “Church in the World”
classes during Lent in 2006.



THE
LARGER CIRCLE:
FRIENDS OF
OLD SOUTH

by Michael Fiorentino


After several years as a member of Old South, I felt as though God was calling me to serve elsewhere. Although I have no regrets of my decision to join another UCC church, it took me roughly two years to make this move. Why? Because of the deep respect and affection I had and continue to have for Old South. I’ll try to be succinct in my explanation.

First, a word about how I came to Old South Church in the first place. Despite an unwavering faith in the triune God, I became more and more discouraged with my former denomination. After much investigating it looked as the UCC would be spiritually fulfilling so I visited a number of Churches. I was immediately impressed by Old South’s statement on “the Inclusive Dimensions of God’s Grace” that continues to adorn the back of the bulletin each week. Rev. Jim Crawford was pastor at that time and his sermons and his general demeanor suggested he and OSC were sincere about this statement. Also, the congregation reached out to me and made me feel welcome. Inside and outside the Church, Old South and its ministers truly “practice what they preach” and I couldn’t help but join. I felt spiritually enriched and served on three committees during my time. I made many friends that still sustain me today so I couldn’t “simply leave” altogether when my own “call” to move on came..

A quick scan of the Church directory suggests 20-25% of those listings are friends of Old South — what a wonderful way for a non-member (either one not ready or able to join formally, or one, like me, moving on to a new location) to go on record saying: “I support Old South in all its ministries and I still care about the Church family.” I will always have a special place in my heart for Old South and this is why I insisted on becoming a Friend instead of disappearing. I continue to volunteer thru the Care Committee Spring 2006 Reporter) to send words of cheer to OSC members (not to mention the countless cards I received when my father died recently). Not a week goes by without my checking the Church website to read the Sunday sermon. I continue donating to charities that OSC outreach supports.

After thinking about why I am a Friend of the Church, I asked other Friends to explain why they have also moved into this category as well. Here are two representative and enlightening answers I received


From Barbara Westdyke Wellnitz and Bruce Wellnitz,
Foxboro, Massachusetts

“My husband and I met at Old South in 1964 –- in what was then Old South Seminar, probably the precursor to the 20s and 30s group of today. We were married there in August of 1966. Our youngest son and his wife were married there in Sept. 1998. Our oldest son was baptized at Old South Church –- by Dr. Frederick M. Meek. We still consider Old South our “home away from home,” even though we have been active in a church in Foxboro since we moved here in 1970.

“A dozen of our Old South friends attended both sons’ weddings and more than that number attended our 40th anniversary party last year. We continue to attend the Thanksgiving service at the Meeting House — this year, with a dozen of those friends. That is one of our holiday traditions. Another is the annual New Year’s Day get-together with everyone from that “seminar” era who still lives in the Boston area. We gather at a restaurant or in someone’s home — as we’ve been doing since Jan. 1 1965. Back then, there was a New Year’s Day tea dance on the 4th floor of the church. When the tea dance was no longer held, we continued the January 1 tradition — another holiday tradition. Today, I have a list of more than 60 people whom we met at Old South 40 years ago; they are scattered all over the country now, but we stay in touch. Some are “best friends;” some are acquaintances, but we value these longstanding connections — all begun at Old South when we were young and single. Now, most of us are couples; some, sadly, are now widows. We call ourselves the Old South Group — Near & Far.” (See Winter Reporter 2006.)

From Rev. Bob Lewis,
Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“My first time worshiping at Old South was in September 1956 when I was a freshman at Boston University and lived at Myles Standish Hall. Frederick Meek was senior pastor at that time, and the associate pastors were Emerson Curry and Walter Wyman. I continued to attend Old South and became an associate member in December.

“I joined the college group which, during my years at BU, was led by Bob Christensen and Daniel Weaver. I also taught Sunday School, beginning with the fourth grade during my sophomore year. While a senior at BU I moved up to eight grade, which was the church membership class. I remained at Old South during my first year at Andover Newton and was the advisor for the high school group, which met during the Sunday School hour.

“For many years I had little or no contact with Old South, but e-mail through the Old South Forum has helped me renew those ties. During the 1990s I worshiped at Old South three or four times. Now retired as a UCC pastor, but doing interim ministry, my wife Lois and I live in Allentown, PA. Nearby are our three children and, as of this writing, our 3 and 2/9 grandchildren.

Lois and I are well acquainted with Bill Regan, pastor at Hope UCC in Allentown (and son-in-law to Senior Minister Emeritus James Crawford), and occasionally we see Betsy at various gatherings. They help us keep in touch with Old South and with the Red Sox. In fact, the day of the Red Sox victory parade we saw Old South Church in the background as the parade passed through Copley Square.

