MIDTERM: Combining Religion with Secularism and Getting Americans

Darcy Smittenaar
EN203-1
Mid-Term Exam

Combining Religion with Secularism and Getting Americans

Religion in many early American societies, such as the Puritans in Massachusetts and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, was also part of the governments of those particular colonies.  On the other hand, religion had no part of John Smith’s mercenary venture in Jamestown.  The writings of Samuel Sewell and Cotton Mather, as well as those of the earlier, secular author, John Smith, when combined help to define America and the American people as they are today.  Like John Smith and his contemporaries, as well as many others both in his time and after, Americans seek to better their lives.  Many Americans do not follow a specific religion, but there are many who believe in a higher power, as well as those who live completely secular lives trying to achieve an ideal.

  The failing Puritan religion and the Salem Witch Trials directly influenced today’s American judicial system.  Cotton Mather’s “The Wonders of the Invisible World” tells, in detail, what happened at the Salem Witch Trials.  The testimonies of “several persons who had long undergone many kinds of miseries which were preternaturally inflicted and generally ascribed unto an horrible witchcraft” are used to indict and justify the execution of the supposed witches (204).  In Puritan society, the supernatural was an acceptable explanation, in lieu of physical evidence.  In fact, Mather does not even mention attempting to find physical evidence that such suffering has happened, or that connects the accused with the events described.  These are elements left out of the Puritan system of justice which are firmly planted in modern American courts.  It is the combined physical and testimonial evidence which is used to convict those accused of crimes today, and the proof must not leave even a shadow of a doubt in the minds of the jury.  These changes were inspired both by Cotton Mather’s accounts and by Samuel Sewell’s diary.

Samuel Sewell was also a devout Puritan and participated in the Salem Witch Trials, but his Diary shows that even the most devoutly religious early Americans hoped to prosper.  After his first and second wives’ deaths, he courts rich women and counts every penny he spends in doing so.  He has had children, and perhaps he looks only for someone to help him care for them after the death of his first wife, but his reasons for such hasty remarriage are not delineated in his diary.  However, he does tell the names of each of the women he courts, and they are wealthy widows: Mrs. Denison, Mrs. Tilley, Madam Winthrop, Madam Ruggles, and Mrs. Mary Gibbs.

John Smith was not Puritan, and did not come to America for religious freedom.  Instead, he helped to establish Jamestown in Virginia for a profit.  Merchants, businessmen, and mercenaries like Smith, attempting to escape the stifling social castes of Europe, came at first slowly to America, but their numbers have been increasing since the seventeenth century, and have not stopped.  This is largely due to Smith’s “General History of Virginia,” in which he describes the land as “a country so fair” (43), despite the natives attacking, that even modern-day media depicts it as a place where foreigners can come to make money and improve their lots in life.  Although the main characters in the movie are anthropomorphized mice, their song of “There are no cats in America,/and the streets are paved with cheese./There are no cats in America,/so set your mind at ease” is reminiscent of Smith’s description of the country nearly four centuries previous.

It is not only the immigrants who sought freedom from religious persecution who shape today’s American society.  But the secular adventurers and the somewhat-materialistic scions of later Puritanism combine to make an America which separates religion from government, demands physical, measurable evidence of any claim, and still strives to be better for the next generation.

NOTE: BECAUSE THIS ESSAY WAS PART OF A TEST, THERE IS NO WORKS CITED LIST; IT WAS ASSUMED THAT ALL REFERENCES WERE TO THE TITLED WORKS WITHIN TEXTBOOK FOR THE CLASS.