102. Who Were the Pilgrims, Really? Faith, Flight, and the Mayflower

If you live in America, chances are you've been spoon fed Pilgrim lore since you were but a wee lad. 

You've likely heard the tales of adventurous English men and women braving the seas, fist bumping Indians, and wearing terrible clothing. 

But what's the real story? What would possess these people to brave a journey that would take them weeks, and possibly even cost them their lives? What was so bad that they needed to leave? And what did they believe was waiting for them? 

We'll discuss all that and more for this THANKSGIVING special episode! 

Speaking of thanksgiving, WE are giving thanks to YOU, dear listener. Thank you for being such cool pals. 

Let us know what your least favorite thanksgiving side is! We hope you have a wonderful holiday! 

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/chumphistory

Transcript

Mr. Borkavich (00:00.684)
Hey everybody, John Simon here. Welcome to Church History for Chumps. I'm here with Kim Jong-un, Taylor Treadway, and the Theotokos appreciator, Thomas Duhamel.

Kim Jung Un (00:08.536)
Why?

Kim Jung Un (00:12.962)
Why is that my nickname?

Theotokos Appreciator (00:13.022)
Yo.

Mr. Borkavich (00:15.426)
I'm not even sure.

Kim Jung Un (00:17.248)
I probably said something about wanting to be a dictator at some point.

Mr. Borkavich (00:21.63)
It might have had something to do with the HOAs and just how much power and flavor.

Kim Jung Un (00:24.462)
LM why LM will know LM is like the Taylor lore expert LM why Why is it why is that my nickname? He really is I know

Theotokos Appreciator (00:29.195)
you

Mr. Borkavich (00:29.378)
He's like the historian of our show. He just knows all the details. Yeah. Can I just say, we always love, like, it's become like a fun little ritual for me that every Tuesday morning, whenever we get comments from people on Spotify, I just screenshot them and then send them to Taylor and Thomas. And then we all just like take turns heart reacting stuff and...

Kim Jung Un (00:51.862)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (00:55.922)
smiling and just enjoying the day. It's so nice. Yeah. So yeah, we love LM and Jackson and, you know, the, I'm going to forget. Gosh dang it. I feel bad. I'm a jerk now.

Kim Jung Un (00:56.792)
Dude, we love it. We love every one of you guys. We're so grateful for every listener.

Kim Jung Un (01:09.112)
Don't love them too much.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:10.795)
So did we, I don't think we even talked about it, but was it two episodes ago now? Like for the listener listening now, that was, that was our hundredth episode.

Kim Jung Un (01:19.79)
Yeah.

Yeah, we didn't even notice. So we do have a new metric to pay attention to Tommy. So if you haven't followed us on Spotify, follow us because what are we at John Simon like 900. So once we get to 1k, we'll throw a little part what does a church history for Trump's party even look like?

Mr. Borkavich (01:24.822)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:24.938)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:34.466)
like nine, nine seventeen, I think.

Mr. Borkavich (01:43.202)
What if we do like a... What if we just send a bunch of our listeners like a Zoom invite and we just have a little chit chat with everybody, a little Saturday afternoon? Wouldn't that be fun? That'd be super cool. Yeah, we can all just talk and they'll realize immediately that we're really not that smart. They'll be like, they'll be like, Taylor, what do you think about the 1614 Dutch occupation in the... And they'll be like, oh no.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:50.293)
DING! That'd be cool.

Kim Jung Un (01:54.062)
my gosh, I love it. Yes. All right. Boom. There you go.

Kim Jung Un (02:03.032)
John ain't... John ain't...

Mr. Borkavich (02:13.09)
I have no idea. Big fan. Yes.

Kim Jung Un (02:14.094)
I love it.

Kim Jung Un (02:19.278)
John, I hate to break it to you. They already know we're not that smart.

Mr. Borkavich (02:23.842)
that's the worst. You're probably right though. That's okay. man. Well, hey, happy Thanksgiving to you guys. It's not Thanksgiving yet. I guess we're going to drop this two days before Thanksgiving, but give me, give me your all time, actually, no, give me your all time overrated side dish for Thanksgiving. What could you go without?

Kim Jung Un (02:26.254)
It's alright. Yeah, it's okay.

Kim Jung Un (02:33.258)
That's right!

Kim Jung Un (02:45.07)
Tommy, you got.

Theotokos Appreciator (02:49.067)
Deviled eggs, dude.

Mr. Borkavich (02:50.946)
man, hurts. That hurts. But it is technically the least biblical. I don't know who named it that, but I mean, don't bring those to church, bro. Come on.

Theotokos Appreciator (02:53.245)
yeah, overrated.

Kim Jung Un (02:58.03)
Hmm

Theotokos Appreciator (02:58.251)
Yeah,

Kim Jung Un (03:00.75)
I gotta say the cranberry sauce.

Mr. Borkavich (03:08.285)
I like cranberry sauce.

Theotokos Appreciator (03:09.387)
So cranberry sauce is like the weirdest thing because it actually goes pretty good with stuff on your plate at Thanksgiving. there's not a single, I was thinking about that today, I was at a Thanksgiving meal and I'm just like, there's not a single other time that I'm just eating savory foods and I'm like, you know what, I wanna just mix up with this some cranberry sauce.

Mr. Borkavich (03:19.713)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (03:33.706)
Did you if you...

Kim Jung Un (03:34.146)
Well, dude, it's jelly, basically. Imagine Tommy, you're on the grill for the family. know, Steffi's making up the broccoli and the mashed potatoes. And you're like, yeah, we're have a good little family dinner tonight. Yeah, you know I say, a jelly, grape jelly. Like, I don't get it.

Theotokos Appreciator (03:37.323)
What?

Theotokos Appreciator (03:41.813)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (03:47.893)
Got some drumsticks. You know I should slather on these drumsticks? Jelly!

Mr. Borkavich (03:51.456)
And...

Just like, imagine if you're like at a steakhouse and it's like, how would you like your steak done, sir? Medium rare. Would you like the roasted garlic potatoes? That sounds great. How about some raspberry preserves? It's like...

Kim Jung Un (04:07.783)
I recommend them or the orange marmalade.

Theotokos Appreciator (04:10.533)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (04:12.706)
It's like, no, I'm okay. thank you.

Kim Jung Un (04:15.232)
Eggs. What country am I in? Yeah, that's the cranberry sauce. What's yours, John?

Theotokos Appreciator (04:17.449)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (04:21.064)
It's real strange. You know, I'm going to say this one strictly because it is such a hit or miss side for me in my experience. Potato salad. It can be banging and it can be just, yeah. You can get a big old scoop of it. I think so. Isn't it? Is it not?

Kim Jung Un (04:23.95)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (04:35.473)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Bad. It can be food poisoning.

Kim Jung Un (04:41.844)
Is potato salad a standard Thanksgiving food?

Theotokos Appreciator (04:49.067)
In the African American communities, potatoes.

Mr. Borkavich (04:50.472)
Kim Jung Un (04:52.44)
I guess, is it? Is that Black Thanksgiving?

Theotokos Appreciator (04:55.891)
I feel like it is a little bit more of a Black family dish.

Mr. Borkavich (04:55.906)
no. That's crazy. I really thought that was just a thing.

Kim Jung Un (04:59.91)
I need, listen, we need all four of our black listeners to help us out here and tell us.

Mr. Borkavich (05:04.322)
Black listeners, please. Marcus, Jared, I need you guys to help me out here. Or else half my family won't talk to me in a couple days.

Theotokos Appreciator (05:10.884)
the

Kim Jung Un (05:18.068)
Well, might, it could be a black thing or it could be just a like Simon clan thing.

Mr. Borkavich (05:23.178)
It might just be a mixed breed thing. They're just like, we don't know what to do. We've got ham sandwiches. I don't know.