For many years, while on summer vacation, there would be a day when I made the circuit of second-hand bookstores in Boston and Cambridge, and often the day included dropping in at Old South and picking up brochures and copies of sermons. Once, in fact, I used that opportunity to look up something in the New Century Hymnal. Going back in time, I have several books by George A. Gordon and a few by Fred Meek.

Old South served as an important influence during my formative years and has remained an inspiration to me since then. May God bless and prosper the ministry and mission of Old South Church and especially its public witness within and beyond Boston.

These stories, among many others out there, demonstrate why we Friends continue to stay in touch and keep a special place in our hearts for Old South Church.



WIDENING
OLD SOUTH’S
WELCOME

by Joanne Herman

Editor: At the January 2008 Council meeting, the Council voted to amend the text of the “Inclusive Dimensions of God’s Grace” to read as follows (bold text indicates changes):
A Note on the Inclusive Dimensions of God’s Grace

The Old South Church in Boston, in the name of its host, Jesus Christ, and in the spirit of Christ’s invitation carved into the stone of this church’s portico, “Behold I Set Before You an Open Door,” welcomes all who seek to know God.

Following the One who we believe is Sovereign and Savior, we affirm that each individual is a child of God, and recognize that we are called to be like one body with many members, seeking with others of every race, ethnicity, creed, class, age, gender, marital status, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to journey together toward the promised realm of God.

We invite everyone to join in the common life and mission of our reconciling community through participation and leadership in this congregation, and by fully sharing in the worship, rites and sacraments of this church.

As we all move forward with the work of this church, we commit ourselves to making justice and inclusivity a reality in this congregation and in the world. On the threshold of Christ’s open door, we rely upon the healing, unconditional nature of God’s love and grace to be our help and guide.

Council’s unanimous vote directly followed hearing Joanne’s story as related below.

My wife Barbara and I had both been raised UCC by our families but had not been members of any church in our thirty years of marriage. When she started losing her battle with carcinoid cancer in the spring of 2005, however, we felt we could not transit the time remaining without a stronger spiritual connection. Yes, as a transgender woman, I wondered if any church would accept me. There were lots of stories circulating in the transgender community about parishioners in various denominations who had been cast out of their congregations upon disclosing their transgender status. Regardless, I felt I needed to try.

In looking around the web for a UCC church near us, I quickly came upon Old South Church in Boston. Old South had been welcoming lesbians and gay men for quite a while, which I took as a good sign, since I have usually found myself welcome in similar places. Still, Old South’s “Note on the Inclusive Dimensions of God’s Grace” did not specifically mention gender identity and expression. We decided to give it a try anyway, even though other transgender people might have given up at this point.

We were in tears during much of our first service. It was strongly meaningful in so many ways. Could we become regulars? I needed to confirm that I would be welcome. So, in the following week, I met with then Associate Minister Jennifer Mills-Knutsen. She said that Old South’s statement including individuals of “every sexual Identity” was meant to include transgender folks, too. She cautioned me, though, that I might be the first one of “me” in the congregation!

Barbara and I became Old South regulars, and we loved not only the church and the service but also its people. No one seemed fazed by two women who were so clearly a couple, and we felt even more welcoming energy toward us as my transgender status came to the fore.

In October of 2005, we became members. I was surprised how emotional I became when I heard when I heard Senior Minister Nancy Taylor pronounce my name from the pulpit. It was a recognition of my new name and true gender in the eyes of God, let alone all of the members of the congregation. How wonderfully reaffirming!

Barbara’s last time in Old South was the day she became a member. From then until her passing in January 2006, the congregation provided extraordinary support for the two of us as Barbara’s health failed her.  They continued to watch over me, too, as I adjusted to my new existence as a widow.

Shortly after Barbara’s death, Old South’s annual report was published. Imagine my surprise when the Rev. Taylor called out as one of the highlights of the year Old South’s welcoming its first transgender member! All of my doubts about being welcome in a house of God are now gone for good.

For the benefit of other transgender people looking for a spiritual home, however, I would urge UCC settings to be more direct in your welcome. A welcome only to individuals of all “sexual orientations” is interpreted as a welcome to those who are lesbian, gay and bisexual (as well as heterosexuals); it doesn’t address gender identity and expression. An additional welcome to “transgender” individuals is much better, but could be interpreted as excluding those whose presentation does not conform to the gender binary (man/woman). To extend the broadest welcome possible, say instead that you welcome individuals of all “sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions.” It will be much appreciated.
Note: Joanne Herman’s story originally appeared in the UCC Waves newsletter, April 2007.


