The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
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Book Reviews of The Wordy Shipmates
Book Review: great as history; not stellar as social commentary
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The point Sarah Vowell hopes to make with her book is condensed in its three opening sentences: "The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed." In many ways the book aims to be a modern social commentary that tells us about all the terrible things that happened to and in the United States and the world because some Puritans hopped on a boat and came here.
We elected Bush? That's Anne Hutchinson's fault. And not just because Bush is a descendant of hers either. Had it not been for Anne's ideas, most American Protestants would not now believe in "immediate personal revelation" (p. 209)--the idea (radical at the time) that individuals have a personal relationship with God and that, as a result, only the individual is responsible for his or her own salvation. In other words, had it not been for Anne, there would have been no born-again Christians and, hence, no George Bush.
Our (often disastrous) interventions around the world? Blame Winthrop of "City on a Hill" fame. Had he not drummed into us that we're a city on a hill, a model to the world, we might be less eager to spread our model from one corner of the globe to the next. And, in any event, we might not have had Ronald Reagan as president. (I suspect Sarah Vowell might be a Democrat by the way.)
The Indian massacres? That too is the Puritans' fault. But here Sarah Vowell does not have to rely on genealogy or one man or woman's belief system to prove her point. The Puritans, after all, massacred many Indians. Like the Pequot, whose children, women, and men they literally burned alive. This book is thus worth reading if all you want are the details of what happened after Thanksgiving.
But this book is also worth reading because as Sarah Vowell ruefully admits, "I wish I did not identify with [the Puritans'] essential questions" (p. 29). But she does. She does not say it outright but she seems to feel that at least part of the belief system that made those Puritans sail to America was a sense of social justice. The Puritans resurrected (in the Christian world) the Hebrew ideas of: isomania (we should all be equal before the law), literacy (we should all be able to read the law--or the Bible), free speech (we should be able to denounce authority), and manual labor (we should all earn our bread by the sweat of our brows). And this belief gave us not just Bush, Reagan and the massacres of Native Americans but also Martin Luther King, Jr.
And because she recognizes the good that came (with the much-detailed) bad, Sarah Vowell gives us a thoughtful and detailed translation of what the Puritans were up to. She makes the language and the politics of the 1600s understandable to the reader of 2008. And not only understandable but fun to read. And so we enjoy learning about the disagreements the Puritans had with the Pope, the Anglicans and with each other; we get the political implications the Bible had for them; we understand the importance Winthrop's "Christian Charity" sermon had for his contemporaries (and Sarah Vowell admits, for her). We (or at least I) learned a lot reading this book and what is more I enjoyed learning it.
The final verdict then? As social commentary, this book is not much different from many others like it (say Michael Moore); as history of the Puritan era though it is a resounding success. I recommend it.
Book Review: An irreverent look at our Puritan legacy
Summary: 5 Stars
As a New Yorker and self-professed member of the media-elite who hails from a conservative, Western, small town, Pentecostal background, Vowell delights in historical contradictions and deep roots.
NPR contributor, humorist and author of "Assassination Vacation," and "The Partly Cloudy Patriot," Vowell focuses a lens of irreverent respect on the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This is the larger group that followed the Pilgrims in 1630 and established Boston. They were somewhat more business-oriented than the Pilgrims and considered themselves members of the Anglican Church rather than Separatists like the Pilgrims.
It's partly for this that Vowell is drawn to them. "Maybe it's because I live in a world crawling with separatists that I find religious zealots with a tiny bit of wishy-washy, pussy-footing compromise in them deeply attractive."
Looking over their legacy - the Puritan work ethic, separation of church and state, the concept of personal salvation - Vowell focuses on three outsize personalities.
John Winthrop led the group on their journey to the New World, became governor of Massachusetts and left a massive diary. Roger Williams was banished for his opinions, particularly his insistence that government not interfere in religious matters, and left to found Rhode Island. Anne Hutchinson was banished too after a trial over her ideas of personal salvation made her seem dangerously witch-like.
Vowell takes us through the turbulent history of those days - the Indian wars and shifting alliances, problems with England and the Crown, internal squabbling and the founding of Boston. But her real interest is on the concepts that have echoes throughout our history.