Kim Jung Un (05:27.198)
I don't know what to do. Dude, I feel like that's like intercultural thanksgivings. I've seen some of these before, like the Korean families that got the mix of second gen and and so so like one half. Yeah, like one half shows up with. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (05:38.369)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (05:39.679)
You got turkey and bulgogi.

Mr. Borkavich (05:42.465)
Which honestly, I mean, I married into a Mexican family and they just straight up do normal American Thanksgiving, but they crush it though. I mean, they're like, why would we have tacos? We have that every other night.

Kim Jung Un (05:51.542)
Yeah, they do American. They do. I'm sure.

Theotokos Appreciator (05:54.827)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (05:58.702)
Yeah, we had that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I definitely have seen that. And Mexican households are for sure just like normal Thanksgiving. And we're going to do it the best.

Mr. Borkavich (06:08.214)
Yeah, yeah, they freaking kill it too. They know what they're doing. It's always good. Yeah. Well, I'm excited. I'm excited.

Kim Jung Un (06:10.942)
Yeah. Mmm. But I, I'll be in Tucson for Thanksgiving. I don't know if I'll have, I don't think I'll have any time to see you guys. I know.

Theotokos Appreciator (06:17.802)
What?

Mr. Borkavich (06:18.914)
Don't even say that. Don't even say that. I'm already mad that you mentioned it. I wish you would have just said, hey, I was in Tucson last week, but I didn't tell you because I couldn't see you. Cause like, I know, I know we're not going to see each other.

Kim Jung Un (06:24.758)
I know.

Theotokos Appreciator (06:26.783)
I'll be in LA. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (06:34.124)
I know, dude, it's like a quick window, man.

Mr. Borkavich (06:37.576)
It's always a quick window, Taylor. It's always. sure. Yeah. Well.

Kim Jung Un (06:40.524)
Yeah, it is. I know. I'm sorry. Bro, come out to SoCal. We'll go to Disneyland. I'll show you mountains.

Mr. Borkavich (06:49.674)
You are literally coming to the same city as me in a week and a half.

Kim Jung Un (06:53.39)
I tell you what, I tell you what, I'll invite you guys both on air on Saturday morning before Brandy and I drive out, we can go to Snooze Cafe and I tell you what, I'll buy. I'll buy. Yeah, hey, look at that. Okay, dude, all right. I'm not gonna flake Brandy's one desire when she visits Tucson to Snooze Cafe. I can't flake.

Theotokos Appreciator (07:03.337)
Woo! Ayyy!

Mr. Borkavich (07:06.028)
Done, bro, done. Are you kidding me? Yeah. 100%. You freaking flake and I'm gonna roast you on air.

Mr. Borkavich (07:21.408)
Okay, alright. Well, I expect a calendar invite, brother, because, People who care about keeping your- Okay, don't you- Is it black to send calendar invites? That's like the- That's like the new, fellas, is it gay to eat the frosting on top of a cupcake? Is it black to send calendar invites? For flaky friends?

Theotokos Appreciator (07:22.315)
Alright.

Kim Jung Un (07:25.408)
What the heck who does that? All right black listeners

Theotokos Appreciator (07:30.842)
no...

Kim Jung Un (07:46.774)
Yeah, for breakfast?

Mr. Borkavich (07:50.306)
Gosh. All right, boys. Well, you're ready to get some pilgrim progress here?

Kim Jung Un (07:50.606)
Mmm.

Kim Jung Un (07:59.619)
We actually should do an episode on the Pilgrim's Progress, probably.

Mr. Borkavich (08:02.306)
That's not what this is. I was just, was, I was using word play, Taylor. You're like, Oh boy, John Bunyan? No, do your own episode. Also listener, if you're like, that's interesting. I feel like John's done a lot of episodes lately. I've noticed, I've noticed the same listener.

Kim Jung Un (08:07.692)
Well.

That book!

Kim Jung Un (08:15.553)
All right.

Kim Jung Un (08:22.002)
my... Dude... Listen, I'm almost... I go... I'm going to Boston and then I'm coming back and I'm done traveling.

Theotokos Appreciator (08:24.107)
Mr. Borkavich (08:32.32)
It's alright, it's alright, hey, hey, we're all just having a good time. Honestly, today I felt like a historian, bro. I was cracking open the books. I was feeling it. So.

Kim Jung Un (08:40.492)
I love it. Is there anybody I need to say hi to at ETS, by the way? I hope Lightheart. I hope Lightheart's there.

Theotokos Appreciator (08:50.123)
we had to ask you about what this, we don't know what this is, bro.

Kim Jung Un (08:53.678)
it's not Baptist at all. It's Evangelical Theological Society.

Mr. Borkavich (08:53.696)
Yeah, you don't know your Baptist lingo, your little acronym. Yikes.

Theotokos Appreciator (09:01.727)
Yeah, I don't know.

Mr. Borkavich (09:01.901)
so it's kind of like closet Baptists.

Kim Jung Un (09:04.566)
Nope, not even close. Literally everybody in academia, like conservative theological academia is going to be there.

Mr. Borkavich (09:12.93)
Okay.

Theotokos Appreciator (09:13.259)
Well, I already told you in private, but I'll tell you on air. If you do see light heart, get them on the pod.

Mr. Borkavich (09:18.988)
There we go.

Kim Jung Un (09:19.5)
I'll beg him, I'll beg him.

Theotokos Appreciator (09:21.673)
Yep. Sorry my friend Thomas keeps emailing you asking you to talk about Constantine.

Mr. Borkavich (09:22.274)
Do it. Do it.

Kim Jung Un (09:24.184)
Do you think?

You think if I bring up the fact that I found his first published works was the Catechism of the New Age, his little inspection on D &D. If I bring that up, that'll get me in.

Theotokos Appreciator (09:37.195)
That'd be cool.

Mr. Borkavich (09:37.41)
Tell him that we really talked it up, because we were kind of fanboying on it. We were like, this guy's, he knows what he's talking about. All right.

Kim Jung Un (09:41.836)
We actually were, we were really excited to find that. All right, sorry, I interrupted. Give us the cold open, frosty.

Mr. Borkavich (09:50.241)
Yeah, also guys, you probably haven't heard any haikus in a while. It's because we haven't gotten any new supporters for I Is A Coffee. And, here's the thing. We never take our supporters for granted. That's actually why we don't stop talking about them. So if you would like to be always talked about, you should be a supporter so we can, we can pay for our editing.

Theotokos Appreciator (09:57.281)
shade.

Kim Jung Un (10:12.632)
What's the Bernie Bernie Sanders meme I'm once again asking for your help

Theotokos Appreciator (10:17.321)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (10:20.226)
That's literally it. That's literally it. I'm once again, begging.

Theotokos Appreciator (10:24.363)
That in the the uh, Jeb Bush, please clap.

Mr. Borkavich (10:28.098)
Please clap, please, please buy me a coffee. All right, but anyways, okay, let's get to Pilgrimmen, guys. We gotta get you guys in the Thanksgiving spirit. Here we go. Imagine this, imagine this. You're in Europe in the early years of the Reformation. You, your family, and most importantly, your church have decided after much prayer and consideration to join the legions of Protestants leaving the Catholic Church behind.

Kim Jung Un (10:28.462)
Please clap. Yeah, hey, yeah, Pete, buy us a coffee.

Mr. Borkavich (10:58.562)
Unfortunately, you have a healthy relationship with the local magistrate who opts not to bring any harsh punishment down on you right away, but they make it very abundantly clear. You are no longer welcome here as a citizen. You need to leave. So now after your family has invested generations of heritage, hard work, taxes into this community, you are a refugee in your own homeland.

To abandon the rule of the Roman Catholic Church meant in some areas to lose your civil rights and your property, forced into a state of exile. Time to hit the road. But where shall we go? You see, the experience of exiles in the Reformation was widely varied. There were Italian-speaking Protestants and German-speaking Protestant Zurich that were met with suspicion and eventually banished after they failed to assimilate to the new culture.