Transgender Key Concepts
and Terminology

* Sex is anatomy; Gender is a social construction of beliefs and expectations.

All LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) People Challenge Gender Expectations

1. “Women should love men” and vice-versa — Who you love = sexual orientation.

2. “Women should look and act like women” and “men should look and act like men”
— How you look and act = gender expression.

3. “Women should live as women” and “men should live as men”
— How you live your life = gender identity.

About “Transgender”
Transgender is a shorthand adjective
      (e.g. “Transgender woman”).
Some who do not conform to gender expectations do not consider themselves transgender
Therefore:
Gender identity and expression . . .
is more inclusive than . . . transgender



PART II: SONGS, DISGUISES & STORIES:
MOHAWKS,
THE GREEN DRAGON &
THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
by Liz Rice-Smith

Part I Introduction (see Fall 2007 Reporter for full text)

Old South — “the Church of the Boston Tea Party”

December 16, 1773. What a day! And to this day, from time to time, one of our OSC sidewalk signboards on Boylston Street carries the message: “The Church of the Boston Tea Party” . . .

While many of us are well aware of our Old South ties to many of the activists who carried out the action of the Boston Tea Party as well as to the hosting of important  meetings at the Old South Meeting House, we may not have been aware that the  activists dumped tea, in disguise, as Mohawk Indians. What do we make of it, that they disguised themselves as Mohawks? Who were these men, and why did they disguise themselves? What does this mean to us, that just before our feisty patriots dumped tea into the Boston Harbor that December day in 1773, they donned clothing, head pieces, feathers, axes, and war paint of American Indians – specifically, the Mohawk/Iroquois people?

        And Now Part II . . .

The Kanienkehaka/Mohawk People
Over many thousands of years, Native First Americans in the Northeast area of the continent had developed highly artful and sophisticated patterns and protocol for the complex, refined, and clear management of their nations, family lives, cultural activities, land use, trade, conduct of war and peace, expression of religious life, and practices of governance. The Mohawk people, Kanienkehaka (which means “People of the Flint”) are culturally and politically an Iroquoian people. The Kanienkehaka have responsibility as the “Keepers of the Eastern Door” of the Rotinonsionni (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy). This Confederacy includes the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora (added in the 1720s), and Mohawk nations.

The Mohawk people, a small nation, fierce and powerful, were known as a matrilineal people of the Longhouse — intelligent, terrifying to enemies in their uses of guerilla war strategies (including uses of “the fires”). The Kanienkehaka’s First Nation enemies called them “Mohawks,” which holds various uncomplimentary meanings such as “poisonous snake” or “cannibal,” and this name was adopted by the Europeans who came to dominate the continent. The Kanienkehaka who participated in the 1704 raid on Deerfield, for example, were from the Mohawk villages near Montreal — Kahnawake, La Montagne, and Sault-au-Récollet (present-day Kanesatake), villages on the St. Lawrence River at the northern edge of their homeland that were founded by people who moved from the Mohawk Valley beginning in the 1670s. These are the people with whom Jesuits lived at Kahnawake (known to early Massachusetts colonists as Caughnawagans). Many of the Kanienkehaka of Kahnawake are Roman Catholic. Today, eight communities including Kahnawake and Kanesatake make up the Kanienkehaka nation.

Plague and Tea. For several years before the events of the Boston Tea Party, some colonial activists were advocating for Americans to use what they called a local “Indian tea” instead of the British variety imported by the East India Company. This local tea, also called Labradore or Hyperion Tea, was made from the red-root bush that grew wildly in swamps near many New England rivers. Advocates for “Indian tea” told stories to spur its consumption. One such fable had it that “Indian tea” had become so popular in France that the East India Company was lobbying to have its importation banned. Some verse in colonial newspapers promoted the patriotic brew, emphasizing some of its purported benefits:

Throw aside your Bohea and Green Hyson Tea,
and all things with a new-fashioned duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labradore
For there’ll soon be enough here to suit ye;               
These, do without fear, and to all you’ll soon appear
Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever;
Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish,
and love you much stronger than ever.

In Boston, during the years before the Tea Party, people had been getting up to 80 per cent of their imported tea from Dutch smugglers, while the East India Company’s British warehouses were bursting with seven years’ supply of unsold tea. The largest mercantile organization of its time, the Dutch East India Company was verging on bankruptcy while the British government was looking for ways to levy taxes in the colonies, and the flag married commerce in the form of a colonial monopoly and tea tax. In short order, the “detested tea” became a symbol of British tyranny the length of the Atlantic Seaboard.