The Puritans' Calvinist belief in themselves as the chosen people has come down to us pretty well perfectly preserved. Winthrop's sermon to his shipmates, "Christian Charity," exhorts them to show themselves as models of Christian fortitude, "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill." In other words, the eyes of the world will be watching.
Though this sermon was barely mentioned in Winthrop's day, it has since served up quotes to numerous politicians. One of Reagan's favorite images was "that shining city on a hill."
Vowell revels in the double-sided whammies of zealotry. She mines Winthrop's sermon for its exhortations to love one's enemy, to help each other at all costs, to show justice and mercy. And explores the underside of this confident righteousness morality - enforced conformity, intolerance of dissent, an iron-handed holier than thou perspective.
Roger Williams, a man I was taught in school to think of as a moderate, was an argumentative zealot, who believed that everybody else was wrong. He didn't want government interfering in his religion though and for that we thank him. As for Anne Hutchinson: "She suffers the same fate in the historical record as the Pequot; her thoughts and deeds have been passed down to us solely through the writings of white men who pretty much hate her guts."
Vowell makes connections between the founders and our national character - from Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr. to the community of New Yorkers after 9/11. Our system of government, from electing a president to rustling up the Patriot Act, has its roots in the Puritans.
Vowell's examinations of these connections and the history itself is serious and funny, quirky and contemplative. Sure, some of the religious distinctions and heated arguments are pretty dry, but if anyone can enliven them, it's Vowell.
Book Review: Worth the effort to see where the roots of American Puritanism were laid and how far modern religious leaders have drifted
Summary: 5 Stars
Sarah Vowell, like many of us, was likely introduced to "the shining city on the hill" by President Ronald Reagan. Reagan used the metaphor to describe the America people longed for, an admirable and special place that other nations could emulate. "In my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace," Reagan said. "A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still."
Reagan, of course, was borrowing from Puritan leader John Winthrop, who gave his famous "city on a hill" speech to his followers as they came from England to their new home in America in 1630. These Puritans, who would go on to found the city that would become Boston, had an opportunity to build their own society from the ground up.
"...we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us," Winthrop told his fellow immigrants. "So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses."
They looked for guidance, not from their home in England but from more ancient role models. How many people in our supposedly devout nation of Christians recognize the true source of the words as Jesus Christ? In Winthrop's time, the reference would be obvious. Jesus's words come from Matthew and inspired Winthrop and the Puritans deeply.
"You are the light of the world," Jesus told his followers in his famous Sermon on the Mount. "A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
Today, an alleged evangelical like Sarah Palin credits the phrase to Reagan, apparently unaware of its biblical background. It's a contrast Vowell spends plenty of time on. For all of their faults, these Puritans understood and studied the Bible. They were also obsessed with learning, making a point to create Harvard University to educate their young leaders. It's a stark contrast when compared to modern conservative leaders who consider educated men "elitist" and want to place the Ten Commandments in public schools yet cannot name all 10. As Vowell shows, these modern religious leaders have all of the egotism of their forefathers, but it isn't egotism that is tempered by humility, devotion and fear.
Vowell is one of our most interesting writers, always sure to bring a unique perspective and modern twist to her historical wanderings. It speaks volumes that she has successfully made a book inspired by Puritan sermons interesting and vital. It isn't nearly as breezy or as easy a read as her previous, more personal essays in ASSASSINATION VACATION, but it's worth the effort to see where the roots of American Puritanism were laid and how far modern religious leaders have drifted from their influences.
