Plymouth Rock Foundation’s E-News – November,
2020
by Dr. Paul Jehle, President
(www.plymrock.org)
The
400th Anniversary of the Signing of the
Mayflower
Compact Day
Mayflower Compact Day is
hardly heard of these days. It used to
be on the calendar years ago, but now it is not taught or remembered in most
schools in America though we have benefited from it as a legacy of
self-government All it takes, however,
is for a few to commemorate its significance to keep it alive!
Mayflower Compact Day is the day the
Pilgrims signed this document on board the Mayflower
while it lay anchored in the harbor on Saturday, November 11, 1620. With the change in the calendar in 1752, the date
now corresponds to November 21, which is also a Saturday this year, 400 years later!
Forty-one males signed the document that brought unity in the midst of mutiny.
A compact is a covenant. Since the Pilgrims were children of the
Reformation, their view of covenant came from the Bible. It was God that initiated the concept of
covenant with Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:15-17 and 2:24). Throughout the Bible covenants were used both
vertically (with God directly) and horizontally (with people) to depict God’s
process of bringing people into unity with Him and one another. It elevated the common good, or what is best
for all, encouraging people to work together.
The Pilgrims, while they
were meeting secretly at Scrooby Manor in England (1606), ratified their church
covenant, described by Bradford; “…as the
Lord’s free people joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church
estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways made known, or
to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it
should cost them.” They did this as the Lord’s “free people,” without
the permission of the hierarchy of the Church of England, as taught by their Pastor,
John Robinson. It was the people that ratified this covenant, not
just the leaders, and thus Christian self-government was the cornerstone of
their church.
William Bradford made it clear
that what made their Pastor John Robinson unique, for “besides his singular abilities in divine things (wherein he excelled)
he was also very able to give directions in civil affairs… by which means he
was very helpful to their outward estate…”
In other words, their Pastor led them, not just in spiritual affairs
of their soul, but also in civil affairs.
Pastor Robinson gave sound advice
in his farewell letter to the Pilgrims:
“Whereas you are become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil
government, and are not furnished with any persons of special eminency above
the rest, to be chosen by you into office of government; let your wisdom and
godliness appear, not only in choosing such persons as do entirely love and
will promote the common good… not being like the foolish multitude who more
honor the gay coat than either the virtuous mind of the man, or glorious
ordinance of the Lord.”
This is good advice for
it affirms that civil government is the glorious
ordinance of the Lord. When blown
off course and not within their Patent (“northern Virginia” where Manhattan is
today), and as Bradford writes “occasioned
partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers
amongst them had let fall from them in the ship: that when they came ashore
they would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them”; they
drew up the Mayflower Compact.
They exercised self-government, writing
a covenant for their civil affairs as they had already done for their religious
affairs. There, off the coast of
what is now Provincetown, the cornerstone of American government was born. As
the American Bar Association noted in 1978 “The document represents the application to the affairs of civil
government of the philosophy of the church covenant which was the basis of
Puritan theology. This theology found in
the Scriptures the right of men to associate and covenant to form a church and
civil government and to choose their own officers to administer both religious and
civil affairs.” The ideas contained within the Mayflower Compact are
significant:
1)
“In the Name of
God, Amen. We whose names are
underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James…” God, then the people, and then the King – rights
that are sacred (God-given)! In England the
power flow was from God, to the King and then the people.
2)
“Having
undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith and
Honor of our King and Country…” The
cornerstone of civil government’s mission, as understood by the Pilgrims, was to
advance the Christian faith under the protection of civil authority.
3)
“solemnly and
mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine
ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic.”
The Mayflower Compact allowed each male, as head of their household,
to have an equal voice in the law regardless of church affiliation.
4)
“to enact, constitute
and frame such just and equal Laws…” Through
representatives, they governed themselves, enacting laws that were to be just
and protect their rights.
The Pierce Patent of 1621 (the original
of which hangs in Pilgrim Hall Museum today) made the Pilgrims legal in the
eyes of England. In the minds of the
Pilgrims, their Compact might have been temporary until they were legal, for
they said they were “loyal subjects.”
But in time it became more, for as historian Jeremy Bangs noted; “…the
Pilgrims did not invent for civil society the democratic concept of decision by
majority vote; nonetheless, in early modern society they did put into real
practice what had only been adumbrated in smaller social groups and theorized
by Browne as an application of ideal church structure to civil society as a
whole.”
Subsequent editions of Pilgrim
laws printed the Compact as a preamble, indicating that they functioned under this
covenant of self-rule. Thus, the Compact
is, in essence, the cornerstone of self-government under God which has made
America unique among nations. For as
Calvin Coolidge said in 1920:
“The compact which they signed was an
event of the greatest importance. It was the foundation of liberty based on law
and order, and that tradition has been steadily upheld…. It was democratic, an
acknowledgment of liberty under law and order and the giving to each person the
right to participate in the government, while they promised to be obedient to
the laws.”
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