Then, on Monday morning, the 29th of November, 1773, activists posted handbills all over Boston, proclaiming:

Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!—That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the harbor; the hour of destruction, or manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny, stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself and to posterity, is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall, at nine o’clock THIS DAY (at which time the bells will ring), to make united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration.

“That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company …” — explicit associations concrete and metaphoric, powerful in their meaning. Plagues. Why the association of tea to the plagues? And how had tea become the worst of plagues? Separatist and Puritan expansionist settlers initially had come to the Atlantic Northeast with the intent of establishing a new way of life and developing alliances, engaging in trade, evangelizing, and co-existing peaceably with the people they referred to as Indians. Separatist and Puritan forebears held little memory of their own much earlier tribal histories as peoples of the skies and stars, woodlands and waters in their own lands. As a people on their own original lands, they had endured centuries of invasion, occupation, and battle from the Roman Empire, from the Huns, as well as from other European peoples.

Those of our forebears who were fortunate enough to have survived centuries of plague (even into the 1600s) and other torments were becoming a newly, if-at-all literate people during the mid-1600th to mid-1700th centuries. Certainly, our Separatist and Puritan forebears knew nothing, really, of the diverse peoples who had established nations and dwelt in the Atlantic Northeast over centuries, having prevailed there for thousands and thousands of years. What were our Separatist and Puritan forebears thinking?

Many of the first expansionist settlers from England settling in what we now consider New England and Virginia viewed the native peoples in North America -- in Biblical context -- the “lost tribes of Israel.” One hope and goal carried by the Pilgrim and Puritan expansionist settlers was that the Original Peoples in the Atlantic Northeast were peoples who would become converted to Christianity through their contact with the Puritan settlers. The settlers who migrated with motivation fueled by Separatist and Puritan perspectives were seeking opportunity, release, and freedom from their experienced corruptions and tyrannies of monarchy and the empire church. They sought to leave behind Roman Catholic and Anglican Christian practices of that era, patterns in feudal management of land and property, centuries of plague and pandemic as well as illiteracy. Our forebears and their forebears had lived amidst circumstances of endless wars, most of which were struggles waged for land, gold, nation, empire, and religious control. And, in the context of family, women and children were the property of male heads of families.

They knew nothing, really, of the diverse peoples who were dwelling in North America and had prevailed there for thousands of years. They knew little, if nothing, of the practices of land use and management utilized over thousands and thousands of years by the indigenous peoples in the Atlantic Northeast. They knew nothing of the technologies for production of food, or for that matter, the technologies for conducting war which were utilized by the diverse peoples who inhabited the lands to which they had come. Further, as a people migrating from Britain and Europe, they were no strangers to misery, having witnessed and survived centuries of plagues, religious wars, and servitude.

When our forebears first migrated, it was their goal to establish means by which a broader public might have access to schooling. Very few of our forebears in England had the opportunity to become educated or literate. The Bible had only recently been translated from Latin to English. Further, some of our newly reading forebears (as well as any of those of our educated forebears trained in theological and Biblical studies) viewed themselves as similar to, even identifying even with early Christians, ready and preparing to evangelize, to engage with diverse peoples who had never had the opportunity to know Jesus or hold a Biblical view on the world. Just as Jesus’ disciples had roamed amongst the lands and diverse people of the Graeco-Roman world, preaching and establishing churches, some of our migrating Separatist and Puritan forebears viewed their mission in crossing the oceans in a similar way. The preaching clergy were instructing them to interpret scripture in this vein. They were further fueled by their additional goals of establishing literacy and educational resources, as well as owning land while engaging in economic interchange.

Between 1550-1650, however, initial contacts between and amongst the First Peoples of North America and early expansionist explorers or settlers delivered notable and unimaginable consequences. Among the early expansionists to North America were people descending from forebears in Europe who had survived centuries of plague and war. Over these centuries, those who descended from people who’d survived countless episodes of plague and war, seeking to become early explorers and expansionists, these people had built significant intergenerational immunity within their own geographic confines and amongst their own micro-organismic populations and family groupings. Their immunity was hard won, won at great cost. In no way can we minimize this fact of bio-history. The early explorers and expansionists were people whose forebears had survived centuries of plagues. Millions and millions had died. At that time of exploration and expansion, they had no idea, micro-biologically, scientifically, that that was the case, or of what that meant. The early explorers and expansionists had no idea of what microbes they were carrying or what fleas their animals carried, let alone the risk all that could mean to human beings with no exposure to such toxic, death dealing microbes. Of course, the expansionist settlers also had no idea of the nature of the weather in the Atlantic Northeast, most especially the winters, into which they were re-locating. And its related risks.

