The Covanental Legacy of Pastor John Robinson Remembered

A covenant is a sacred agreement between God and individuals, binding those individuals together before God in a common purpose. The Scrooby Covenant of 1606 was significant because it was a rejection of a worldly and coercive system of social and religious organizations in favor of a covenant between God and man entered by individuals binding themselves together before God through a solemn covenant which they freely acknowledged on behalf of themselves, their families and their heirs.

William Bradford explained it this way:

“ . . . the Lord’s free people joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them.” (William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed Samuel Eliot Morison, p.9)

Fourteen years later, the spirit, foundations and structure of the 1606 covenant were repeated in Provincetown, Harbor, aboard the Mayflower when members of Pastor John Robinson’s congregation, joined by others who would build their new society, covenanted and combined in a “civil body politic,” and “In the name of God, Amen,” to create America’s first great covenant—The Mayflower Compact.

This 1620 Mayflower Compact has correctly been honored as the conception moment for what would ultimately become the United States of America. The Robinson/Scrooby Covenant of 1606 became the model for the covenant of the Mayflower Compact of 1620, which in turn became the model for the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

The Thanksgiving 400 - A Grateful Nation Booklet

Download Today - Your Commemorative Booklet for the Holiday

No American holiday is more universally honored or the cause for as much goodwill and family togetherness as Thanksgiving Day. Today it is celebrated each year on the fourth Thursday of November, but the American tradition of a special day of thanksgiving has as its foundation the Pilgrim harvest festivities of 1621. This year, 2021, marks the 400th anniversary of that celebration. Over the centuries millions of Americans have followed the example of the Pilgrims, with the result that Thanksgiving Day has become the great American tradition of American families stopping from work to celebrate and give thanks for the mercy and goodness of God.

For the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim thanksgiving celebration of 1621, we offer this booklet of gratitude. It is a celebration of that first day of thanksgiving, and of the streams of blessing which flowed from Plymouth to our nation and the world. Within its pages you will find American traditions including psalms, hymns, poetry, parades and recipes. Importantly, this commemorative booklet provides chronological recollections on the faith of our 1621 fathers and mothers. Bring “Thanksgiving 400: A Grateful Nation” to your own celebration. Read it aloud, sharing the stories and many primary source documents. Our booklet chronologically offers insights into that legacy of vision, evangelism, civil and religious liberty, and national gratitude. A great mantle was placed on this nation with the declaration of the Pilgrim Fathers that they would be a covenantal people of faith committed to generational faithfulness and missionary zeal. A Thanksgiving Day worthy of remembrance rests on this foundation.

Your donation helps support the work of the Leyden Preservation Group.  Together we can preserve our heritage and historic landmarks.  Download your beautiful 64-page booklet.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2021 - “Around your table”

Thanksgiving 2021 - a Grateful Nation GATHERING

November 21, 2021 Plymouth, MA

A Time for Thankfulness - Today is Covenant Day 

Today we celebrate the birth of American liberty. On this day, November 11th, 1620, the Mayflower, carrying 102 passengers, men, women and children, anchored in Provincetown Harbor, 67 days from Plymouth, England. That same day, 41 men in the company solemnly covenanted and combined themselves together “into a civil body politick”. The body politic established a state without a king or a noble, a church without a bishop or a priest, and a domestic commonwealth whose members were “straightly tied to all care of each other’s good and of the whole by every one”. Their fortitude and dedication to the principles of civil and religious liberty, gave the world the very first example of a nation successfully birthed as a representative republic, built on principles of life and liberty under God. The ideals embodied in the Mayflower Compact served as a model for the Declaration of Independence close to a century-and- a-half later. 

