You know that anti-American preacher we've heard so much about recently: Jeremiah Wright? Well, it turns out he's a Pilgrim. A capital P Pilgrim. His people came over on the Mayflower.
You know the history (or legend): English folks become unhappy with persecution by the Church of England, form their own religion and move to America, landing the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock.
Those original American patriots are the people who founded the church that ordained Jeremiah Wright.
See, the United Church of Christ traces its "congregational" roots back to the Mayflower.
Congregationalism was among the early births of democracy in the New World. Here's how one such congregation in Wright's denomination defines it:
The term applied to self-governing churches is "Congregationalism." They are so called because the local congregation is free to govern itself without interference from any other ecclesiastical body or authority. Membership in a Congregational church is based upon "owning the Covenant" which, in the Pilgrim instance, was first formulated in tiny Scrooby, England in 1606, as has been mentioned. This covenantal relationship among members continues to be the basis of membership in The Church of the Pilgrimage until this day.
Here's a reverse timeline:
-- Wright's denomination got its name in 1957 when the Evangelical and Reformed Churches merged with the Congregational Christian Churches, but before that ...
-- Several brands of congregationalists carried on the Pilgrims' faith tradition in the United States after splitting off from Unitarians in 1804 in Plymouth, Mass., but before that ...
-- Congregationalists landed at Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620.
Wright built the largest and most successful Pilgrim church in America. It is probably the liveliest too.
The savage attacks on Wright are so spectacularly unAmerican. They are the mob's attacks of freedom of religion. And they are the intolerants' attacks on anyone who dares demand that Americans continue to better themselves.
But they are also attacks by the ignorant on a proud religious faith that helped build America into the Christian nation that conservatives profess to be so proud of.