Bio-historically, the early explorers and the early expansionists carried the impact, as well as the threat for the future, the impact of centuries of wars and epidemics in monarchies and empires. In crossing continents and oceans, rivers and seas, islands and cultures to come to North America, these explorers, traders, and migrant expansionists — called by God or not — were carriers. They were carriers of plague, pox, flu, viruses, and distemper. Further, they carried their desperation and yearning for literacy, land, and religious expression. Their ships carried them across the seas, also carrying along rodents, fleas, and other insects, as well as a mêlée of micro-organisms.

All this brought the “great dying” or the “great mortality” during which 90 - 95% of the First Nations people — who were dwelling along the eastern coast from the tips of Nova Scotia to Florida and inland 300 miles from the ocean — all died.

It was this, in part, that contributed to the European explorer/ expansionist perception that the vast terrain of “uninhabited land” was available for the taking in North America. Key to what was perceived by the European explorers and expansionists as vastness in “uninhabited land” was the result and impact of this “great dying.” Whole villages were lost. Between 1550 and 1650, many of North America’s First Nation peoples died from illnesses against which their immune systems were totally unprepared. While later deplorable incidents of intentional expansionist, genocidal infection of the First Nation peoples were introduced and did occur, the significant, early and pervasive pandemic of bio-eradication called the “great dying” was confounding and regarded by many as acts of God, with a staggering range of attributions to God’s purpose.

Also key in this fallacious attribution regarding the unimpeded availability of “uninhabited land” were such limitations as the Separatist and Puritan expansionist ethnocentrism and ignorance regarding difference in human conduct of family life, uses of land, definition of nation, and conduct in trade. The early settler expansionists were oblivious to differences in practices in burial, in technologies of agriculture and livestock, and strategies of war. Migrating expansionists had a very limited appreciation of the sophistication, adaptiveness, intelligence, and power in the spiritual traditions and representation of the many indigenous nations in North America.

English memory, and the memory of English migrants to New England was short for those earlier centuries when their own people had lived as woodlands’ and wilderness peoples. As tribal peoples themselves, for centuries their forebears had sustained family and nations of their own prior to and then through endless invasions resulting finally in the military and cultural occupations by the Huns and the Romans. Having lost this memory of their own peoples as an indigenous, resourceful people prior to occupation and imprint by the Roman Empire and the Roman institutional model of Christian Church, expansionist Separatists and Puritans were facing enormous challenges in a land new to them but ancient and well-familiar to the First Nations peoples. And, more to the point, with the hope of building a new world, or at least “a city on the hill,” our forebears came to North America. They arrived in the Atlantic Northeast both bearing and imprinting complex and multiple legacies from centuries of occupation, disease, and subjugation.

In 1534 when Jacques Cartier was sent to the Atlantic Northeast to find a new route to the Orient, he stepped on to the island we know as Montreal and was greeted by more than 1,000 Hochelegans, Iroquoians. Notably, by the time Samuel de Champlain established a post in Quebec in 1608, there was no sign of any peoples ever having been there. Contemporary scholars working now to make sense of both the impact of plagues/epidemics on the native populations as well as the views of the English settlers regarding the “great dying” of the Indian peoples suggest that while the English settlers were beneficiaries of native epidemics, they were neither “unwitting nor innocent” beneficiaries. Nor were they totally ignorant of the impact of migration and contagion. The well documented epidemics of 1616 -1619 and 1633 -1634 in the region we now designate as southern New England further decimated strength and numbers of the Pequot, the Narragansett, the Massachusett, and the Wampanoag. To our Pilgrim and Puritan forebears, having migrated, their own survival in this world —new to them — became the priority. Sunday after Sunday they heard preaching (two sermons each Sunday, and long ones at that!) which guided them to view these epidemics as events at the hand and by the will of God, epidemics which left even more empty land for them, if they were able to stay alive, themselves. The Native Peoples were stunned, especially during the second epidemic during 1633 - 1634, that so many of their own died, while the white settlers seemed untouched. As even William Bradford noted in his journal: the settlers were “not in the least tainted.” (Of Plimoth Plantation, 1620 - 1647).

So, when our Separatist and Puritan forebears first migrated to the region we call New England, their hearts and minds were aflame with a faith and “godly” purpose which was powerful and earnest. Their “errand into the wilderness,” and their “City on a Hill,” were at the heart of the matter. They were, however, totally unprepared for the intercultural challenges they were about to face. They were unprepared for the demands of geography and climate. Most especially, they were unprepared for the transfer of their travails and oppression in countries/empires of origin (England, France, Spain, Holland) into this world, so new to them Initially, they were unprepared to acknowledge that they had become, that they were, in fact, expansionist occupiers. The “empty land” or “vacuum domicilium” argument was the Puritan Christian argument, the theological justification used by our forebear peoples to interpret their entitlement to occupy seemingly “empty” native lands. The impact of their ethnocentrism was furthered by their relatively new literacy, their inexperience in diverse cultural encounter, and their lack of knowledge about differences in patterns of land use. All that, combined with years of subjugation leading to crass land hunger, forged to serve as impediments to their having a more just approach in their migration and coexistence.

