Origin Myths and Facts: Still on a Pilgrimage

In her Thanksgiving Day commentary, “A Case of Hit and Myth,” Margaret Finnegan raises the important concept that all cultures create mythical stories that shine the most favorable light possible on their founding fathers and their principles. Unfortunately, her writing is of higher quality than her historical research. I do not doubt that the Pilgrims were not all sweetness and light and probably did not return the Native Americans’ kindness for very long before their own goals got in the way. But her statement that the Pilgrims “could not abide religious pluralism” is absurd. Is she thinking of the Puritans?

The Pilgrims were led from religious persecution in England to Holland by John Robinson. They had tried to question the dogma of the Church of England, which of course allied the church and the crown. For the audacity of their questions and alternative beliefs they lost their property and sometimes their lives. In Holland the congregation was contentious and argumentative, so great was their pluralism of thought. From these beginnings came the Congregational Church, based not on dictates from the king or some higher church body but on the decisions of the local congregation. This tradition, which has been upheld from that time forward, resulted in a church with the highest level of pluralism and diversity of any church on the planet.

William Viertel

Coupeville, Wash.

Finnegan says that the Thanksgiving legend is “a better story” than what really happened in Plymouth in 1620. OK, we like heroic plot lines and happy endings. We like stories where leaders are great and good, battles are against the evildoers, soldiers are all heroes and the fight is to preserve “our freedom.” Perhaps it doesn’t hurt us much to believe such fairy tales about the distant past. But it does hurt us to believe them about the here and now. Reality is a quagmire. We need to grow up and deal with it.

Cynthia Tuell

Upland