It’s estimated that 35 million people may descend from the Pilgrims, although there were only 102 Mayflower passengers, about half of whom died the first horrible Winter in the new world. Reportedly only 29 are known to have descendants. So over 10 percent of the United States population traces to those hearty 29 survivors. There are descendants overseas too of course. Winston Churchill, though his American mother, may be one.
About half the Mayflower passengers were not Pilgrim religious separatists but essentially along for the ride, seeking to live better in America. Forty one adult male passengers, including both “saints” and “strangers,” signed the seminal Mayflower Compact while crossing the perilous Atlantic, pledging themselves to consensual self government. It’s considered a precursor to the Constitution.
More important than the Pilgrims’ stunning procreative and demographic success is their incalculable spiritual, political, cultural, and economic influence. They were the founders of American Yankee culture. Much of what we know today in the world as democracy, capitalism, international trade, mass education, technology, rule of law by consent, and human equality are traceable to the tiny but potent civilization they founded on New England’s frigid, rocky shores. They contributed the early essential parts to a giant transcultural machine that continues to churn and drive the world forward.
Nearly everyone in the world who lives under or aspires to live under constitutional democracy lives under the Pilgrims’ direct shadow. So too do all the billions of beneficiaries of industry, technology and modern medicine. Everyone who has a cell phone, uses the Internet, eats a diverse diet, lives in a comfortable home, and has a lifespan of more than a few decades can thank the Pilgrims. The Calvinistic dynamo they unleashed on a vast but mostly empty continent established a new historical view of the human individual and of history’s ultimate destination that has left virtually no person on earth untouched.
The Pilgrims modeled themselves on the primitive Early Church and the ancient Hebrews. And although they could not possibly have foreseen, the Pilgrims’ vast impact on the last 400 years across the globe has been unequaled by any other small groups except the Apostles and Patriarchs of old.
It’s a remarkable feat for a group of 102 seemingly unexceptionable ordinary people from the middling ranks of old England, half of whom died the first year. The Pilgrims would quickly attribute their enormous historical success, purchased at terrible initial cost, to the beneficent Hand of Providence. And they would be right. God can use very small numbers, only a handful, to transform the world, across centuries and millennia. It’s an inspiring and intimidating lesson that should last well beyond Thanksgiving.
Comment by Bishop Andrew Gerales Gentry on December 3, 2013 at 8:20 pm
The Pilgrims came for religious freedom but only for themselves. They once hanged a dog on suspicion of being a Quaker. They believed Native Americans were infidels. They called Roger Williams’ “open colony” the “piss pot” of the New World. They thought they and they alone were the only “elect” and all others were damned. They created an economic system based on one of the Seven Deadly Sins, greed, and taught what the ancient Hebrew prophets condemned and that was wealth equaled God’s favor! You can have the bloody Pilgrims!