On the other hand, were Dutch Protestant exiles that found a safe haven with the French Calvinists. English exiles had a really hard time, not just because the violent persecution that Protestants faced under Queen Mary, but also because of the cultural conflict that resulted when the exiles that originally left came back home and felt like they were superior to the OG Protestants. Things were messy. Things were hard for Protestants in exile.

But maybe there was another way. Or another place. A place that smells like turkey and apple pie.

Theotokos Appreciator (12:33.579)
Hmm

Kim Jung Un (12:33.966)
We're going to America. Is that the song?

Mr. Borkavich (12:36.862)
And I'm proud to be an American. All right. So there we go. Reasonably, this idea suddenly came up. What if we just tried settling that big new chunk of land where all the Spaniards are chilling, right? So this was basically it. This was a, and I have to say I was heavily, heavily helped. And I want to get more in the habit of doing this.

of shouting out our sources. Alec Ryrie, the book Protestants, huge freaking help and also just a banger of a book. Thank you to Pastor Josh Palmer for recommending this to me. If you're listening, you better be listening. You're supposed to be supporting our show.

Kim Jung Un (13:21.134)
Pastor Josh has way more important things to do.

Mr. Borkavich (13:25.004)
Shut your dirty mouth. He's like, no, I'd love to learn all that stuff for the 20th time. Yeah. So, yeah, no, he's a genius. He's a super genius. But Alec Ryrie in his book, I'm going to read so many of his quotes because he has just so many banger quotes that I'm going to read from.

Theotokos Appreciator (13:26.987)
Hmm

Theotokos Appreciator (13:33.159)
Yeah, yeah.

Kim Jung Un (13:35.906)
And here are three morons talking about it.

Theotokos Appreciator (13:42.059)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (13:49.675)
So the story of the pilgrims really starts with the story, as we mentioned, of Protestants living in exile. Because the Reformation was such a big upheaval and such a huge shift in not just the religious landscape, but the political landscape, there were so many Protestants in exile from their homelands. Here's a quote.

we are talking about more than a million souls. The biggest single exodus came at the end of the period where the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 scattered about 400,000 French Protestants across Europe and beyond. Hundreds of thousands were also displaced during the Thirty Years' War. Earlier, between 1550 and 1600, England hosted perhaps 50,000 Protestant refugees, mostly French and Dutch.

The numbers who crossed the oceans were again smaller but noticeable, which of course leads us to the Pilgrims who will settle in New England in this time.

Kim Jung Un (14:58.988)
Which country did the pilgrims come from?

Theotokos Appreciator (14:59.819)
Comfort.

Mr. Borkavich (15:03.084)
What's that? They were English.

Theotokos Appreciator (15:03.307)
England but weren't they weren't they weren't they separatists from the Church of England though?

Kim Jung Un (15:04.622)
Which? Oh, yeah, because this.

Mr. Borkavich (15:11.97)
yes, they were, my friend. Yes. So they were, and we'll get into this, but they were an interesting batch. And so, a really, if you guys on Church History for Chumps, you guys should go back and listen to our episode 63 that we did with our good friend, because that was one of our favorite episodes that we've done, of course, with our good friend, Ben Lansing from Our Church Speaks. But we talk about King Charles I and the English Civil War and

Theotokos Appreciator (15:27.243)
Yes, such a banger episode.

Mr. Borkavich (15:41.591)
Basically how it was a civil war of Protestants versus Protestants, which always kind of sucks, but we'll get into that. So before the Thanksgiving story of pilgrims and Indians that we know so well, there were proto-pilgrims in the New World. That's a term that I coined, so TM on that. The first Protestants to ever settle in the Americas were actually not in the United States, or what we would call the United States. The first Protestants to settle in the Americas, can you guys guess where it was?

Kim Jung Un (16:11.744)
New England.

Mr. Borkavich (16:13.642)
No, I literally said it was not the United States.

Kim Jung Un (16:16.014)
Florida.

Theotokos Appreciator (16:17.427)
In the Americas. First presence in the Americas.

Mr. Borkavich (16:18.812)
Yes, in the Americas.

Kim Jung Un (16:20.686)
the Caribbean's.

Theotokos Appreciator (16:24.171)
I would have guessed more like Mexico or in, yeah, Mexico.

Mr. Borkavich (16:31.37)
Okay, Tommy was closer. It was Brazil. It was in Brazil. So it was in Guanabara Bay where Nicolas Durand, so he's gonna get a, he's gonna start a settlement under King's orders. He's a French dude. He's gonna send a bunch of folks out to try to compete basically with the Spanish and Portuguese colonies that were already in future Latin America.

Kim Jung Un (16:31.478)
I say, I say Caribbeans.

Kim Jung Un (16:35.959)
What?

Mr. Borkavich (16:57.978)
He brings out several hundred settlers and he's like, these guys don't have any work ethic. So he goes back to France and he gets a bunch of Calvinists because he's like, these guys are gonna get stuff going. And then the Calvinists show up and they just start causing problems because they just start arguing with all of the French Catholics about whether the Eucharist should be celebrated the Catholic way or the Calvinist way.

Kim Jung Un (17:24.834)
Wow.

Mr. Borkavich (17:24.962)
And so they get shipped back.

Kim Jung Un (17:27.508)
No way. All right, you guys are too problematic.

Mr. Borkavich (17:30.082)
It's literally like, like you guys suck dude, I thought you were...

Theotokos Appreciator (17:32.799)
The original reformed pub.

Kim Jung Un (17:35.544)
Dude, how bad do they have to be to get over there, be doing good work and be like, not worth it. We'll keep it with the Catholics.

Mr. Borkavich (17:42.445)
They're like, no, that's the thing. It said they were more obsessed with theological purity than of building the settlement. So they just showed up and they were like, this is how you're practicing the Eucharist. And that's all they did, which I think is so funny. it's so good. And then like three years later, the whole colony got conquered by the Portuguese. know, nothing lost, nothing gained.

Kim Jung Un (17:51.713)
Hmm

Kim Jung Un (18:08.044)
Hmm God's sovereign God's sovereign hand protecting his own from the Portuguese

Mr. Borkavich (18:14.644)
I guess. Two other attempts at colonizing occurred by French Protestants. One landed in South Carolina. The other one was off the coast of Florida. The former was too small to survive and abandoned back to Europe. And the latter was destroyed by the Spanish who suck because the Spanish Catholics just always bout that life, bro. Always, always bout that life.

Kim Jung Un (18:41.774)
Mmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (18:41.867)
haha

Mr. Borkavich (18:44.674)
But enough with all these French losers, let's get to the real story of the- let's get to the real hero of the story, the English, sort of. Okay, so, as I alluded to earlier- hold on, got years coming up- we're in the, latter- the mid to late 1500s is where we're at. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (18:53.836)
What year is it?

Okay.

Kim Jung Un (19:05.302)
Okay, so, well, I'm just wondering where this sits with Toleration Act. so, but it's still, it's still 100, it sounds like it's 100 years off. there's, culture is still very much probably anti-Protestant.

Mr. Borkavich (19:10.391)
that's interesting. I'll let you get to that.

Mr. Borkavich (19:15.83)
Okay.

Mr. Borkavich (19:20.258)
Okay, okay. All right, so as I mentioned earlier, episode 63 of Church History for Chumps, not all was great for the English Protestants, because what had happened was, essentially, Queen Mary, also known as Bloody Mary, is going to reinstate Catholic rule in England and bring about a massive wave of persecution against the Protestants.

So what happens? A ton of Protestants are gonna freakin' jump ship and they're gonna go to Europe and they're gonna chill there and they're gonna wait until the coast is clear. And then eventually the coast will be clear. Yeah. Am I breaking up, guys?

