FINAL WARNING: Setting the Stage for Destruction
Some of the Pilgrim leaders became worried about the group who had
come from London and Southampton, and to control their actions, 41
of them drew up plans for a civil government, based on Christian
principles, which became known as the Mayflower Compact. Bradford
was elected as their first Governor, and he established a system that
was unlike the Jamestown colony in Virginia (who were Anglicans),
which was based on the communal theories of Plato and Francis
Bacon. Although half of the settlers died during the harsh winter, the
success of the Plymouth colony brought an influx of others seeking
religious freedom from the dominance of the Anglican Church of
England. To protect their newly found freedom, their government took
on the form of a theocracy, which only allowed propertied church
members to vote; and there was no tolerance towards other religions.As the population grew, the Puritans were unable to maintain their
strict control, and other colonies in New England were established as a
haven from those frustrated with their rigidity. Even though Puritan
control was broken in the late 1600’s, the New England colonies which
welcomed Quakers and Jews, continued to ban Roman Catholic
worship until 1783.In 1624 the Dutch established a colony known as New Netherland,
which was seized by the British in 1664, and renamed New York.
Various religious groups flourished there, such as the Dutch
Reformed, Swedish Lutherans, French Protestant (Huguenots),
Quakers, and Jews. In 1682, responding to William Penn’s (a Quaker)
‘Holy Experiment,’ Quakers, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Mennonites,
and other pietists from Germany settled in Pennsylvania. Although
Maryland was founded in 1634 as a Catholic colony, it was soon
overwhelmed with Protestants, who dominated religion in America
until the Civil War.The World Council of ChurchesIn 1910, J. R. Mott, a 45-year old American Methodist minister, chaired
the World Congress in Edinburgh to foster inter-church relations and
to eliminate overlapping by spreading out their manpower in the
missionary field. Out of that, came the Universal Christian Council of
Life and Work, at Stockholm, Sweden in 1925; and the World