John Winthrop was faced with one of the most challenging commissions possibly of all mankind: he was to lead a large group of Puritans into a little-known and dangerous new world. His thesis would hopefully help form the future America into a great God-loving country.
His message was for the purpose of creating a community of Christians that worked together as one body: "Ye are the body of Christ and members of their part." (p.6) He explained that through love and brotherly support for all members of the body this community could be achieved. He said that the bond which held the members of the body together is love, which "will necessarily infuse into each part [of the body] a native desire and endeavor, to strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort the other." (p.6) This message was a "commission" which God had given the Puritans to set an example for the New World Christians.
Reflection:
I'll begin by saying that everything Winthrop says is old stuff; almost all of it is from the Bible. What he teaches must have been known morals at the time. What may have been a new concept (or actually a concept to be reintroduced: see the answer to the community of peril question, p.4) was that of communism. This was the main point and bulk of the address. In order to understand that we need to erase the common, present-day concept of communism, because this is way before the time of Marx and the Communist Manifesto. Winthrop explains it using different terms. He calls the community the body and the glue that keeps everyone together is love. Specifically love for a deity and love for one's neighbors and brothers. "Bear ye one another's burden's and so fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2, p.6)
I think it may be so that only through the love (or fear) of a deity could communism be a probable form of government. Instead of a man as a totalitarian leader, an omniscient god to rule, because "by his spirit and love knits all these parts to himself and each to other, it is become the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world." (p.5) In other words, through the unifying power of Christ the Puritans could create an infallible community of God.
He goes on in detail about this love, and how to express it towards others. "As in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with a pure heart fervently. We must bear one another's burdens. We must not look only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren." (p.9) This twofold command was what I think Winthrop defined as charity. First to love without false pretense; second to help one's brothers and sisters. It's good, in theory; just like his communism. But these ideas have been floating around for centuries and haven't become widely accepted among the majority of the population. They are not easy concepts to understand, and harder to follow. Winthrop said it himself: "Man is born with this principle in him to love and seek himself only." (pp.6-7) It is not in human nature to think about others, so Winthrop (and many others in the past) tried to show that through Christ a new principle can come forth, one to love God and one's brother (p.7). Thus one can look after and be charitable to said brother.
As I begin to read The Wordy Shipmates, I hope to see how these words affected the development of the Puritans in the New World. Will they follow or forget, as it is so easy to do so, the words of John Winthrop? Will Winthrop's idea of communism be accepted by the settlers? Will they, with bonds of love be charitable to their brethren?
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I agree that this idea of Winthrop's of community is like communism except that his idea centers around God. Most communist countries like China and the now defunct U.S.S.R. throughout history haved tried to discourage religion because it tends to disagree with the state. Communist countries like to have the state held above all other things, where religion would be held. This idea of community Winthrop proposes is in other ways similar to communism in its philosphical ideas of equality, it just turns out that, as you said, men tend to think of themselves. These noble ideas of brotherhood are often taken and perverted to form heirarchies that control the masses throughout history in communist regimes from Lenin to Mao to Castro.
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