128 Colonials and Methodists (Five Hundred 12)

Hear the winding tale of early Christian history in the Americas with a special focus on the thirteen colonies.  Right from the start the Americas were full of Christian diversity including Catholicism, the Church of England, Puritans, Baptists, and Quakers.  In this lecture you’ll see how this diversity led to an unprecedented level of religious tolerance and flourishing.  Other significant issues in this period include the horrors of the slave trade and the treatment of native Americans as well as the impressive success of the Great Awakening under the preaching of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards.

This is lecture 12 of a history of Christianity class called Five Hundred: From Martin Luther to Joel Osteen.

All the notes are available here as a pdf.

—— Notes ——

Founding the Colonies

• Catholicism in the Americas
  • Spanish claims included American west coast, Florida, and much territory in central and South America (Catholic)
  • French claims included eastern Canada (Quebec) and the territory of Louisiana (Catholic)
  • 1634 Catholics founded “Mary land”
• 1607 Virginia founded as first English Colony
  • founded as joint effort by the Virginia Company to make money (Tobacco export)
  • brought Church of England to New World
• Separatists founded New England
  • 1620 Plymouth settled (from Brownists who were sojourning in Holland)
  • 1630 Puritans establish Massachusetts Bay Colony fleeing from Archbishop Laud
  • 1648 Cambridge Platform: Westminster Confession w/ congregational polity
  • No religious freedom
  • 1636 Harvard founded for training of Puritan ministers
  • 1631 Roger Williams (1603?-1683) arrived
  • 1639 Williams founds first Baptist church in RI
• 1681 William Penn founded Pennsylvania (Penn’s Forrest)
  • he was a Quaker who tolerated all monotheists
  • many people outside of England moved to Pennsylvania including Moravians, Lutherans, German Reformed, Amish

 

Immorality

• tobacco
  • 1602 an English doctor wrote Chimney-Sweepers or a Warning for Tabacconists warning about health risks
  • 1604 King James wrote a tract against tobacco
  • 1617 Virginia exported 10 tons; 1622 30 tons; 1627 250 tons; 1639 1,500 tons; 1688 colonies exported 14,000 tons; 1771 52,000 tons
• rum
  • 1667 Boston’s first distillery
  • 1774 Mass had 63 distilleries, producing 2.7 million gallons of rum a year
  • RI had more than 30 distilleries
  • colonists preferred rum made in the West Indies so they sold it in Africa and to Indians
• Golden Triangle
  • molasses bought in New England to make rum
  • rum sold in Africa to purchase slaves
  • slaves sold in West Indies to purchase molasses
• slavery
  • 1619 first Africans came to VA as indentured servants (work for a set time to pay off travel debt)
  • by 1680 racial slavery
  • insanely inhumane conditions on slave trader ships
    • Falconhridge: “The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived. They are far more violently affected by seasickness than the Europeans.  It frequently terminates in death, especially among the women.The exclusion of fresh air is among the most intolerable.  Most ships have portholes for air.  But whenever the sea is rough and the rain heavy, it becomes necessary to shut these and every other conveyance by which air is admitted.  The fresh air being thus excluded, the Negroes’ quarters very s