The Importance of Celebrating 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)

As it did in 1820, and later for the Tercentenary in 1920, the eyes of America once again gaze on the small town of Plymouth. Will “America’s Hometown speak to the world about the substance and faith of the men and women which launched a nation, or will the message be lost in a total wave of political correctness?

More than any location in the United States, Plymouth stands as a Jerusalem to our nation’s heritage of religious and civil liberties. Notwithstanding the contribution of Jamestown in 1607, Plymouth stands unique in the annals of our history. It is heart of our spiritual origin story as a nation. Plymouth was unique because when the Pilgrims came, they came not as individuals but as families. They came as families to establish a society under God and bound together in covenant as a civil body politic.

But what of today?

What Dickens concluded in his Tale of Two Cities might rightly be said of the Pilgrim Quadricentennial - “It was the best of times, It was the worst of times.”

We live at a time of polarization and anger; a season where we as American’s have not only lost our identity, but we have lost our way. The climate has changed much since 1920 when a post- World War I America was eager to look to the past for the foundations of peace and liberty. In that season, Americans rallied to remember the faith of their fathers and mothers. The 300th anniversary of the Mayflower was looked at as a messenger of good will for the nation, and a reminder that God has not forgotten the United States. Beautiful monuments were erected, and noble principles embodied by the Mayflower Pilgrims were foremost in speeches, plays, parades and presentations. Today many of these sentiments and values are looked at with skepticism and even contempt.

And this is precisely why, the Pilgrim 400th is emerging at the “best of times” — Never in our history have we more badly needed to be reminded as a people of our origin story. Never have the stakes been higher on the crucial issue of our identity as a liberty loving and free people. Never has it been more urgent that we embrace the example of those Pilgrim fathers who met aboard the Mayflower and dedicated themselves to a civil body politic “In the name of God, Amen.”