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--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Last Thanksgiving, we discussed the true history of the holiday, and the legacy of the pilgrims can still be felt to this day. In this episode, we speak to a Hillsdale College professor about the pilgrims' long-term impact, how it ties into the modern culture wars, and the future of religiosity in the United States. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, November 28th. Happy Thanksgiving. And this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Here to discuss the pilgrims and their long and interesting influence on American culture is Hillsdale College professor of history, Miles Smith. Dr. Smith, thanks so much for coming on.
--:-- Miles Smith: Oh, it was my pleasure.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: So listeners may recall last year we brought on a Plymouth Plantation historian to talk about the true story of the first Thanksgiving. And that was a fan favorite episode, which we're going to link to in the description. But this year, I want to talk about the Pilgrims' cultural legacy in America. So first off, who were the Mayflower Travelers? That group included more than just Pilgrims. How did that group come together, and who did it include?
--:-- Miles Smith: Well, it's a motley crew. About 30 to 40 percent are the group of people we call the Pilgrims. They're dissident English Protestants. They were called the Brownists in England. They were followers of a guy named Brown, and they're convinced they have to actually completely separate from the Church of England. They're not even interested in reforming it. They've got to get out of England. And so they're kind of seen as cranks, interestingly enough.
--:-- Miles Smith: They go to the Netherlands first, and then they decide, oh, Holland's maybe even not as holy enough for them. So they sort of set out to find a place where they can truly build what they think is a godly commonwealth. And so they charter a wine ship, interestingly enough. The Mayflower had been a wine ship. And this was sort of controversial. The Puritans were sort of very pious people who had some thoughts, well, maybe we shouldn't drink alcohol. Some of them did, by the way.
--:-- Miles Smith: So there was sort of a controversy even on what they were charting. So they charter a wine ship, and they go to then what was Virginia. All of the East Coast was considered Virginia. And so their voyage takes them somewhere in the order of 40 to 40 days, and they're crossing the North Atlantic. And it's pretty clear that the pilgrims are not sure about the rest of the passengers, who are kind of what you might think of working class, rough, sort of working people.
--:-- Miles Smith: Parliament called the rest of the passengers human offals. It means human poop. And so there's not a lot of cultural commonality with the pilgrims and the rest of the people on the Mayflower. So it's a pretty eclectic crowd who's traveling across the ocean at that point.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: So when they arrived, did they create a society altogether or did they split off and the pilgrims made their own plantation and the offals fended for themselves?
--:-- Miles Smith: Yeah, it's a good question. So actually, there's sort of a proposition. Hey, we've all got to learn to get along because we're going to the backside of the planet. We have no idea what's out there. We've got to sort of at least have some sort of organizing principle. And so what they do is they kind of draw up a civil charter, a social and civil charter. And that's what we call the Mayflower Compact.
--:-- Miles Smith: And they basically say, OK, this is how we're going to run the government. No one in the early 17th century would have conceived of an idea of having secular government. They all think that government's going to be tied to religion. And so everyone's relatively comfortable with the idea, hey, we're going to covenant with each other under God to at least create some sort of stable society here in what they think is Northern Virginia. We call it New England.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Now, when they got there, historically, we think of the pilgrims as being a very pious group, but if only 30% were actually part of that cohort, did the, I don't want to keep calling them offals, but did the other people absorb some of their ways and mannerisms or did the pilgrims moderate to accommodate them?
--:-- Miles Smith: So it probably more the former. I mean the people who are particularly religious and pious, they understand well, hey, the pilgrims are the guys with the guns. They're the guys with the ability to control what becomes the New England Commonwealth, the actual state apparatus in New England. So it's more the former.
--:-- Miles Smith: People who might not be particularly pious or interested in religion, they decide, you know what, in order to keep on the good side of the people who are kind of running everything, I need to at least seem religious. So it's much more the former. People sort of begin to sort of, they fake it till they make it, if you want to think of it that way.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Now, I want to go back to life on the ships. This is 40 or 50 days in the North Atlantic. Was that considered safe at that time or were they taking their lives in their hands doing this?
--:-- Miles Smith: No, it was very dangerous. You know, the North Atlantic isn't a regular sort of throughfare at that point. There's no cities to trade with in the new world. So it's only sort of recently begun to be regularly traveled at the beginning of the 17th century. So it is dangerous. There's no guarantee you're even going to make it to the new world.