Theotokos Appreciator (19:57.567)
You said go to Europe? that what? Okay. No, I just, I wasn't following your story. So there's, when you said these are, these are Protestants living in England, when you said they go to Europe, meaning they're going to other nations. Okay, okay. Okay, okay, cool.

Mr. Borkavich (20:12.607)
I'm sorry, like continental Europe, yeah. Like they're going to France and the Netherlands and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, sorry, that was a little confusing.

Kim Jung Un (20:19.008)
and grease where the yogurt flows like water.

Theotokos Appreciator (20:22.219)
that's a good reference, dude. Thank you, Germany.

Mr. Borkavich (20:26.25)
What is that even? All right, I'm not gonna worry about that.

Kim Jung Un (20:29.134)
YouTube!

Mr. Borkavich (20:32.674)
All right, so, so you've got a bunch of English transplants essentially in continental Europe who are kind of holding tight until England stops deciding to kill all the Protestants. Eventually England is going to flip back and it's going to become more favorable towards Protestantism. But the problem is that the English Protestants who were hanging out in continental Europe are going to come back.

And they're going to see the Protestantism in England, which as we kind of imagine it is Anglicanism. It's Protestant and it's certainly not like, you know, popery, but they also like images and high church liturgy and wearing shiny clothes and...

Kim Jung Un (21:22.732)
Yeah, they're far from like the reformed like I preach in all black. No one better smile and don't don't you dare look at a picture Yeah

Mr. Borkavich (21:28.214)
This is not the Reformation, absolutely. This is not the Reformation that they were comfortable with. And it got to the point, which again, we covered in that last episode where there was literal violence between Protestants because they thought that the King who represented the English Protestant tradition was basically just like a crypto Catholic.

And so, and this is where the Puritans come, the Puritans saying like they believed in the purer form of both the faith and of the Protestant Reformation. And so, yeah, you've got these Puritans who had been hanging out in, you know, the Netherlands and France with all these Calvinists, and then they came back and they were like, what are these freaking weirdos doing? This isn't Protestantism. These guys just look like weirdo Catholics. And

So the Puritans are essentially going to be the ones who stay in England and they're going to say, look, this kind of sucks, but I believe that we can fix this. I believe that if we stick around, we can push hopefully all of this Anglican weirdo stuff out of the way and we can get to a real Protestant representation that is good. And then there were the separatists and the separatists were like, not interested. England is bunk.

There is no winning this. The only chance we have is once again to go back to continental Europe and just hide out and not not play around with this anymore because this is this is busted. So here's another quote from Ryrie. He says England's more scrupulous Calvinists found that their consciences gagged at the thought of submitting to the half reformed English church. Most of them, however, were also deeply committed to the ideal.

of a single national church with no appetite for forming dissident sects. The only way to avoid being contaminated by the English Church's corruptions while not violating its unity was to leave England altogether. So from the 1580s on, restless English Protestants began to trickle abroad, chiefly to the newly liberated Netherlands.

Mr. Borkavich (23:43.863)
Although tens of thousands of them eventually settled there, they were, like all expatriates, conscious of belonging in neither one place nor the other. In the second decade of the 17th century, when members of the English community at Leaden set their sights on America, they did so in order to assert that they were English. Their leader, Edward Winslow, lamented how grievous it was to live from under the protection of the state of England,

how like we were to lose our language and our name of English. In America, the separatists might live under English sovereignty, but without having to conform to the English church.

Theotokos Appreciator (24:24.605)
like stay English but be different. Yeah. That makes sense.

Mr. Borkavich (24:27.4)
Exactly, exactly. Because to them, going back to England meant being a half-reformed Christian, and staying in the Netherlands meant being reformed, but having to talk like a dork. So...

Kim Jung Un (24:42.67)
I can't tell if I... So one, obviously the Puritans really, like we owe a lot to them for our theological heritage. Like they landed on a lot of right things. But I can't tell if these people are just being stubborn or if they're being convictional. You know?

Theotokos Appreciator (25:00.735)
Well, we've talked about the Puritans before. The catch-all phrase Puritans is sometimes unhelpful because there's so many different variations of people that fall under the label Puritans. And you've got some Puritans that are really helpful and some that really aren't.

Mr. Borkavich (25:10.722)
It gets real broad over time.

Kim Jung Un (25:24.472)
and I've heard Martin Lloyd Jones called the last Puritan. like I, I agree that it's probably too broad of a label, but then just our little group here that can't seem to find a home. I don't

Maybe we're all too ecumenical here, but like, I'd be like, all right, I guess I worship. I guess I worship at Anglican church now. I don't know.

Mr. Borkavich (25:46.411)
I mean

Mr. Borkavich (25:50.135)
Here's the thing, I think I'm less sympathetic simply because of the fact that like they were so opposed to Anglicanism they literally overthrew parliament and like cut their king's head off so I'm like and cancel I mean come on bro that's that's those are those are three those are three of the things in which the Lord does not delight

Theotokos Appreciator (26:02.365)
and canceled Christmas.

Kim Jung Un (26:11.246)
Yeah, it makes me wonder how many worldly motives were being served here disguised as conviction.

Theotokos Appreciator (26:21.599)
That episode that we did with Ben was really eye-opening for me.

Mr. Borkavich (26:21.642)
I mean, it could be both.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (26:25.142)
then maybe I'll need to go back and listen to it. You know what? I was going through our episode history. That's like the last episode before Taylor, I think.

Mr. Borkavich (26:32.096)
Yeah, we call those the good old days, man. All right, back to the goods here.

Theotokos Appreciator (26:32.202)
You might be right.

Kim Jung Un (26:34.641)
Okay. All right.

Theotokos Appreciator (26:39.307)
That would have been a funny time to log off just for the joke. Just like no word, just like gone.

Mr. Borkavich (26:44.544)
gone man so petty taking his ball home taking my history home all right so the english as we said the english separatists or the specifically the ones from the netherlands called the the laden or the laden separatists they wanted a place where they could live under the conviction of their reforms tradition but they also hated the idea of losing their english heritage along the way and i guess also

Kim Jung Un (26:46.254)
You

Mr. Borkavich (27:14.09)
A couple other sources I read said that economically, the Netherlands was not very friendly for them. It was kind of hard to afford living there. And I think they found the Dutch too liberal, which again, just checks out with them being Puritan sub genres of being like, gosh, these guys wear shorts and walk around with their wooden shoes. I don't know.

Kim Jung Un (27:38.03)
night.

Mr. Borkavich (27:39.779)
So, uh, so the new world suddenly carried a huge incentive for them as a place where they could practice religious freedom while maintaining the crumpet munching tea sipping culture that they loved so much. Uh, fortunately for them, I had a lot of fun with this episode. Uh, so fortunately for them, there wasn't out. Jamestown had just been established in 1607 by English settlers. And these were not Jamestown settlers were not.

Kim Jung Un (27:52.27)
Dude, everybody is catching hands from you tonight. my gosh.

Mr. Borkavich (28:09.634)
associated with this religious cause. were simply English dudes looking for to start colonizing, looking for resources, economic gain, etc. But the Leaden separatists and the rest of the separatists involved saw this as basically proof of concept that the English have a place in this new world. And so in 1620, the Leaden separatists are going to sail to England from Holland in the boat called the Speedwell.

and then depart for the new world in the Mayflower.

Kim Jung Un (28:44.012)
Yeah!

Mr. Borkavich (28:45.974)
Such begins the expedition to end all expeditions, the journey of the Mayflower, full of English separatists looking to set aside a new world for themselves to worship freely and to grow their community. The voyage to England was incredibly difficult. It took 66 days, most of which they were going against the wind. So just very challenging going against the wind in the Atlantic Ocean.

Theotokos Appreciator (29:09.973)
tough.

Mr. Borkavich (29:14.178)
There was a baby that was born on board that was named Oceannus, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah, it's actually a pretty solid name. Only one of the 102 would die along the journey, which is pretty impressive.