       -----------------------------------------------

Early on, the first settlers in Plimoth and Massachusetts Bay colonies desperately needed the wisdom of native technologies, agriculture, and practices of exchange in order to survive. However, the native peoples began to realize what was occurring — with increasing numbers of ships arriving with more and more people. Wars (the Pequot/King Phillip’s, for starters) and all the atrocities which are part of war — hostilities, raids, and other countless depredatory events — erupted in all directions. Unwilling to think differently about the meaning of their arrival on this territory, unable to comprehend that the land might in fact have been inhabited before plague/epidemic decimated its indigenous populations, the Puritan settlers began to change their view of the native peoples as generous and hospitable friends, as people waiting to hear the Good News of the Gospel, or as the “lost tribes of Israel,” and instead began to view them as agents of evil. Affliction was viewed by the Puritans on a continuum from (a) punishment or pain for evil deeds, to (b) pain to right the wrongs and correct the moral order . . . all the way to (c) a testing or trial to evoke evidence of faithfulness amidst tremendous challenge, challenges which, in the meeting, provided uncommon opportunities to demonstrate holiness and God’s grace. The early settlers could not see or consider the wrong that they did. Wittingly or unwittingly, they could neither see their suffering during the Indian raids as affliction suffered because of their own wrong-doing nor could they acknowledge the horror of their own depredations. They could not extend beyond their own ethnocentrism and claims to title in owning what had never been theirs to own.

By 1704, Puritan theologians began to cast the trials of Indian raids against settler villages and abduction in a frame of “Holy Designs” and spiritual opportunity. At first, though, for example, right after the February, 1704 attack against Deerfield, Massachusetts, theological attributions of that raid were cast as a punishment for sin. The nature of the “sin” was not so clearly identified. By this time, the Mohawk, Abenaki, Pocumtuck, and Huron peoples were engaging in complex actions as allies and enemies, in every direction, with each other as well as the French, the English, and in some instances, also the Dutch.

Immediately after the 1704 raid against Deerfield, news of the attack traveled first by the fire and smoke of the burning buildings, and then over the next days by verbal report, letters, and sermons. According to Sewall’s diary, he had been informed about “the Slaughter made on Deerfield” by the Colony Secretary. Sewell then told the Rev. Samuel Willard, who was the minister of Boston’s First Church at that time. Willard preached to his congregation from Judges 2: 1 - 5 about Bochim, a place where God admonished the ancient Israelites for breaking their covenants with God, to which the people responded, “lift[ing] up their voice,” they “wept ... and they sacrificed there unto the Lord.” Bochim was a location in Canaan, the “promised land” to which God had directed chosen people after deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

Puritan settlers, some by now newly literate and deeply identified with the chosen people of Biblical proportion, heard Rev. Samuel Willard speak to them about the ways God had given the Hebrew people a condition for their deliverance. They had been commanded to “make no league with the inhabitants [of Canaan and to] throw down their altars.” But because the Hebrew people hadn’t obeyed God, God told them the Canaanites would not, by holy power, be driven “out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.”

What were our forebears thinking? What were their preachers preaching? In some preaching in Puritan churches in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the native peoples of the Northeast were likened to “a lost tribe” of Israel, sought after for reconciliation within this new nation. And in other preaching, the native peoples of the Northeast were likened to the Canaanites, an enemy of holy proportion: thorns in their sides; their gods a snare unto them. Despite the early frontier wars in all directions, anglo-native trade and diplomacy had abounded. The style and approach of Puritan mission efforts with the native peoples, however, had resulted in very little evangelical success.