--:-- Miles Smith: You have, you know, sometimes with storms in North Atlantic, you have waves easily 35 to 40 feet. Considering the fact that Mayflower is not much longer than 110, 120 feet, it's a heck of a wild ride. So they do know it's dangerous. They do think that it's dangerous. They are aware of that. But they're all pretty convinced, at least the leadership, that they're supposed to do it.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Now, I want to get to some of their cultural impact. So you talked about how some of the maybe less religious members of this community absorbed some of the cultural customs of the pilgrims. How did this early Christian commune, for lack of a better word, I guess it was a commune. Yeah, that's a good way to think of it. How did that first, you know, Christian culture impact the subsequent expansion of Christianity in the United States?
--:-- Miles Smith: Yeah, so they would have been downstream from English Calvinists. And so for them, they're not afraid to use social and civil power to enforce religiosity. So a church going is sort of mandatory. Hey, we need you to show up for church. You have to show up for church. They fine people for deviant behaviors. And so even if you're not enthusiastic about piety, just kind of in your heart, in order to sort of get by, you're going to become more enthusiastic whether you sort of feel it or not.
--:-- Miles Smith: So the legacy they leave is that New England always, at least until the middle of the 19th century, had sort of the biggest space for public Christianity. It's interesting. We tend to think of the South as more religious at the beginning of the United States and really throughout the history of the United States. That's a relatively new development. New England was more religious because New England was sort of unafraid to use social and civil power to make people religious.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Now, you mentioned that people had to attend church every single Sunday to be part of the society. That itself has certain social impacts. So, for example, it limits the distance you can live from the church. You can't really travel for extended periods. So it has some trickle-down effects on society just beyond the religiosity, and it really affects the social cohesion.
--:-- Miles Smith: It's in the 18th century. I mean, one of the interesting things, you bring up space, and it's a really good observation. Most of the people on the Mayflower are from a part of England called East Anglia. That's the little nub of England that sticks out into the North Sea towards Norway. That was the part of England that had township governance. That was the type of England you were most likely to be a congregationalist in.
--:-- Miles Smith: So they came with a kind of preconceived notion of even how a town should be laid out. It's laid out with sort of a Congregationalist church in the middle of it. So it means that, guess what? You kind of live in a town around that church. Township governance is something we get from their East Anglian dispositions. And so this is something that they kind of just dispositionally replicate when they get to New England.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: When did that rule go by the wayside, and what were the effects of that?
--:-- Miles Smith: It's in the 18th century. I mean, one of the interesting things, you bring up space, and it's a really good observation. Most of the people on the Mayflower are from a part of England called East Anglia. That's the little nub of England that sticks out into the North Sea towards Norway. That was the part of England that had township governance. That was the type of England you were most likely to be a congregationalist in.
--:-- Miles Smith: So they came with a kind of preconceived notion of even how a town should be laid out. It's laid out with sort of a Congregationalist church in the middle of it. So it means that, guess what? You kind of live in a town around that church. Township governance is something we get from their East Anglian dispositions. And so this is something that they kind of just dispositionally replicate when they get to New England.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: So for 200 years, though, people were expected to attend their local township church and they would get a fine if they didn't show up?
--:-- Miles Smith: Yeah, for a good century and change. Yeah, so for well over 100 years.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: I didn't realize that the Salem witch trials were such a significant factor in secularizing America. I mean, culturally, of course, everyone knows about them, but that's a very significant downstream effect.
--:-- Miles Smith: It's one of the sign factors. Another one is just you have a lot more people in New England by the beginning of the 18th century. And you have people who aren't really from East Anglia. They don't have any history with being a pilgrim or being a Puritan. So you've got folks who might be just a regular Anglican coming and moving to Boston. And they don't want to go to a Congregationalist church.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Now, what was the cultural effect of that? I'm thinking if you had a society where everyone had to show up at a certain place to do a cultural activity or a religious activity together, and then suddenly you don't have to, I imagine that would exponentially create a more individualistic society. What was the effect of that?