Theotokos Appreciator (29:19.381)
That's sick. Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (29:28.812)
That's like really good. That guy, he, what, did they say what he died from?

Mr. Borkavich (29:33.995)
I think he, was, he got sick. He got sick and didn't get back. Yeah. It honestly might've been, I think it was some kind of fever, but yeah, was pretty, pretty bad. Significant figures on the book included William Bradford, who would be the first ever governor of the colony and a fellow named William Brewster, who would kind of be like the senior church elder figure of this.

Theotokos Appreciator (29:35.455)
dysentery.

Mr. Borkavich (29:58.817)
So of course, very, very difficult. There's so many myths and stories and mythologies around this trip because of course this is seen as the big, like the primordial American voyage. Mr. Bradford, William Bradford is gonna write upon seeing the land that they were like finally getting close. He wrote, being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven.

who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof.

Theotokos Appreciator (30:37.163)
How many people did you say were on the boat?

Mr. Borkavich (30:38.838)
There were 102.

Theotokos Appreciator (30:42.197)
Wow. You know what's crazy is I have had numerous times in my life where I've talked to people who are directly descended from somebody who's on the Mayflower, which is crazy. know, like it's, really is. I think it is not just because of the mythology, but it just truly was kind of like the kernel of the American

Mr. Borkavich (30:54.209)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (31:12.319)
people. Because a lot of people a lot of people can actually trace themselves to the Mayflower in their family lineage, which is pretty cool.

Mr. Borkavich (31:13.459)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (31:20.096)
Yeah, no, no, no, for sure. So they will name the new settlement Plymouth, which is actually named after the port that they departed from back in England. So they were kind of like, you know, where we depart from is kind of a sign of, you know, we're bringing home with us, essentially. It's kind of the spirit involved here. Now, the question that I'm sure is on everyone's mind.

This is the, was Peter crucified upside down equivalent of this episode. Did they really have a Thanksgiving meal with the Native Americans there? Hmm. What do think, Taylor?

Theotokos Appreciator (31:55.307)
Hmm

Kim Jung Un (32:02.99)
Well you already said it's the equivalent of Peter being crucified upside down, so I'm gonna say no. AHHHH

Mr. Borkavich (32:08.77)
Yes, they did. That's right. You hid out the I had a secret reverse card under my sleeve. Yeah, the pilgrims of the Plymouth colony in today's Massachusetts did share a meal with the Wampanoag Indians in the autumn of 1621. The details were uncertain.

They know that it lasted for four days, so it was a heck of a feast. They probably didn't have turkey or stuffing. Like they probably had what was much more abundant in the crops they had there. But, yeah, yeah, probably nothing that interesting. They didn't have, you know, green bean casserole. But yeah, so they did. And it was meant to be kind of a show of solidarity between the two because the Native Americans were actually very, very helpful.

Kim Jung Un (32:42.69)
maze and trout and like mushrooms. Right.

Mr. Borkavich (33:00.934)
in helping the new settlers build and farm and just kind of get accustomed to the new land. Another significant thing about when they got there was that they penned the Mayflower Compact, which was the first agreement of self-government in the new Plymouth colony. The main reason for it I read was essentially they had received a patent from England before going to the New World, allowing for settlement in Virginia.

where Jamestown was, but when they landed on the coast, they were several hundred miles north. And so there were kind of these murmurings on the boat of like, well, if I don't have to follow this patent, then I might just do whatever, because there's no law telling me that I can't. And so they basically wrote up a compact, which is very straightforward and essentially says, we're going to work together and, you know, abide by laws and constitutions that we

collectively see fit. Like we're not just gonna do whatever we want here. We're not gonna... Ooh, well, let's see. I will read it right now, because it's pretty short. Here we go. In the name of God, amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the faith.

Theotokos Appreciator (34:03.083)
As I mentioned the Ten Commandments.

Mr. Borkavich (34:24.064)
Having undertaken for the glory of God, an advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid. And by virtue, hereof do enact, constitute, and frame

such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submissions and obedience." So yeah, lots of Christian language for sure. I mean, these were...

Theotokos Appreciator (35:10.133)
Was that just like, that sounded like a preface to something like, to more that was coming.

Mr. Borkavich (35:14.698)
I think there's like two lines after that and then it's just signatures. But also I don't think the original document is survived. But I really think it's pretty brief. I think it's just about that.

Theotokos Appreciator (35:19.454)
yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (35:34.573)
Because yeah, it's like right after that part, it says, in witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November in the reign of our sovereign Lord King James of England, France and Ireland, Anno Domini 1620 and then signatures. So yeah, the basic premise is like we agree that we will establish laws that we will treat each other Christianly, that we will govern each other and, you know, submit to each other.

Theotokos Appreciator (35:51.307)
All right.

Theotokos Appreciator (36:03.317)
Which they had to do, from what I remember, I think they struggled really hard in some of the winters. I think they actually dealt with a little bit of cannibalism, if I remember correctly. Or maybe not murderous cannibalism, yeah, I don't know if there's a different word for that. If you're eating dead bodies, digging them up to try to survive. I think they had to deal with a little bit of that.

Mr. Borkavich (36:19.5)
like survival cannibalism.

Theotokos Appreciator (36:31.807)
lot of sickness like that boat ride was definitely not the hardest part. Like I think it was establishing their colony that was really difficult.

Mr. Borkavich (36:35.809)
Yeah.

Yeah, sadly, and this is perfect timing for that, within a year of getting established, about half of the settlers are actually gonna die, mostly due to disease and the conditions of just where they're at. I mean, you gotta think, they're not used to a New England winter, even being from England. That's totally foreign experience for them.

Theotokos Appreciator (36:49.567)
That's crazy,

Kim Jung Un (36:49.913)
Jeez

Theotokos Appreciator (36:56.885)
do that

Theotokos Appreciator (37:05.193)
Mm-hmm. Dude, that, I don't know, is just in vivid perspective for me, because that's like, the amount of people on the boat is like about the size of like my church. And like, I love those people. And we haven't had the opportunity to go on a two-month boat ride together either to like, you know, gain even more camaraderie. I can't imagine if in a year, half of the people in my church were dead. I mean, and that's...

Mr. Borkavich (37:15.426)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (37:32.501)
That's what this is too. This isn't just a bunch of people on a cruise ship together either. Like this is a church. This is a church of people that traveled across the ocean together. Like that would be horrible.

Mr. Borkavich (37:37.41)
Mmm.

Mr. Borkavich (37:43.712)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Theotokos Appreciator (37:45.995)
Man.

Kim Jung Un (37:46.67)
Tchoo.

Mr. Borkavich (37:47.923)
let's see. So the community is going to remain relatively small as we can imagine. Like I said, people are going to die in droves in the first year. the good news is in 1630, John Winthrop is going to lead a fleet of over a thousand settlers from England who are also going to settle in Massachusetts. And so an interesting thing to consider here, and this is something that I think we don't often.

think about when it comes to the story of the Pilgrims is that most of them were not there, were not assuming they would be there long term. A lot of them will go back and not just because things aren't working out great. A lot of them are like, no, we just want to, we just want to go back because we want to go back to England. Like England is our home. And so something that Rari points out that I think is really interesting is essentially that

The Puritans and the Pilgrims heard about what was happening in continental Europe with the Thirty Years War, like all this awful violence that was happening between the Catholics and Protestants, and they were basically like, eventually the same thing is going to happen in England because there's a ton of religious turmoil there too. And obviously the Thirty Year War is God's judgment on heretics, and eventually God's judgment will come upon those awful Anglicans. So...

It's great that we're here, but we don't need to go, but eventually we want to go back. Like once things get really, will get really good for us, then eventually we'll go back. And so I'll read it from Ryrie again. says, in other words, their project was an inherently temporary one. Like all exiles, they hoped to return and return they did. It is not part of America's founding myth, but we now know the sheer scale of the Eastward journeying in the decades after 1640.