Why, then, Mohawk disguises while dumping tea? Perhaps, in part, it was a family matter. By the time of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, many children “captivated” by Indians during raids, including Mohawk raids, against settler villages, had been adopted into Indian families. And some of the tea dumpers wearing Mohawk disguises that December day were kin to abducted children, now grown and living as Mohawk. Children “captivated” from villages including Wells and York (in what is now the state of Maine, which then was a part of Massachusetts) as well as Groton, Deerfield, Westborough, and Rutland in Massachusetts were cherished by the families who adopted them, and had become Indian. They were not forgotten, however, by their family members and congregations in settler colonies. These abductions of Mourning War Raids were intended by First Nations peoples, consciously, to bring in new children to replenish family and First Nations, populations decimated by pandemic and war during the era between 1550 - 1750. Further, it may well be that Mourning War Raids were also intentionally designed by a most astute people to bring into bio-familial life and progeny some of the genetic material and physiology of immunity which the settlers brought in their physiology. The First Peoples of the Atlantic Northeast increasingly recognized that the explorers and settlers carried disease and contagion, infecting them. They also realized that when pandemic struck in regions of the Atlantic Northeast, approximately 30 - 50% of the European settlers died, while 90% or more of their own people died.

It may well be that the First Peoples had both a “germ theory” as well as some dawning understanding of contagion and immunity, making use of that perspective when seeking captives to carry into their world. By the turn of the century and into the early 1700s, early expansionist settlers in the Atlantic Northeast, including our own clergy at the Old South Meeting House, were beginning to experiment with inoculation as a means to fend against pandemic (and, not long after, were intentionally using their theories of contagion and infection applied in bio-war against the Indians).  At this same time, the Indians, most notable the Mohawk people, were utilizing other methods to cope with the devastating stresses and costs of disease and annihilation (as well as strains on food supplies and stressors of war and land theft) on their populations and cultures.

Accordingly, First Peoples were abducting and adopting children who became First Nation peoples. These Mourning War raids were set off at the behest of women leaders in Mohawk villages. These captivated and adopted settler children then married and inter-married, becoming deeply identified with their adoptive Indian people, becoming fully committed to efforts to prevail beyond extinction.

A Congregationalist minister who served in Westborough, Massachusetts from 1724 to 1782, the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman, kept journals over the entire course of his ministry. And from three hundred years ago, Parkman’s perspective stands. So it is that all these years later, he offers us his view of encounters in diversity, rich with the details of related interactions. His journals give us a compelling window through which to gain a sense of interactions between and amongst the Mohawk/Iroquois peoples and Puritan/Congregationalist colonists in Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Atlantic Northeast.

Young Parkman had been “sent at sacrifice” by his Boston family and educated at the North Latin School, where John Barnard, the former pastor of the First Church in Andover, was schoolmaster. Parkman is noted to have greatly respected his pious teacher and, studying classics under Barnard, Parkman prepared for Harvard College, enrolling in the class of 1721. After graduating, he read theology and took a second degree, his Master’s, which he was awarded at Commencement, July 1, 1724. While working as a schoolmaster in Newton and serving as a visiting preacher to a variety of churches, including New North, Wrentham, Worcester, and Hopkington, Parkman was seeking a call to ministry. His diaries detail many aspects of what were becoming the cultural and theological challenges of his time, with specific content addressing the lives and thought of the Mathers; Jonathan Edwards, with whom he corresponded and exchanged visits/hospitality; George Whitefield, the English Evangelist to whom he extended hospitality during visits; and co-pastors Revs. Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince of our Old South Meeting House in Boston.

Parkman’s diaries can well be read with an eye to many different aspects of life in the context of Puritan, Congregationalist ministry and community. Parkman was not situated as the first minister in the church in Westborough via the efforts of any bishop who would position him there. The Reformation throughout Europe had led the way for a different understanding of church. The settler Separatists, Puritans, and Congregationalists of his time in Massachusetts constructed a church polity with a very different process for establishing religious leadership of pastoring and teaching. Parkman’s call to Westborough was determined via the hospitality, meetings, discussions, prayer, vote, fears and hopes of the Westborough settlers, convening as a congregation. And Parkman tells us all about it. We learn from Parkman some details regarding the complex nature, characteristics, and challenges of our forebears’ awareness of and encounters with native peoples, including the Iroquois/ Mohawk and Abenaki — encounters across and through the regions we now describe as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and Quebec. Parkman also leaves a record of rain and snow, earthquakes, and a wide range of storms.

On October 27, 1745, for example, Parkman noted that he preached to his congregation “A.M. on 2 Cor. 3, 17 latter part. P.M. on Ps. 2,8 on Occasion of the Return of our Ambassadors from the Treaty at Albany with the 6 Nations of Iroquois Indians.”

 I took Occasion also to Mention God’s wonderfull Mercy to Us, who were heretofore but a few generations back Heathen — but us in Special in this Place it being nigh Seven Times 3 Years that God has waited upon us, Since our first incorporating into a church state. ...

We read his entry of a year earlier, on July 4, 1744, when Parkman noted both his own presence at an event in Cambridge, at which he dined amongst Mohawk leaders visiting at Harvard, and also conveying his sense of the impact of a natural disaster from the month before.