--:-- Miles Smith: That's a great, great question. And you would tend to think that it would sort of create a relatively individualistic society. But the legacy of it's so strong that even today, New England tends to be more kind of conformist than other parts of the country. It tends to vote the same way. People tend to sort of think the same way.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: I'm actually from Massachusetts, and most Massachusetts people will remember a time when you could only buy alcohol at the liquor store. You needed a license just to go into the store, and the hours were very restricted, closed before noon, closed on Sundays. I think they may still be closed on holidays. And I was actually very scandalized when I went to school out of state in Colorado and I saw you could buy alcohol in the grocery store.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: So how did we go from the point of having this religiosity in the Northeast to the center of gravity of religiosity now being the Southeast?
--:-- Miles Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think the mass migration into the Sun Belt is something we're not even sure what to think about now. You know, I was born, North Carolina has about six and a half million people, and it has 11 million people now. I live in Michigan. When I was born Michigan had just under 10 million people in it. And today 40 years later it has just under 10 million people in it.
--:-- Miles Smith: New England relatively stable too. It's not growing quite as fast as the South is. And so I don't even know if we got enough information if we seen the legacy of this growth long enough to know why do people come. You know, for a lot of people, I always heard it's the weather or the taxes are lower, something like that. I don't know.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: I was just in Connecticut this summer. That was in Enfield, Connecticut. And I'm from North Carolina. I love Chick-fil-A. It's just, you know, I'm a Southerner. And so I was like, oh, there's a Chick-fil-A. So I'll stop in a Chick-fil-A. And the first thing I noticed is it was very quiet. People don't talk to each other quite as much. There's not the same type of public conversation.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: The South is a pretty loud place. I studied abroad in Italy, and I never was that alien because I was like, oh, well, this house is kind of loud. Italy is kind of loud. That was so different than in the Chick-fil-A in New England I went to. It was quieter. People don't necessarily look at each other as much. It was just very clear to me that, like, this is a different type of place than the one I grew up in.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Maybe insular is not the best term, but something was different. More reserved, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Some of your specialty, it sounds like you watch religious trends. And so no doubt you've kind of kept tabs on the past, say, 10 years. The rise of the religious nuns is sometimes how it's phrased. People who say they are not any religion. So not necessarily atheist, but certainly not weekly church attenders.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: However, Megan Basham, one of my colleagues, has reported for us recently that that trend may be slowing, may be crested around 2020. And in very recent years, past, I would say, two years, I've seen some headlines and articles about the rise of religiosity among young people, specifically young men.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: I saw one about traditional Catholicism in New York City having a mini boomlet. And anecdotally, I've heard that the Presbyterian Church has had big growth on college campuses, especially with young men. And is this a trend that you have kept an eye on and something that you expect to see more of?
--:-- Miles Smith: Yeah, it's definitely real. I teach at a religious college and faith life of our students is very vibrant. I think that when I talk to them, they're aware that this is something that is typifying their generation. The Zoomers, I guess they are, are more interested in religion than my generation, which I guess I'm an elder millennial or Gen X.
--:-- Miles Smith: And I think it's because they sort of recognize there's a sort of emptiness to a lot of specifically secularist claims about life. I think that it seemed to them to be pretty nihilistic. And I think nihilism isn't beautiful, right? Like, it's purposeless. And I think Zoomers, at least those who are sort of interested in conservative things, even if they're not religious per se at first, I think thinking about nature and thinking about things that are old and beautiful has led them to say, okay, what if Christianity is actually true? Because it seems old and kind of beautiful too.
--:-- Miles Smith: A friend of mine, James Wood, he's a professor at Redeemer University in Canada. He wrote an article for First Thing sort of saying a lot of people who would never darken the door of a church are becoming interested in church because of things like conservatives talking about nature, conservatives talking about God, conservatives talking about beauty.
--:-- Miles Smith: These aren't people who are churched people. A lot of them have never darkened the door of a religious institution in their life. But they're sort of thinking about Christianity because Christianity respects reality. And people like reality. They like what's good about reality, embodiment, all of those things.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Well, Miles, thank you so much for making time for us today.
--:-- Miles Smith: Thank you, Georgia.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: That was Hillsdale College professor Miles Smith. And this has been a special Thanksgiving episode of Morning Wire. And happy Thanksgiving from all of us on the team. And if you're interested, you can visit the show description for a link to last year's fan favorite interview, which was about the true history of Thanksgiving.