England's religious politics suddenly changed that year and the religious winds blowing across the Atlantic shifted too. Literal winds helped. The eastward journey was far easier, often lasting less than four weeks. Between 1640 and 1690, more subjects returned from New England than embarked for it. More than a third of the Protestant ministers who had traveled west in the 1630s returned in the 1640s.

Mr. Borkavich (40:10.58)
Almost half of the men who graduated from Harvard College in the 1640s and 50s subsequently returned to England. After 1640, the price of land in the colony crashed. Those who remained lambasted the returnees as deserters. But from old England's perspective, it was the stayers who seemed perverse. So, yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (40:33.539)
To me that seems like if it required uprooting my whole family and going on a two month boat ride if I do that once that's my last time dude I'm not going back. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (40:41.41)
Yeah, we're gonna stick around. It's like the Oregon Trail, man. Like, I'm not getting back on the wagon. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I get that.

Theotokos Appreciator (40:47.679)
No.

Kim Jung Un (40:49.708)
Well, it's so interesting to think that because I'm with Tommy 100%. Like, I think we just sort of have been raised and taught through elementary school that like when you made the journey you were there. It's so crazy to think, well, why don't we just go live in the new world and wait for all this to settle down? And then we'll go back. Yeah, we'll sacrifice everything to live over there for a little while. And then everything we build will just abandon.

Mr. Borkavich (41:03.242)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (41:09.216)
And then we'll go back.

Mr. Borkavich (41:15.586)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Another thing I found really interesting, and we'll get into this just a little bit. So a question that most of us have when we think about what it was like for the settlers is immediately what their interaction was with the natives who were there. And of course, we did get into the beginning of how there was some like really positive, like friendly interactions and agreements. But one thing that

Kim Jung Un (41:19.893)
Hey, that's wild.

Mr. Borkavich (41:48.643)
I read about was that when the pilgrims settled in Massachusetts, the settlers found a quote, a miraculous plague whereby a great part of the country is left void of inhabitants. So essentially the presence of the Spanish and the French throughout different areas, vast areas of the new world had basically brought about disease that had spread so significantly that even the land that they had just arrived at

was partially vacant because of how many people had died because of their predecessors who had gone there. And so like, yeah, one of the things that probably made kind of keeping peace treaties a little early in the beginning was that the Native Americans had basically like been fighting off a pestilence. Like there'd been like a plague ravaging them.

Kim Jung Un (42:41.376)
Yeah. For a while, right?

Mr. Borkavich (42:44.554)
Yeah, yeah, I want to say for decades probably, which is awful.

Kim Jung Un (42:47.022)
That's nuts.

I had heard about that. had heard that millions, is the estimate, died of Native Americans. Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (42:55.346)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's real real bad One thing that I thought was really interesting was Protestants prided themselves. This is one thing that comes up a lot in these stories is Protestants pride themselves in doing X because they know Catholics do Y so one thing is They're like, well, we know the Spanish Catholics are like

Theotokos Appreciator (43:13.867)
Hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (43:19.82)
beating the heck out of these poor Native Americans. They're killing and taking all of their stuff. They're like, we're not gonna do any of that. They're like, the Protestants, when they got to the New World, they were like, there is more than enough lands to share. We would love to be able to peacefully coexist. And there's writings from the early pilgrims that are acknowledging that the Native Americans were the rightful owners of the land, which again, makes sense that they were like,

Of course we're not gonna stay here forever, we eventually want to go back, because this is their land, so we don't need to take from them forcefully, because again...

Kim Jung Un (43:52.366)
Mmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (43:56.725)
They're just like, we like this because these guys don't know about the Catholic Church and they're not going to tell us. They're not going to tell on us.

Mr. Borkavich (44:01.165)
Dude, dude, I'm not even joking. Like one of the things that I read was, so mission work is a very interesting topic because mission work starts really slowly. does not, like they do not get there and immediately think about missions, which again makes sense. They show up and half their population dies of scurvy and stuff like that. So they've got some survival instincts to take care of first.

Theotokos Appreciator (44:22.537)
Right. You know...

It's interesting the different theological perspectives that come across the water at different times. I was trying to look up whether or not these guys, like what their kind of eschatological vision was, because I've read, I wish I could remember who it was. It wasn't in these early waves, but like maybe a little later on in history, you have people coming over from England, reform types.

Mr. Borkavich (44:40.266)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (44:55.947)
who are, you they're Calvinistic, but they're really post-millennial. And it's a very, very different post-millennialism than what we would call post-millennialism today. Their post-millennialism was like a very like nearsighted, triumphalistic, like America is the New Jerusalem. Like, and I was reading, I was reading like a

Mr. Borkavich (45:00.598)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (45:26.539)
I'm gonna have to try to find it and maybe I can post it on our socials, but it was like a journal entry or a writing from a Calvinistic church leader, I think, coming over to the Americas a little later on. And it's like, whoa, like this is a really interesting, they had a very, like they had a plan, you know, we're coming over here because this is going to be like Zion, essentially. And it says that,

These guys who showed up in Plymouth, these separatists, they were a little bit more of the kind of classic, all millennial ilk. So they may not have had that sort of like, we got to show up and like get to work kind of. And it makes sense to even if they had, the fact is that they were just trying to preserve their niche essentially. And they felt like they couldn't do it in England.

Mr. Borkavich (46:20.682)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a great, another great quote, like I said, I'm quoting from this dude left and right. But the, there's a lot that goes into like what informs it. So what we were talking about earlier, there were Protestants who were inspired to evangelize, strictly to keep them from becoming Catholic, if the Catholics should settle later. So that was definitely a motivation.

in terms of like the mission hermeneutics, one thing that Riri talks about is that Lutherans, and this I think is a hermeneutic that I don't think lasted much longer, I think it kind of died out, but they basically believed that you are not supposed to preach the gospel outside of your nation and tribe, and their understanding of doing that is the call

to preach the Great Commission was not a call to every believer, it was a call to the apostles. And that's why, historically, the apostles did preach to every tribe and nation. So if a tribe has accepted Christ, then they already believe. And if they rejected Christ, then they are currently receiving the judgment of what unbelief has done. But it's not our job to bring the gospel to them again, like they're under judgment.

Theotokos Appreciator (47:47.019)
It's like an extreme nationalist church kind of position.

Mr. Borkavich (47:50.698)
Yeah, and like...

Kim Jung Un (47:51.875)
That's interesting. That theological line of thinking will move down and affect Baptists as well. I think I mentioned it on my Isaac McCoy episode, but there's anti-mission Baptists that kind of have that same thought of, can, and in England, even where they're...

Mr. Borkavich (47:59.6)
Mm, yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (48:05.876)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (48:13.73)
where they're from, it will evolve to just straight up anti-immissions. You don't evangelize the lost. It would turn into you can warn them. So I wonder if those early Lutheran settlers thought that you could warn, but you cannot invite.

Mr. Borkavich (48:28.502)
Yeah. I mean, like, well, I won't, I won't make that comparison because that may be a bad faith comparison. was going to speak about something. Nevermind. but yeah, we're trying, bro. I'm trying. yeah, but no, the, the, one of the things, and this is a very common thing that we talked about a little bit with the Isaac McCoy thing, which is, one of the mentalities that went into mission work, was

Theotokos Appreciator (48:38.915)
Hey, you're growing! We'd to see it!

Kim Jung Un (48:40.802)
Hey.

Mr. Borkavich (48:57.984)
when you interact with an uncivilized people group, the better strategy is to civilize them first and then Christianize them after the fact, which you understand where the logic comes from, but in practicality, it doesn't always work great. And here's Alec speaking about that. He's speaking about them interacting with like the Native Americans. And he says, it was a familiar scenario for them because on Europe's fringes,

Protestant states were bumping up against peoples whom they saw as barbarians. The Samy of Northern Scandinavia, the Highland Scots, the Irish. Protestant states generally saw civilizing these people as both a Christian duty and a political necessity. This meant persuading or coercing them to live in settled communities, teaching them civilized languages like English or Swedish, and settling civilized people among them to teach them by example. It did not work very well.