--- Reviewed by Jonathan Snowden
Book Review: The pre-modern side of Puritan New England
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
There's nothing like a Sarah Vowell book to provide a new slant on a historical period. In "The Wordy Shipmates," she tackles a rather odd era, and one for which most people have definite opinions: the settlement of Massachusetts by the Puritans. Vowell does not reveal that the Puritans were *not* the American version of the Taliban. Certainly, they were fanatical, even by the standards of their own time, and harsh and guilt-ridden to boot. Their endless arguments about the meaning of biblical verses and their extreme hatred and fear of "Papists" put them two steps away from the loony bin. Yet they possessed attitudes (and paranoias) that put them squarely at the root of what would become the American nation character. Having arrived on these shores, by the grace of God, they were ferociously jealous of their freedom from the intrigues and violent interference of the English court and church. Worried sick about takeover by their own government, they were careful to give at least the appearance of subservience to the powerful crown. Vowell's hero is John Winthrop, the first governor of the collection of rude shacks that became the city of Boston. Winthrop is an oxymoron -- a Puritan with a streak of practical morality -- who rules with a weird combination of Christian compassion and tyrannical ruthlessness. Over a fractious and easily offended populace, Winthrop bobs and weaves like a prize fighter, somehow managing to keep his society from fragmenting. Winthrop nearly meets his match with Roger Williams though. Williams, far from being the free-speech champion that we liberals thought him to be, is even more of a Puritan than the Puritans. He finds that his austere compatriots to be insufficiently willing to separate from the ungodly, raising the hackles of "moderates" like Winthrop, and eventually earning himself banishment from the community. Yet Vowell finds the silver lining in Williams, who, arguing for a wall to keep the government out of the *church*, set the stage for future debate that bore fruit over a century and a half later in the Bill of Rights.
"The Wordy Shipmates" is a fascinating read, peppered throughout with Vowell's entertaining and snarky similes and parallels. Her discussion of the way that most Americans (including herself) get their history from popular shows like "Happy Days" and "The Brady Bunch" is illuminating and a little scary. To counter this, Vowell provides plenty of primary material -- mostly from Winthrop's journals -- and provides explanations that give context and cut through the turgid 17th-century prose. Most aspects of tehstory move briskly,. Though her telling of the genocidal Pequot "War" drags a bit. She does do a great job of seeing how Winthrop's' "City on a Hill" image has been used and misused throughout history, especially by those who missed the point that at its base, the City was intended to describe a society whose members were bound to one another through Christian charity. For a closer look at a society which we tend to judge and dismiss, "The Wordy Shipmates" book is a gem.
Book Review: Our Patriotic Ancestors Unravelled!
Summary: 5 Stars
Nathaniel Hawthorne said it best about the Puritans examined, vilified and honored in this no-nonsense, all-points-of-view historical treatment by the iconoclastic Sarah Vowell, "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank Him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages."
A pre-requisite for reading this book is the ability to hold focus, as the author dances between past and present with historical figures, events and analysis, not always in a linear fashion. But the work is well worth the effort, for here is an author who forces us to think about just much our ancestoral legacy has shaped our domestic and foreign political policy in and beyond America. And if the reader is too lazy to do so, well Ms. Vowell covers innumerable bases before she concludes with a realistic slam-dunk, home-run vision of Puritans shaping a new land.
It all begins with some terse debunking of our stereotypical, Brady-bunch Thanksgiving dinner style picture of Puritans sitting down with the native Indians. We get a full account of the Catholic-Protestant debate back home in merry 'ol England to the point where we realize that emigration was better than the looming death waiting off-stage had they remained in England. Ms. Vowell also gives us, through examination fo the writings of John Winthrop, a superb analysis of a successful leader in those times, an intelligent, dogmatic and even dictatorial guy who knew how to spin Biblical verses into sermons that guaranteed communal agreement and obedience to authority, meaning himself, of course. The vision is clearly set forth, one to which any American might gravitate in dark times: United we stand, Divided we fall. Simple!
A large portion of this account covers the hugely antagonistic relationship between John Winthrop and Roger Williams, the latter a more excessive version of Puritanism than even those staid Puritan figures who found entertainment in attending Church several times a week. Williams attempted to teach the Native Indians in Providence the concept of original sin; the results of that effort don't make for pretty reading, understandable as it may seem if one stops long enough to really think about hearing such an idea for the first time.
Finally, we have a brief but potent treatment of Anne Hutchinson, the Puritan "brain" of the bunch, the original American Oprah, who preached that one could only know if one were saved by "feeling" it. Excommunication to the Bronx followed her vociferous preaching; the uninhabited Bronx, not the presently densely populated city within a city.
Satire, alternatingly droll with interspersed raucous humor, reflection, challenge, and meditation fill these pages with so much history connected to Nixon, Reagan, 911 and so much more that the reader occasionally has to stop or risk overload. But it's an overload that is far too infrequently heard and a welcome, refreshing burst of fresh air whirling through older significant times to hopefully create a historical future different because of this notable reading experience. Finely, finely done!
Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on February 9, 2009