Term Paper on "John Winthrop and Ralph Waldo Emerson"

Term Paper 7 pages (1765 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Reform- both social and spiritual- had been an important subject of debate in the days when church and state had not yet been separated. It was only after the separation of church and state that reform stopped being such a pressing issue. Cambridge-educated John Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He came from an affluent family and had he not been interested in Puritanical reformation, he could have died rich in England. But his restless soul wouldn't allow such an easy path. And so he started reading Bible closely and was soon completely under its influence. A short but memorable address delivered by him in 1630s upon the ship Arbella exhibited Winthrop's understanding of the principles of reformation as he interpreted them from the Bible. This short address at once became a lot of things including a warning, a threat and a lesson.

This address is now known as "A Model of Christian Charity" and contains important characteristics of a new social order. He looked at his people on board as a "community of peril" (p. 85). He encourages them to "walk by" one another, touching upon the religious lofty ideal of love, "the bond of perfection" (p. 86). He also refers to more practical things such as the "law of nature and the law of grace" (p. 83). These principles he felt could help the community build a new society. Winthrop uses a different means to stress the importance of reformation on the principles that he lays down. Apart from early encouragement, he later uses admonition and threats to get his message across.

But if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, be revenged of such a perjured people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant. (pp. 90-91)

These lines are used as a warm-up to something more serious and important. The entire gist of the address is based upon the Covenant. Winthrop points to the risky nature of the task he feels God has assigned to the community. His thesis rests upon the belief that if disaster will follow "if we shall neglect" the Covenant and, "dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world" (p. 90). He doesn't really believe in the traditional theology but it is theology nonetheless that guides his words. He repeatedly stresses upon reformation that community had to undertake and the principles on which it should be based. He talks about homelessness of the soul which is more metaphysically discussed. Thus the e fears of "shipwrack" and the "curses" that he refers to are actually connected with spiritual reformation or lack of it thereof. He wants to repeatedly remind the people they must not make the mistake of causing a shipwreck and should strive to "avoid this shipwrack" they must be "knit together" (p. 90) lest "prayers... be turned into Curses... till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are agoing" (p. 91).

Winthrop is consistently following the same theme i.e. community must follow God's commands and the covenant and concludes, "we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it"(p. 92). Throughout the address, Winthrop was taking about the abode where people would ultimately go. When he talked about the city, it was not just the land the community was to reach at the end of the present journey but the city that they would create for themselves in the thereafter. The title of Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630) explains what the speaker wanted in a model society and what was his definition of reform. The speaker felt that the community is in extreme peril, which obviously generates moral panic among the colonists. This panic helps them acknowledge the need for something bigger and less tangible than physical weapons. J. Gerald Janzen, in "The Terror of history and the Fear of the Lord," offers an explanation for Winthrop brand of reformation:

For to live in the venture of faith is to face the terror of history, the terror of the unknown future, an unknown future which in the form of present potential both threatens and invites, which yawns... As an abyss of uncertainty and yet, somehow, beckons with promise. 16

It is then interesting that fear of God formed the sole basis of reformation. There were no other sources involved and Puritans felt that the utopia they had in mind could actually materialize if God was followed the way they were preaching. This is evident in other writings as well including Thomas Tillam's poem, "Upon the First Sight of New England" (1638):

Methinks I heare the Lambe of God thus speake

Come my dear little flocke, who for my sake

Have lefte your Country, dearest friends, and goods

And hazarded your lives o'th raging floods

Posses this Country; free from all anoye

Heare I'le bee with you, heare you shall Injoye

My sabbaths, sacraments, my minestrye

And ordinances in their puritye

But yet beware of Sathans wylye baites (p. 127).

The threat is always there. The nostalgia is strong but the work always ends with an admonition. It is not exactly a poem but rather a lyrical argument. For Puritans it was simple. To forewarn meant to forearm. Besides God's wrath and cosmic anger made for a good story. Winthrop thus uses fear to arouse in people a serious desire to reform society according to the Puritanical understanding of spirituality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of those great thinkers of the "Transcendentalist" movement who encouraged independent thinking. He was of the view that to develop intellectual faculties man should be urged to think creatively, so that his thoughts are not dependent on someone else's views. This had been Emerson's philosophy, which is reflected in all this work because he wrote for the primary purpose of instilling a sense of individual and independent thinking in man. Independent thinking according to him could take place only when allowed himself to think freely without any kind of restriction. Many of his popular works are based on this concept and they revolve around the theme of intellectual reawakening. His essay "Self-reliance" is also based on the same premise. Reformation forms a small section of the text but the entire writing illustrates Emerson's belief that reform was an individual phenomenon that begins from within and must later affect the entire society. To understand Emerson's view on reformation, it is important to take into account some other texts as well. Linck C. Johnson, in "Reforming the Reformers: Emerson, Thoreau, and the Sunday Lectures at Amory Hall, Boston," explains that Emerson's views in his various addresses proposed "the same lessons he had earlier offered to those in the larger society, the lessons of work and of obedience to the very soul of the self, the individual's only secure and reliable guide" (254, 264).

Emerson argued that reformers were of two kinds, those who follow the "dictate of a man's genius and constitution" and those who "adopted from another" ("New England" 362-63). The latter is a dangerous breed since these reformers focus on only small sections of the whole problem and thus the larger problems remains unresolved. Emerson stresses individualism when he says, "The union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated" ("New England" 369). In his journal Emerson writes that "the remedying [of evils] is not a work for society, but for me to do," though he confirms that he does "not know how to attack it [the system] directly, & am assured that the directest attack which I can make on it, is to lose no time in fumbling & striking about in all directions, but to mind the work that is mine, and accept the facilities & openings which my constitution affords me" (Journals 9: 85).

Emerson was different from Winthrop. His views were more concentrated upon individual change instead of social reform. Emerson felt that if each man chnagd, society would automatically change and even if it did not, then man must understand that his primary duty is to reform himself. As Larry J. Reynolds pointed out, "At the heart of Emerson's idealism is the call for spiritual regeneration, for new men, not new social orders" (42). Emerson believed there was no use in opting for rather superficial changes such as the change in law or culture. For him, the actual change was to triggered within each individual. He was not in favor of institutionalized change and for this reason, had often spoken against movements including the anti-slavery movement: He wrote in his journal: "Does not he do more to abolish Slavery who works all day steadily in his garden, than he who goes to… READ MORE

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