Hail Number 1!

I, Number 2, humbly petition your attention oh mighty giant ball of magenta light.  May your gentle incorporeal hand guide us all to whatever painful fate you have in mind for us.  Incidentally, I Number 2, was truly saddened to hear that your brilliant plan for the inter-stellar wet-bar failed to find sufficient funding in the congress of light – may you gently crush the bureaucrats souls. 

Sadly, I will not be able to join you for the tender trouncing as the surveying of your Earth land ‘North America’ requires my further diligence.  I chose to adopt a dim yellow disguise to study the people of this land – they call me “The Sun” – I know: what a lame name.  Nonetheless, I have uncovered ample historical accounts of the inhabitants of these lands, with a preponderance of extremely disorienting language, but little clarity.  As your gentleness initially surmised, these people had not yet recognized the truth of your singular softly-lit wrath-filled omnipotence; instead many of these people believed in a curious being known as God (and also his carpenter son, who by our standards was in desperate need of a hair cut).  Ultimately, it can be inferred from their writings that the early people of the land ‘North America’ (now known as parking lot B) were deeply conflicted about the nature and extent of the influence of this God, both socially and at times internally.  I will demonstrate this to your friendly fury, by contrasting the two predominant schools of though of the time (Puritan and Enlightenment), as well as discussing individual authors own apparent self conflict.

European colonists began their migration in the newly discovered (by western eyes) North America in the 16^th century.  The first settlers - from long forgotten countries with funny names like England, Spain and The Nether-regions (translation is rough, may be Netherlands) – came not only for the promise of new wealth, but just as importantly to escape religious intolerance and persecution. At the time the continent of Europe was experiencing dramatic religious turmoil.  In a Christian Science Monitor article titled “When Europe Fought over God” author Gregory M. Lamb describes a state in which “Europeans were prepared to burn and torture each other because they disagreed on whether, or how, bread and wine were transformed into God.”  While this sample disagreement might seem idiosyncratic to us now, it leads to the greatest point of discussion for the time.  The America’s became seem by many groups as a blank slate, or carte blanche of religious freedom.  Ironically, there it would appear that they could not escape fundamental disagreements by crossing the Atlantic.   New world: old conflict.

Two of the primary groups to make this migration were known as the Pilgrims and the Puritans.  Often, the word Puritan is use interchangeably with the word Pilgrim; while similar in some ways the two groups are not the same.  On the website “Pilgrim And Puritan: A Delicate Distinction” Richard Howland Maxwell notes that “The Puritans, in short, were people who wanted to reform or purify their church. A pilgrim is defined . . . as one who makes a journey for a religious purpose.”  Both groups believed that the English church was flawed; however the Pilgrims believed that the institution was beyond repair and desired to separate them selves from the Church, quid pro quo, the government of England.  The Puritans, instead, wished to purify the churches practices and rituals, while still remaining a part of the church. 

As the two groups geographically relocated themselves in North America “The Pilgrims at Plymouth were Separatists; the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay were not” (Howland par. 10).   One of the preeminent Pilgrim voices of the time was William Bradford, one of the original founders of the Plymouth colony.  Bradford’s words on the influence of God are displayed prominently in his Mayflower Compact, a precursor document to an American constitution.  The Mayflower compact, signed while crossing the Atlantic Ocean and transcribed in Bradford’s journal Of Plymouth Plantation was intended to unite the different sects on the boat.  To do so, Bradford and the leaders of his book identify their purpose for coming to the new world as a journey undertaken “for ye glorie of God, and advancement of ye Christian faith” (89-90).  The scenario described is that this country was settled to practice the belief in, and to please, God.  This devotion to God would impact all aspects of Bradford’s journal, and lead of the rationalization of the mistreatment of the native denizens of in the name of God.  Conflictingly, even among Bradford’s contemporaries, the influence of God was not agreed upon.  Fellow early colonist, Roger Williams was a Puritan Separationist.  Williams wrote in his The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution regarding God role in the law of humans: “All civil states… are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship” (Chap. 9).  The friction inflicted by the governing beliefs of these two influential men (as well as many others) on a premature body politic would continue to play out for entire the future history of what the nation would become.  Constant conflict over the role and influence of God.

At this point I must point out to your moderate mean-ness, that I Number 2 fear that these humans might have been insane.  In the mid 1600s, the land became populated by hyper-zealous, dogmatic, God-fearing xenophobes.  Less than a hundred years later, the contemporary fashionable philosophy had shifted to some entirely different.  Enlightenment thought is centered around a fundamental belief, not in God, but in man, the natural world and science.  Tightly tied to the Enlightenment is Deism, which says that while God exist, His influence is expressed mostly through natural reason.  One of the founding minds of Enlightenment thought was Thomas Paine, whose philosophical writings would become a source of influence and controversy in the of the government to come.  In his book Age of Reason, Paine speaking against theocracy writes “power could not be… from God, yet the provision with the constitution makes supposed such a power to exists” (73).  Paine, determined in his Deist belief that God’s influence does not translate directly to the actions of man, introduced a radical belief for the time.  Church and State, long thought married, is a relationship redefined by Enlightenment thought.  How such a dramatic change in the collective consciousness of these people is only overshadowed in it’s perplexity by the question of how this new thinking could have existed at the same time as the more Puritan fundamentalism. 

While the generalizations of thought existing at the beginning of the historical record of North American are diverse and ripe with conflict, it’s important to remember that equal conflict seemed to exist in these individuals themselves.  One illustration of an individual conflict of God’s influence, can be found in a Deist writer Phyllis Wheatley, a freed slave.  Tangentially: these folks used to condone the owning of slaves, much like you have enslaved countless planets under your iron fist of gentle justice.  Wheatley wrote in a poem to General George Washington (future first president of the future country) “Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side / Thy ev'ry action let the goddess guide” (ll 39,40).  Here, she extols many Enlightenment virtues, including natural law priority and the virtue in reason.  Yet contradicting, Wheatley claims that the goddess’ actions are “divinely fair” (l 9).  Whether the used of the divinely is a mixed metaphor intended it impact the author’s conceit, or an entirely different form of divine intervention is unclear.  Even some of my fellow balls of light are conflicted about Wheatley’s indent. Another of Wheatley’s poems On being brought from Africa to America elicited much debate at last year’s Ball of LightBall. When Wheatley writes about her feelings on God and slavery, Ball of light Amber believed that “Phillis Wheatley expresses her faith and gratitude in God for the gifts she had been given” while ball of light Tracey believe that “This within itself is irony, but shows that she was very aware of her audience and careful not to offend them. This is powerful because she makes her readers believe that she is thankful for her position in slavery”.  Clearly, a small amount of personal interpretation can make for ever different conversations when those conversations involve God. Ultimately, it’s indicative of the at mixed language used to describe the fate of man both at the time, and throughout the course of human existence.

My dear dread bright light, I know that you had hoped, nay demanded for me to provide a rigid conclusion about the historical influence of God on these human – but alas, twas not to be.  For after examining the early writing of the species, the only conclusion to be reached was that they were a deeply convicted, and conflicted people.  Perhaps one day, they too will know the real truth about you that I am so lucky to know – the one true god in the universe is a brightly lit, yet tastefully magenta ball of furious drunken power called Number 1.  Formally, I recommend that your bitterness continue to use the human inhabitants of Earth as target practice for your giant merciful comets.

Yours begging not to be killed again,

Number 2 Johnson

(Drew Hammond)