Have you ever wondered why the Native-Americans (Indians) helped make possible the Pilgrims’ celebration of their first Thanksgiving in 1621?  Why were the Indians so cooperative, especially since — just 15 years earlier — they had been so hostile to Europeans exploring New England that a French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, told his government to look elsewhere for colonies?

Our story starts in 1492 when Columbus arrived in America (actually the Caribbean).  From then on interaction between Indians and Europeans steadily increased, with the Europeans trading goods coveted by the Indians, particularly horses, for goods provided by the Indians, such as pumpkins and corn, that they then brought back to Europe.

However, the Europeans also began bringing Indians back to Europe, as slaves, which is one reason these Indians, while willing to trade with Europeans, were vehemently opposed to them establishing colonies in the New World.  Hence Champlain’s unfortunate experience.

And there was one other thing that Europeans brought to the New World — diseases that Europeans had become immune to, but native Indians had not.  As a result, sometime in 1617 a terrible disease, probably typhus, caused an epidemic that virtually wiped out the Indian tribes in New England.

And to what did these Indians attribute this epidemic?  An explanation many historians ascribe to is this:  In 1615 a French ship ran aground along the New England shore near a village of Wampanoag Indians, who promptly killed all but three sailors, one of whom told the Indians that his God would punish them for this deed by wiping them out and giving their native lands to other peoples.

And so, in the wake of the epidemic that immediately followed, the Indians became terrified of the Europeans and their God’s power to wreak such vengeance.  Thus in 1621, when the Pilgrims came along, most Indians were in no mood to confront them.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.  Besides getting help from those Indians who survived the epidemic, the Pilgrims also benefitted from the deaths of those who had not, because many Indian villages were vacant, as were many fields that those now-deceased Indians had previously cleared for planting.  All the Pilgrims had to do was clear out the weeds and start their own planting — again, assisted by those surviving Indians.

The Pilgrims also saw the epidemic as God’s handiwork, and considered it a sign that they were God’s chosen people.  Indeed, that feeling of special favor was the driving force behind much of Britain’s subsequent expansion into America.

As we know, that expansion came at the expense of millions more native Indians, who must have wondered how the white man latched on to such a powerful God.

 

This week (Oct. 31) in 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther posted his famous 95 theses on a church door in Wittenberg, Germany, to protest several practices of the established Roman Catholic Church that Luther believed violated traditional Catholic teachings.

The church practice that particularly bothered Luther was the selling of indulgences, and, as it happened, his posting of his theses coincided with the arrival in Wittenberg of a Papal delegate whose job was to convince potential donors, especially wealthy ones, to give money to the church.  In return, the church would “indulge” them by lowering, or completely erasing, their punishments in the afterlife for sins they committed on Earth.

In a way, it was like fundraising in modern political campaigns, and in light of the presidential election campaign that is finally (!) concluding, it might be illustrative to posit a scenario in which these Papal fundraisers act like the financial “bundlers” who raise large sums for President Obama and Mitt Romney.  In fact, “bundlers” is essentially what these Papal fundraisers were.

You know how it works in presidential campaigns.  For large sums of cash, donors get special access to the candidates, plus a promise of future positions or favors.

Selling church indulgences was similar.  The Papal fundraiser would come to town and say to a gathering of Catholic fat cats, “O.K., we have several categories of giving for you to consider.  For a donation of $100,000 (or the 16^th Century financial equivalent), you become our Bronze Medal Friend of the Church, meaning that, regardless of the sins you commit while alive, you get to go to Heaven.”

Switching to his next PowerPoint (again, 16^th Century equivalent), he says, “However, if you become a Silver Member Special Friend of the Church by donating $250,000, not only will you go to Heaven, so will your wife and kids.  Doesn’t matter how bad they were on Earth.  Plus, when you get to Heaven you get a one-on-one meeting with St. Peter himself.”

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The Emperor Constantine, the first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire and the man who ended that empire’s persecution of Christianity, died this week (May 22) in 337 AD, having lived a life that would change the world.

Born a pagan, as were the vast majority of Romans, Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was the result of — or so legend has it — a vision that came to him as he prepared to fight the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 AD, a battle that would determine who would rule Rome and one in which the odds were stacked against him.  According to Constantine, a Christian cross appeared to him with the exhortation “By this sign conquer.”  Constantine subsequently ordered his soldiers to inscribe the cross on their shields, and when he did win the battle and became Roman Emperor he converted to Christianity.  He also founded a new eastern capital city for the empire, Constantinople, which was his main base of operations. Under Constantine’s rule Christianity went from a persecuted religious sect with an insignificant number of followers to the Roman Empire’s dominant religion.

Scholars debate whether Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was immediate—as the legend of the cross suggests—or more gradual and influenced both by his interaction with religious teachers and his political circumstances.   Most scholars agree that Constantine was a genuine believer—he immersed himself in the theological issues of the day, he supported the church financially and granted the clergy privileges.  But there is also no denying that from a political standpoint, uniting his empire under one religious orthodoxy based on a single god minimized both religious disputes and social instability.  That made his empire more peaceful and easier to control, which is why his promotion of many Christians to high office was probably as politically motivated as it was divinely inspired.

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