Pilgrims' Progression

The President of the Divided States of America (as he sees it) has made another gaff (as I see it). In Obama’s Thanksgiving address he compared the Syrian refugees to the Pilgrims: just a bunch of troubled people yearning to be free, so he says. My immediate reaction was to disagree: the Pilgrims were a peace-loving group; they were not driven from their homes by violent military force. Although they did experience a level of persecution, they were not being murdered daily for their beliefs. They  made intentional plans for their future relocation and paid for transportation to a place where they intended to start a new life supported by their own labor.

My first thought was discount the comparison of Pilgrims with Syrian refugees altogether. The Pilgrim’s plan was to start anew with a set of rules they believed were necessary to the proper arrangement of society. They wanted it based on the principles of their religion. They wanted civil government that mirrored their religious beliefs. If you reread those last three sentences and replace “Pilgrim” with “Muslim” there is a frightening likeness.

When I saw the similarity, I began to see things differently. Perhaps Obama was right. Perhaps the Syrian refugee situation is more like the Pilgrims’ than I realized at first. The Pilgrims landed in territory occupied by an established society which had divided opinions about whether to accept the “refugees” or drive them away. The Pilgrims forced their way onto a beachhead and defended their stand with the language of divine right. Eventually the European settlers who followed the original Pilgrims drove the indigenous people from their ancestral lands and claimed them for their own.

How like the current situation in Paris, France or Dearborn, Michigan or Minneapolis, Minnesota this is. Muslim pilgrims have taken over large segments of real estate in Western cities and planted civil/religious communities which have become colonies of sovereign Muslim settlement. Sharia law dominates in these areas almost completely. The police in these cities have for all practical purposes abandoned these zones to the Muslim pilgrims. While this may not be what Obama was trying to say, it sounds like a reasonable comparison to me.

There is one contrast that is quite stark: the Native Americans who faced the Pilgrims were technically backward compared to the invading Europeans. Quite the opposite, we have the technological superiority over the “invading” Muslims, but their crude ways can be strikingly effective. Simply hijack a plane, for example, and fly it into a building. Or build a simple bomb and leave it on a train. It is proving difficult to thwart this intrusion with technology; we must fight it with policy.

If the American natives had favored a policy less like Massasoit in his original acceptance of the invaders from Europe and more like his son, Metacom, who tried to resist with force, perhaps the Pilgrim landing would have been a disaster instead of a miracle of survival. If the tribes of the Eastern coastal regions of America had stood together against the Europeans, perhaps the wave of immigration from Europe could have been thwarted or at least substantially delayed. 

I am not suggesting that as Christians we should take up arms against any refugees, Syrian, Mexican, Cuban, who legitimately seek refuge here. As individual Christians, as the Church of Christ, we have the example of the Good Samaritan; we have Jesus Himself. But as a nation, we have a culture to protect and preserve by whatever means, practical and moral, we can devise. (For more see Man the Lifeboats) What I would propose sounds horribly un-politically-correct: accept a predetermined number of immigrants year by year who pledge to assimilate. By this I mean learn English, obey the laws, and respect the beliefs of others. The great American melting pot experiment has only worked because assimilation was the goal. We cannot be African-American, Mexican-American or Muslim-American; we must all be -Americans.

We will never know what might have resulted had the Americans who greeted the Pilgrims adopted a different policy position. However, from Metacom to Tecumseh to Sitting Bull there were “Americans” who doubtless regretted their ancestors’ actions. Their society was overrun and ultimately destroyed. I hope our great grandchildren don’t have similar regrets.