Such peoples could with effort be subdued, but not persuaded to love their subduers. Still, that experience did mean that New World settlers thought they knew how to deal with barbarous and unsettled peoples, civilized first, Christianized later. I mean, like, even if you guys listened to our last episode about John Chow, like, I think that we could all agree as Christians that providing

like civilization to an uncivil culture is not inherently a bad thing. But I do think that the way in which you do that is really pretty significant. I mean, you can definitely see how the fruit didn't always follow every time a Christian culture showed up and said, okay, well,

We're gonna stop speaking that uncivil language and speak English and we're gonna stop wearing these uncivil clothes and you know adopting these uncivil cultures like at a certain point it does kind of turn into erasure. There's a way to do it.

Kim Jung Un (51:03.854)
e-

Theotokos Appreciator (51:04.683)
I think that it's okay to be excited about Western civilization and see the good that can come with it, but I think where certain missions, movements have gone wrong or national movements have gone wrong have been where we forget like what is the source of any goodness that we find in Western civilization? it's the gospel.

Mr. Borkavich (51:29.408)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (51:30.877)
It's a cart before the horse situation. Like I'm thinking about, I've got a friend who grew up in the church that I grew up at and she's been a missionary in like jungles of New Zealand for a long time, like, but maybe close to 20 years now. And she would come back and tell stories about stuff like the one that always struck me is

that this tribe that she's ministered to for a long time, they had a practice of if a woman had a miscarriage, part of the, it was like super taboo and part of her punishment or way to ward off the spirits or something is she had to wear this dead baby on her back for basically until it rotted away, which of course caused horrible health problems and it usually ended up killing.

the mother as well. And so they're coming into this, you know, tribe with, you know, obviously they're bringing like, of course, like Western innovations with them. They're bringing, you know, they've got better access to, they have more knowledge of, you know, medical practices and stuff, but it's them like teaching these women about, you know, like the dignity of the body and the gospel.

that actually kind of reverses that practice, which of course like civilizes them. Like you're more civilized if you're not wearing dead babies on your back to ward off spirits. But the root of that was like, hey, like you don't need to wear a dead baby on your back to ward off the spirits. Like you can bury your baby in the ground and you can trust Jesus to protect you from evil spirits. it's like a totally different way to approach it.

Mr. Borkavich (53:05.538)
Mm-hmm.

Mr. Borkavich (53:10.858)
right.

Mr. Borkavich (53:22.114)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right.

Kim Jung Un (53:26.238)
It's, I almost wanna like throw out the accusation that I think anybody prioritizing civilizing first before the Christianizing, I just don't think they get it. Like religion is just like an opium of the people to them type thing. It's not, yeah, it's just a tool and.

Mr. Borkavich (53:43.276)
Mm-hmm.

Theotokos Appreciator (53:45.259)
It's just a tool.

Mr. Borkavich (53:46.728)
Well, it feels like works based salvation, right? It's like you'll get the gospel once you get your life together. Like that is works based salvation.

Kim Jung Un (53:54.831)
That's good. I don't even know if they cared that much, to be honest with they probably just thought if we can get these people to act like us, speak like us, talk like us, they'll just be allies with us and then their culture will be our culture.

Theotokos Appreciator (54:10.399)
I don't want to speak too much on like a... I haven't fully fleshed out this thought so I'll give it more thought later but... Yeah. I think that part of what leads to that is the hyper intellectualized reformed faith and I'm criticizing my own tradition here. But if your conception of the faith is there is like multiple articles that you need to

Mr. Borkavich (54:19.51)
love these.

Kim Jung Un (54:20.628)
I'm in danger.

Theotokos Appreciator (54:40.073)
get correct in your brain before it's possible for you to be saved, then yeah, like you do need to go into a tribal setting where these people, don't even have an alphabet. And it's like, well, of course they can't be saved because they don't have an alphabet. Like, how are they going to understand our systematic theology and our system of doctrine if they don't even know how to do math? Well, so we're going to have to educate them so that they can get saved. And that's not how the gospel works.

maturity, maturity, maturity works that way, you know, like, to be able to teach the whole council of scripture, like, yes, you do need an education. Like you do need to be able to, by education, I mean, like you need to be able to like, communicate, you know, in written language, you need to be able to deal with, you know, abstract concepts and things like that. But to, be able to understand like the God who made all of this sent his own son.

Kim Jung Un (55:10.443)
I see what you're saying.

Theotokos Appreciator (55:40.223)
die to save you and your people from demons, from your own sin, and from death. Like that can be communicated in the simplest of terms and that's the beauty of the gospel.

Mr. Borkavich (55:53.141)
Absolutely.

Kim Jung Un (55:53.175)
I think, I think, no, you're onto something there with that thought. I think if I could add to it, if you're soteriology or your theology of salvation, if you're soteriology involves tradition, you're probably wrong.

Theotokos Appreciator (56:12.447)
Meaning like you have to be in our tradition to be saved is like, is that what you mean?

Kim Jung Un (56:15.5)
Well, the value of tradition, passing down the rule of faith, those sorts of things. there's this discussion in mythology right now of how much tradition, to use that word, do you have to have? Because we received our Bible through tradition. We've received our understanding, our hermeneutics through tradition.

You have to have some tradition involved. But I don't think the tribes lady that is doing that horrible practice really needs to be walked through Heidelberg's catechism before you can tell her, hey, Jesus is going to protect you from those evil spirits. You just have to ask him and trust in him.

Mr. Borkavich (56:57.132)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (57:02.752)
Yeah, one of the best lines I ever heard from a, from a missionary, from a native person talking to a missionary, but it was the missionary who was talking to me saying this, is the missionary asked this native person, what is the biggest problem with the missionaries that come to your nation? And he said, the missionaries are really good at answering, at giving us

answers that no one is asking the question to. Like, they're providing us with information that no one is asking. And I think that's hitting the nail on the head. It's like, because here's the thing, like, and I don't want to get too loosey-goosey, but it's like, if I have the privilege of bringing about faith in a new cultural context, then God willing, in a hundred years, they'll have their own tradition.

And that's not to say that it should be divorced from the vast 2000-year tradition that we currently have inherited, but, I mean, they don't necessarily need to, like you said, yeah, they don't need to be polo-wearing Southern Baptists to experience the goodness of God. In fact, they should be able to integrate it into their own culture.

Kim Jung Un (58:15.982)
right.

Mr. Borkavich (58:22.53)
in ways that not to in any way dilute the gospel but to enrich the culture and the way the gospel is intended to.

Kim Jung Un (58:30.446)
I would highly recommend everybody listening, and you too, also, read Richard Niebuhr's Christ in Culture, because it highlights five different views that people have of how Christ should interact with culture. And John, what you just articulated is the current IMB stance, the strategy that they have. Yeah, because you're a Southern Baptist.

Mr. Borkavich (58:54.55)
Let's go. Easy.

No, dang it.

Theotokos Appreciator (58:58.975)
Hahaha

Kim Jung Un (59:00.818)
You know what I find super interesting though is have you guys seen on Southeast Asia like dude I get these TikToks that pop up and it's all these different people they're singing like old gospel hymns and it is like now integrated into their tradition and I can speak from personal experience that

Mr. Borkavich (59:18.038)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (59:25.036)
We have a ton of people from our church that are from Southeast Asia. And when I play old country gospel hymns, they're like, yeah, like, this is what I like. So at some point, a missionary went over there with a hymnal and was like, you guys want to sing these songs? And they were like, yep. And they loved it.

