Friends, Remember that guy who “discovered America” in 1492? Yeah … don’t say his name.  And remember the Mayflower in 1620? Forget that, too. Let’s talk about 1619.  See the column below ...  Bob

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Spirituality Column #882

October 10, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Teacher as Student, Part 3

By Bob Walters

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil …” – Isaiah 5:20

Honestly, this column topic date wasn’t planned, it just fell this way.

Since mid-September I’ve wanted to write about two ship landings that happened in America in 1619.  That was a year before the ship Mayflower with its Pilgrims – who last week we learned were not Puritans and were not until many years later called “pilgrims” – arrived at Plymouth Rock, and 128 years after Columbus “discovered America.”

So today we will conclude a three-part series inspired by history lessons I’ve learned from teaching high school history at Mission Christian Academy, Fishers.  From World History, Part 1 (#880, HERE), we discussed the pharaohs in Egypt at the time of Moses.  Last week, Part 2 (#881, HERE) was about the “Separatists” who actually were on the Mayflower, not Puritans.  Now in Part 3, we’ll learn about a couple of English ships that landed in Virginia in 1619, one being the White Lion, carrying African slaves.

The irony of this particular column’s timing is that over the last several decades our nation has increasingly vilified – and now basically cancelled – the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus who, under Spanish sponsorship, sailed across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean Sea in 1492.  In three trans-Atlantic trips Columbus never actually set foot on North American soil.  Yet, he is blamed for unleashing the “evils” of white European culture not just on the indigenous peoples of the western side of the Atlantic, but by extension, facilitating what followed, including slavery in America.

The irony? This column is dated Tuesday, but column distribution is Monday, Oct. 9, which this week happened to be C*l*m*u*s Day – whose name we dare not say – the now-verboten celebration of the “discovery of America.”  It is politically incorrect.

A fair study of Columbus’s 1492 Spanish ships and the English privateer (pirate) vessel White Lion 127 years later would reveal no connection between the two.  But since 2019, four years since the leftist New York Times Magazine with its silly-but-Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project undertook to rewrite American history, progressives are re-defining all European exploration and settlement of North America away from its intrinsic human greatness and applying it to destructive narrative and racial animus.

As for the White Lion, the English pirates had kidnapped the slaves from a Portuguese ship and then traded the Africans for ship’s provisions, i.e., food, at Point Comfort, now known as Fort Monroe near Hampton, Virginia. See a good history HERE.

Also in 1619, another ship – name unknown – arrived in Jamestown, “carrying 90 eligible women for purchase as wives for the cost of their passage, or 125 (155) pounds of tobacco (which served as currency at the time).” So says our U.S. History textbook. Story HERE.  One wonders why that, among feminists, hasn’t been a scandal as well. 

History tells us that while Spanish exploration here was more military and avaricious in nature, the English and others sought commerce, religious freedom, and fresh starts with families far from the monarchs and religious wars of Europe.

My thoughts on Columbus, slavery, and God are here, Sailing the Ocean Blue.  I’ve not read the 1619 Project, but here is a good explanatory piece by Jarrett Stepman in the Daily Signal: Historians Challenge New York Times' Dubious 1619 Project. I’d advise not wasting one’s time on the Times’ “1619” for the same reason I’d advise a friend not to patronize an obviously filthy restaurant; I’ve had a taste.  Yuk … nasty.

I am not blind to the faults of America but think it is dishonest to ignore its good.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will return to a more theological theme next week.