At Meeting the Gratulatory oration was delay’d till the Governor and the Mohawk Chiefs came. I din’d in the Hall. The Mohawks din’d there also. N.B. Great Disorder (we hear) were lately at Ipswhich by means of one Woodberry who with Mr. Gilman of Durham has Sent Letters to many Ministers of the Province as from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. N.B. I transcribed a Letter at Mr. Newmans Study from Madam Christian Wainwright of Ipswich to Madam Dudly of Roxbury respecting the Ipswich Disorders of last Month [referring to an earthquake], horrible to relate. My Brother Samuel Parkman was present at Ipswich whilst some of those Facts were done.

The next day, in his entry dated July 5, 1744, Parkman made notation regarding his early morning ride to Boston, “At Breakfast at Mr. Josiah Quincy’s with the 4 Mohawks,” Iroquois leaders visiting, about whom he noted, “They tell us the Cagnawaya’s were afore hand of them in saying that in the War between France and England they must not meddle.” He also noted that “They inform that [Chief Oserongoton, one of the children “captivated” from Westborough, who had become a Mohawk chief in Kahnawake] has been out of Health, and that his son has return’d from his warring with the Flatt Heads.”

Their names Anerek (or Henrich) Thoyennoga, James, Kayea wire gowa, these Two were elderly men and Chiefs; Yonathan, Kayea wire gowa, and Joseph, Onondager. (N.B. I copy’d their Names from the Writing of Yonathan (or Jonathan) Kayea wire gowa.) Mrs. Kellogg of Suffield being Interpretress. Their Design was to go to the Eastward to bear a message to the Eastward Indians also. Thoyennogea was very ready, pleasant and intelligent, and especially gave free answers to our Enquiries concerning their Sentiments in matters of Religion. We understand that all these 4 are Baptiz’d and Submitt to the Instruction of  an English minister who is settled among them for 2 Towns which are call’d Skenecktada —  about 12 Miles above Albany.

Four years before that, during the late summer and early fall of 1940, Parkman had noted a number of aspects of Chief Oserongoton’s return to Westborough during 1740, amidst the time of the Great Awakening in the region. Parkman’s journal entries include notations regarding giving “advice” to a former congregant of the church where he was minister, regarding the visit of the congregant’s brother, the Mohawk Chief Oserongoton (August 19, 1740), the nature of his own correspondence with Massachusetts Governor Belcher to advocate for the Mohawks to meet with government officials in Boston, and family contact.

Why Mohawk disguises while tossing crates of tea into the harbor? Perhaps, in part, it was an attempt to maintain secrecy about the identity of these activists, lest they be arrested for civil disobedience and actions against the Crown. Or, was it an effort to blame the action on a third party? Historian Philip J. Deloria thinks not. Deloria suggests that it was not the disguises that protected the identity of the tea dumpers but rather the widespread support of the Boston residents and the Sons of Liberty. In Deloria’s view, the disguises were offered up specifically to impute Indian identity, to transform stories, texts, images, and ideologies into physical reality. In Deloria’s view, the actions-in-disguise occurring in Boston and other East coast cities convey the precariousness and creativity in constructing new identities, first imagining and then performing Indianness on the docks of Boston, giving material form to identities that were both witnessed and made real. In Deloria’s view, the patriots on the docks on that chilly December day in 1773 were giving a performance of American Indianness, providing a powerful foundation for subsequent pursuits of national identity.

Why Mohawk disguises, sounds, and songs during the events of the Boston Tea Party? Perhaps it was a way of signifying the colonists’ dawning awareness regarding the ingeniousness of the Iroquois Confederacy as a form of government and model to inspire the shaping of a new government amongst the colonies.

Perhaps it was a way of signaling a key message to the Mohawk/Iroquois Nation regarding future alliances beyond British rule. Perhaps it was a kind of post-traumatic effort to display and reenact – in a different direction — the melee of events of exploration, invasion, wars, and raids which had been enacted over the previous two hundred years. And perhaps it was a way these activist seamen, traders, civic leaders, dock workers – demonstrated on the docks a growing sense of their power as a collaborating people from diverse cultures and nations, joining together to move through and beyond horrific histories of empire with hopes toward a different future.

All this, with wide open doors, hosted by a people and place very dear to all of us – the Old South Meeting House. From the docks, to the Green Dragon pub, to Fanueil Hall, to the Old South Meeting House, to the Dartmouth – to now. Prevailing through pandemic/epidemic, searching strategies for economic justice, hosting actions for understanding amongst tribes and nations, working tirelessly for peace, searching the past for truth – faith facing forward. God is good. All the time!