Mr. Borkavich (59:37.494)
Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (59:45.863)
haha

Mr. Borkavich (59:46.305)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (59:47.04)
So I don't know. mean, the thing is, the thing is, is I'm guessing the missionary didn't go over there and say, you have to sing these songs, right? Like, this is the only way.

Mr. Borkavich (59:54.507)
Right. And sometimes it just happens like that, right? I mean, like, yeah, I totally get that.

Kim Jung Un (01:00:01.58)
Yeah, dude, have iconography on my desk. I think Brandy sent you a picture of my desk, didn't she? Yeah, that's a true church history guy's desk, isn't it?

Mr. Borkavich (01:00:08.108)
She did. yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:00:13.21)
I did, I scoffed at it, I'll be honest. But only out of jealousy, of course.

Kim Jung Un (01:00:15.724)
Yeah. Now people see it and think I'm becoming Orthodox or something. But point is, I'm taking from other traditions and other cultures and going, I like this. I like this.

Mr. Borkavich (01:00:21.728)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:00:26.752)
I will say that there were some really encouraging efforts of missionary work that happened. And again, it's worth saying, we did another episode, I can't think of the number right now, Taylor, if you want to look it up, on our boy David Brainerd. And Brainerd was part of the first great awakening. And this was kind of this first big explosion of missionary work that happened in the Americas. So before then, it's going to be a slow trickle.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:00:41.301)
That was very early.

Mr. Borkavich (01:00:55.522)
and then it's going to increase. there were some really cool endeavors. 32, thank you, Thomas. One is where in 1643, a man named Hyakums, who is part of the Wampanoag tribe, is going to approach this English settler named Thomas Mayhew, and he's just going to ask him for religious instruction. Such a strange way to start a conversation.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:00:58.315)
32

Mr. Borkavich (01:01:22.358)
Thomas Mayhew is going to basically sit down with him and teach him the gospel and the Christian faith. And Hiacums is going to convert to Christianity, and the two of them are going to spontaneously put together a mission in their little community. And it's going to be predominantly of the Wampanoag tribe. It's going to prosper under local.

Native leadership and it's going to be highly successful and virtually the entire population of those islands and of those tribes are going to be converted to Christianity. So and one thing I found that was super cool was that the first Bible to be published in all of North America was by the English missionary John Elliott who was going to

do the very freaking impressive feat of learning the Algonquin language. And he's going to write a Bible in the Native American indigenous language of the Algonquin people. And that's the first written Bible. shoot, that's a great question. me John Elliott, John Elliott. Man, I wrote it down.

Kim Jung Un (01:02:29.996)
What year?

Kim Jung Un (01:02:34.22)
What was his name? David Elliott?

Kim Jung Un (01:02:47.16)
Dang, this would have been like mid to late 1600s.

Mr. Borkavich (01:02:51.842)
I'm telling you. Yep.

Kim Jung Un (01:02:53.602)
Dang.

Mr. Borkavich (01:02:55.178)
Yes, 1663.

Kim Jung Un (01:02:59.224)
That's pretty cool. See, that's like real Christian stuff. Not what those papists were doing.

Mr. Borkavich (01:03:00.428)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. So there is some cool stuff. Yeah, dude. This is a... How much time do we have on this episode? How long have we been going? Where... Yeah, we got to wrap it up. Okay. I'm going to find a way to bring this rabbit hole in because there was something great that I wanted to read. But John Elliott is going to establish these... They're called prayer towns, I think. Praying towns.

Kim Jung Un (01:03:11.416)
or don't.

Mr. Borkavich (01:03:32.162)
And he's basically, he's kind of going to want to do what Isaac McCoy tries to do. He's going to make these little settlements that converted Native Americans can live in and kind of have their own little separate communities where they can learn how to be Christian and all that stuff. And, but the interesting thing is that they fall apart, not because of any inherent flaw to what they were doing, but because King Philip's war happens.

where a bunch of settlers and natives are gonna get into it. And it's just going to become abundantly clear to the Native Americans in New England that these people are not as peaceful as they kind of suggested that they were. And I think that's actually gonna be one of the biggest obstacles to mission work in the first couple generations is just that they don't really know where they stand or forever. I don't know.

Kim Jung Un (01:04:21.742)
You mean, you mean up until now? Yeah. Dude, oh my gosh. And what's so crazy, Isaac McCoy is like 200, 150 years after this, and it was still going on. And oh.

Mr. Borkavich (01:04:29.825)
Yeah.

Mr. Borkavich (01:04:35.936)
Yeah, well, because you can only ever do mission work within the context that you exist. And for the Native Americans, their context was that they felt like they were constantly being driven and they were being exploited and they were being taken advantage of. And they associated that with Christianity, unfortunately. So yeah, that's a tricky place to be.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:00.044)
Well, and this is why some people do make the argument that cultural Christianity, it's the anti-Constantine crowd. They don't like it. And I get it, but we don't have time to get into that whole thing. That is such a massively nuanced discussion. But it's very sad. It's very sad. But it sounds like a lot of genuine Christians came over on the Mayflower to like.

Mr. Borkavich (01:05:12.101)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (01:05:29.176)
help you wrap this up because we totally hijacked your little Pilgrim episode.

Mr. Borkavich (01:05:29.196)
Yeah.

No, no, you're good. You're good. yeah, this was there. were some definite Christians here. I think that over time, probably as as England became more staunchly Anglican and the Puritans realized that they were never really going to get a foothold. I think that's when the American settlers realized, we're probably here forever. And then, you know, like they have kids, they have grandkids, their their communities start to

grow and they kind of figured, well, maybe it's not going to be so bad to be here. Mission work is very complicated, but that's another episode. 1692, the Plymouth Colony will be absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony. colonies keep on kicking until they sign the papers and throw the tea in the water and you know the rest. Yeah.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:06:24.171)
That was great.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:26.282)
We do know the rest. Good job, John. I'll do the next episode or two.

Mr. Borkavich (01:06:28.108)
There we go.

Mr. Borkavich (01:06:32.512)
Alright, sounds good. This was fun. I like getting episodes. just, you guys know me. I feel like I need to, every time I write something down, I'm like, wait, what about this? What if I don't think about this? And then it's, it's all encompassing.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:34.038)
I got you, Boo Boo.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:06:46.527)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:46.766)
That's right. Tommy promised us at some point an episode of St. Boniface in December.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:06:55.529)
Yeah dude, I'm excited for it.

Kim Jung Un (01:06:57.9)
I want to hear about him chopping down the first Christmas tree.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:07:00.669)
I've been tossing around the idea of doing an episode on the Apocrypha, but every time I start working on it I'm just like, my gosh, this is like a bigger task than I thought. It's almost like we need to maybe do a little series on it. Because either that or it would just have to be a bird's eye view.

Mr. Borkavich (01:07:21.548)
Yeah, yeah. I think not even getting into the content of each book, but like just like the history of how people treated the Apocrypha and you know, what the Catholics did with it, what the Protestants did with it. That'd be pretty cool.

Kim Jung Un (01:07:23.872)
I still I St. Boniface

Theotokos Appreciator (01:07:35.85)
Yeah.

Kim Jung Un (01:07:36.381)
The Protestants, they apocry what?

Mr. Borkavich (01:07:39.519)
Exactly.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:07:39.605)
Well, that's interesting thing. So our church's confession, the Belgic confession, says that we can use the Apocrypha as like beneficial Christian literature. It's just not Holy Scripture. So something I've been wanting to do more research in just for myself too.

Mr. Borkavich (01:07:52.354)
Mm-hmm.

Kim Jung Un (01:08:00.642)
Bon Fs Bon Fs

Mr. Borkavich (01:08:02.594)
Alright, good stuff boys. Let's call it a night.

Theotokos Appreciator (01:08:07.883)
Alright, God bless you.

Kim Jung Un (01:08:08.61)
Bye bye!

Mr. Borkavich (01:08:09.837)
Thanks for listening.