September 6. . . . all being compact together in one ship, they put to sea . . . with a prosperous wind, which continued divers days together, which was some encouragement unto them. . . .

William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation, Chapter IX. Of Their Voyage and How They Passed the Sea; and of Their Save Arrival at Cape Cod

As I’m writing this, it’s the afternoon of September 6, 2020 (a Sunday), four hundred years after the Pilgrims (what we call this band of Puritan Separatists) sailed from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower in 1620–the 6th being on a Wednesday that year. Around 100 travelers–some Pilgrims and some not–had set out a few hours or a day or so earlier in two small ships–the Speedwell and the Mayflower. But they hadn’t gotten far before they realized that the Speedwell wasn’t physically up to the trip, so they returned to Plymouth and repacked the people and what supplies they could into the Mayflower and set out again.

Every semester when I teach William Bradford’s history of the colony that was known as Plymouth Plantation, I’m impressed with the bravery and the commitment to their religious ideals that Bradford and his group showed. Our world in 2020 offers very little we could venture to replicate their experience in 1620, its particular unknowns (the so-called New World wasn’t nearly as unknown as popular history would have us believe) and the certain hardships they dreaded as they steered the Mayflower away from its English harbor and, finally losing sight of the coastline of home, turned their faces west to the Atlantic Ocean. Again, their bravery and commitment astound me.

Surely such bravery and commitment should be enough to remember them by, but, of course, American myth-making has made much more out of their story than was actually in their story. They have famously been mythologized as the originators of American ideas of religious freedom and democracy.

Neither is really true of them.

Religious freedom? Yes, to England they were Puritan Separatists. As the first part of that phrase–Puritan–suggests, they wished to purify the faith practices of the Church of England, ridding it of all the popery they saw as held over from Henry VIII’s split from the Roman Catholic Church. Ultimately, however, this group of mostly plain folk–Bradford was a farmer who taught himself Greek and Hebrew so that he could read scripture in its original languages–decided the Church of England couldn’t be purified, and so they separated from it–becoming Separatists. But to separate from the official church of the realm was to separate from the realm itself, which made them traitors.

The strength of their faith was committed to their particular faith practice. They wanted to show themselves as right regarding how God’s people should believe and the way church things should be done. Deviations from their way were not to be tolerated; this included other Christian practices that weren’t their own. In essence, their faith practices became the official practices of Plymouth Plantation–a state church like the Church of England.

The notion that the victim of child abuse often grows up to be an abuser of children can be adapted here. The Pilgrims and the Puritans that followed them in 1630 (to found Massachusetts Bay Colony and Boston) tolerated no deviations from their religious practices, even from other Christian sects. Just as they’d been persecuted, they in turn persecuted others: Catholics (of course), Quakers, Anabaptists, etc., sometimes carrying out these persecutions to the death of the deviants.

A truer character of religious freedom had to wait for the late 18th century.

And as for democracy among the Puritans, none existed among the Puritans. In fact, democracy was to be feared. It threatened community stability, which they understood to have been established by God. If an individual was poor, God made him that way, so he shouldn’t attempt to change his station in life. Such an attempt would be understood as contempt for God’s creation. In a 1630 speech or sermon delivered to the Puritans in the process of establishing the non-Separatist plantation of Massachusetts Bay, colony leader John Winthrop said,

God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.

In Winthrop’s understanding, community organization is not at all democratic. If you’re rich, congratulations are in order. Don’t be an ass. If you’re poor, that’s just your lot in creation. Don’t be an ass. But Winthrop suggests that God expects both rich and poor to “be knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection.” All should be filled with and unified by God’s spirit, which works

first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake off their yoke. . . .

We could use a little of that moderation and restraint these days, perhaps especially from the rich. Winthrop tells them to take care of the poor so as not to tempt God to miracles for their care.

The Puritans had nothing to do with democracy and little to do with the notion of religious freedom. Certainly, they had many admirable qualities, but they had at least as many qualities that led to the devastation of America’s indigenous peoples and contributed to the false consciousness of American Exceptionalism.