THE MYTH OF THE PROMISED LAND
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries many religious separatist groups existed in England and in Europe as a whole, many of which migrated to the Americas
The First Thanksgiving 1621,1899,Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
Freedom from Want, 1942, Norman Rockwell
Task and questions : conceptions and misconceptions in the representation?
Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President of the United States with one live turkey and two dressed turkeys, in a ceremony known as the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. John F. Kennedy was the first president reported to spare the turkey given to him (he said he didn't plan to eat the bird), and Ronald Reagan was the first to grant the turkey a presidential pardon, which he jokingly presented to his 1987 turkey.
We shall be as a city upon a hill.
Task and questions : Who is who (Winthrop/hutchinson)? Kind of society? Quality of the document?
Winthrop's vision of communal life in
the Promised Land of North America is characterized by hope, harmony,
and religious freedom as well as by discipline and social control. Trying to ban 'difference' outside
and inside the community, Winthrop sought to preserve the 'Holy
Commonwealth' that had come at such a high cost. it becomes more and more apparent that
the rhetoric of the Promised Land and divine providence on the one
hand aims to uphold an ideological construction of the 'new world'
which quite obviously was at odds with the actual experiences of the
"saints" , and on the other
serves as a legitimization of colonial rule, an instrument of
control, and a means to homogenize the colony by defining norms of
conduct and marginalizing or excluding those who do not adhere to
those norms.
In sum, the Puritan experience as
American experience is characterized by a number of transitions that
engendered some paradoxes. The first transition, of course, is their
physical movement from England to North America, which entailed
events that could not be integrated into the biblical script which
they attempted to follow. These discrepancies were initially
suppressed, of course, but surfaced time and again over the years.
The second transition concerns the Puritans' transformation from an
oppressed minority of non-conformist believers into an oppressive
ruling elite; yet their efforts to uphold religious orthodoxy in the
colony from the beginning were met with heavy resistance. Third and
most importantly perhaps, even the firmest of believers became
increasingly doubtful whether North America in fact was the Promised
Land they had been looking for. How were they to interpret the
obstacles and difficulties with which they had to wrestle daily? And
why did this Promised Land look like a wilderness? The Puritans'
anxieties grew in tandem with internal and external conflicts and led
to increased pressure of the Puritan elite on any form of dissent; to
them, the violence against the Native tribes seemed both necessary
and providential, and thus fully legitimate.
Time and again, Jefferson returned to
the myth of the Promised Land to describe the special relationship of
Americans with God. In the ways that the
rhetoric of the Promised Land became partially secularized for the
purpose of nation-building, we can observe how the memory of the
Pilgrims and Puritans was preserved and adapted into a specific
US-American civil religion.
The memorial culture surrounding the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans has both a regional as well as a national tradition. A veritable cult of the Pilgrim Fathers started to develop in the second half of the 18th century that continued well into the 19th century. Yet, the mythologization of the Pilgrims and the Puritans in the 19th century did not only affirm a regional identity and extrapolate from it a national imaginary, but also pursued three major strategic goals in relation to what New Englanders perceived as rival influences coming from three different directions. First, the New England Way is pitted against the genealogy of the South and its foundational mythology. Within the United States, the North and the South became increasingly polarized. It was in the midst of the sectional conflict that Thanksgiving was pronounced a national holiday in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln in an act that seemed to proclaim the dominance of the North over the South. Thus here it is against the South's political and cultural aspirations that the myth of the Pilgrims and the Puritans as a foundational American myth is implicitly directed. Second, the West was perceived by the Protestant elite of New England as a major arena in the cultural battle over dominance with the South and as a fruitful field for missionary activities. In this logic, the West was to become part of the Promised Land of white American Protestants descended from Puritan stock. Third, we need to consider the narrative that insists on casting the Pilgrims and Puritans as the founders of New England and of the nation as a reaction to the contemporaneous non-English Catholic (and Jewish) immigration from Europe. Throughout the 19th century, the laudatory commemorations of the Pilgrims and Puritans in public and political discourse continued, and "by the end of the century the Puritans were generally regarded as the founders of American democracy". This hegemonic discourse is obviously exclusionary - for one thing, because it is profoundly racialized.
Task and questions : the purpose of such reference? the montage?
Task and questions : the montage? Guess about Newt Gingrich?
Barack Obama and Exceptionalism
Task and questions : Account for their claims. Why did MotherJones disclose Trump's position?
Task and questions : Present Daniel T Rogers's line of arguments. Choose ONE element you could comment upon.