The Coin that Celebrates the Covenant

Donation for The Coin & The Enduring Legacy of The Mayflower Compact Booklet 

The Leyden Preservation Group is dedicated to preserving one of the great landmarks of our nation’s providential history, and committed to perpetuating the legacy of the Pilgrim story for future generations. This landmark includes our headquarters, Lot #1, the site of the first house built by the Pilgrims, and the site of the memorable treaty with Massasoit, the Grand Sachem leader of the Wampanoag nation. It is also the site where America’s first act of representative government occurred in 1621, popular suffrage. Those who support the work of The Leyden Preservation Group this year with a donation of $100 or more, will receive our Mayflower 400 Commemorative Silver Coin and a printed version of our beautiful booklet, The Enduring Legacy of The Mayflower Compact. Donate $400 and receive five Mayflower 400 Commemorative Silver Coins. 

A Special Gift For Your Thanksgiving Table 

Thanksgiving 2021 is a special once-in-a-lifetime event. Americans will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving. To encourage your family celebration, The Leyden Preservation Group has created a full color booklet, Thanksgiving 400 - A Grateful Nation, perfect to accompany your own family celebration. This commemorative edition includes read-aloud primary source materials, recipes, trivia, Thanksgiving history, Psalms, hymns and more. Make a donation of $100 or more in the month of November and receive your Mayflower 400 Commemorative Silver Coin, the Mayflower Compact booklet, and a copy of “Thanksgiving 400 – A Grateful Nation”. 

AMERICA’S COVENANT OF LIBERTY AND THE FOREFATHER’S MONUMENT

A TIME FOR THANKFULNESS

Free Thanksgiving 2020 Booklet

Plymouth and the roadmaps of American liberty

Speaking before the first convention of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), then California Governor Ronald Reagan began his road to the White House by reminding listeners that the American story was a journey expressed in written documents that formed a roadmap to liberty. The date of his speech was January 25, 1974, but Governor Reagan brought listeners to a sermon penned and delivered aboard a ship which had arrived in New England some 344 years prior:

"Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said: ‘We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.’ Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom... We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.”

The John Winthrop referenced by Reagan was the first Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. He would ultimately be elected twelve times to the position, but in 1630, he was leading “the Great Migration” of ships carrying more than 700 settlers who would arrive over the year.

On board his vessel, he delivered a sermon presenting the vision for a “City on a Hill” and adapted from the biblical passage of Matthew 5:14-15 as the vision for the colony:

Plymouth and the Exceptional Legacy of American Liberty Under God

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. Psalm 78:4

This October 2021, Americans will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first Pilgrim thanksgiving feast - the celebration which became a model for our national day of gratitude to God. 

What should be a season of profound gratitude occurs in the midst of a deep crisis of national amnesia concerning the life, liberty, and history of the United States. At a moment when we should be reminding our children of the many mercies experienced by this highly imperfect but God-blessed nation, the trend is a rejection of patriotic gratitude in favor of cultural self-loathing, the revision of American history, and the desecration of our monuments, flag, and anthem…

RECLAIMING THE PILGRIM HISTORY USING PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL

Read the primary source documents directly (linked in the article below).

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Pilgrim's arrival in Plymouth. Past generations have dedicated two years to the centennial celebration and study of the Pilgrim story. The enthusiasms and gratitude generated by these historical studies produced epic celebrations, famous orations, poetry, parades and the laying of monuments. Notably, they resulted in generations of schoolchildren studying the Pilgrim influence on America’s legacy of life and liberty under God.

It was not uncommon for elementary school children to recite with ease the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims beginning with their origins in Scrooby, England, through their persecution and relocation to Holland, to the voyage of the Mayflower, to the historic signing of the Mayflower Compact, their arrival in Plymouth, their struggles through the first long winter, and the establishment of the colony.

For the 400th anniversary celebration, the Pilgrim story has been subject to hostile revisionism within the mainstream media. Much of the new material, including those produced by the government-sponsored 1619 Project, posits an interpretation of Pilgrim history as the story of theft, genocide, and intolerance. The primary source materials reveal a very different reality. The result of this wave of anti-Pilgrim revisionism is that a generation of children have been taught to look with contempt on the Pilgrims and to regard even the celebration of Thanksgiving Day, as an homage to colonialism and bigotry…

Why celebrate the quadricentennial?

“We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and religions liberty, in our regard for whatever advances human knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin.” ~Daniel Webster, oration at Plymouth Rock, December 22, 1820 (The Pilgrim Bicentennial)

Excerpt Mentioning the Pilgrims from State of the Union Address

During the 400th anniversary year of the arrival of the Mayflower Pilgrims in Plymouth, President Donald Trump references their role in America’s legacy of heroism before millions of Americans during his 2020 State of the Union Address.

"As the world bears witness tonight, America is a land of heroes. This is the place where greatness is born, where destinies are forged, and where legends come to life. This is the home of Thomas Edison and Teddy Roosevelt, of many great Generals, including Washington, Pershing, Patton, and MacArthur. This is the home of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, the Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, and so many more. This is the country where children learn names like Wyatt Earp, Davy Crockett, and Annie Oakley. This is the place where the pilgrims landed at Plymouth and where Texas patriots made their last stand at the Alamo….

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS FOR THE 400TH

happy forefather’s day - 250th

This weekend marks the 250th anniversary of oldest ongoing patriotic commemoration in American history - Forefathers Day.   Three hundred and ninety-nine years ago today, December 21, 1620, the Mayflower Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth Harbor and stepped foot on the now iconic rock.  Notably, this year’s Forefathers Day occurs just weeks before the advent of the 400th anniversary year of the arrival of the men and women who would shape the course of freedom for a future nation.

Over the last two hundred and fifty years, Forefathers Day has marked an occasion to highlight the great tradition of civil and religious liberty under God, bequeathed to our nation by the Mayflower Pilgrims.  Celebrants have included dignitaries and past presidents of the United States. The event has been marked by feasting, games, toasts, poetry, speeches and even great orchestral compositions like the symphonic work of Charles Ives to New England Holidays: Thanksgiving and Forefathers Day (1904).

On October 6, Lot #1 Welcomed Times Square church and the National call to Prayer

October 6th - Worldwide Prayer Meeting Live From Lot #1

Noted radio and television talk show host, Glenn Beck, broadcast live Monday, November 18, from the fire place and living room of The Leyden Preservation Group Headquarters, Lot #1. The broadcast was a a special pre-Thanksgiving show on the importance of the Pilgrim legacy.

Lot #1 is the historic location of the signing of the treaty between the Pilgrims and Massasoit of the Wampanoag which served as the basis for fifty years of unbroken peace between Natives and Pilgrim societies. It is also believed to be the approximate location of the first common house where close to 50% of the Pilgrims perished during the first winter of 1620-1621. In 1621, Lot #1 became the location for the first act of common suffrage with the election of Miles Standish. It is remembered as a place of perseverance through difficulties, of peace between nations, and where principles of individual liberty and defense of freedom were modeled for future generations.

The broadcast included guest appearances by Dr. Paul Jehle of the Plymouth Rock Foundation, and Beth and Jerry Perera of the Leyden Preservation Group. The broadcast was poignant and touching at times, with several guests discussing what it meant to them personally to come to America as immigrants. Beck brought his unique brand of insight to the story of the Pilgrims, the controversies surrounding American history, and the meaning of the Thanksgiving Day celebration.

Discussing the importance of family time around the Thanksgiving table, Glenn encouraged listeners to download the special Thanksgiving Kit offered by the Leyden Preservation Group that provides families with easy access to the Pilgrim story in the words of the Pilgrims themselves, as well as important documents like the Mayflower Compact, sermons, quotes and proclamations about thanksgiving.

Keep up with all the latest news and updates from the Plymouth 400th Celebration and our parent organization Leyden Preservation Group across social media.

Prayer Gathering @ The National Monument to the Forefathers, Plymouth, MA

Saturday, October 2nd, 2021 ~ Noon Eastern Time ~ Livestream at 400th.org

Prayer is communion with God. It is humility in knowing we cannot do what we ought to do without His help. Prayer also expresses gratefulness. We gather to remember that our liberty - both religious and civil-come not by force, but by His love expressed through covenant and the service of others. That is how we became One Nation Under God, and this remains the only hope in becoming that kind of nation once again.

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.” - ‭‭Psalm 33:12‬ ‭