North Atlantic

Roger Williams National Memorial

/ bigdiff / 4 Comments

Those ignorant people who claim that America was founded as a Christian nation need to visit this site in Rhode Island. Disgusted with the forced religious conformity in England (including burning heretics), Williams moves to Boston in 1631, where the Puritans had moved to escape persecution.

“… that no civil magistrate, no King, nor Caesar, have any power over the souls or consciences of their subjects, in the matters of God and the crown of Jesus …”

Roger Williams

Williams’ idea, that the government should not control citizens’ spiritual lives, made him flee the Massachusetts Bay Colony and live with the Native Americans, learning their languages and becoming an advocate for their rights and separate beliefs. Eventually, they deeded him land and he founded “Provident’s Plantation”, now Providence, and Rhode Island became a haven of religious tolerance, for Jews, Baptists, Quakers and even atheists. It is no accident that the country’s oldest synagogue is in Rhode Island. King Charles II granted a charter to Rhode Island, fulfilling Williams’ wish, that no one would be “molested, punished or called into question” for different beliefs in 1663 over 100 years before America became a country. Other colonies copied his charter’s separation of church and state and Jefferson enshrined the concept in our Constitution’s 1st Amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The First Amendment to the US Constitution

We live in a precarious time, where a single conservative Catholic sect, Opus Dei, has used its influence to place a majority of Justices on our Supreme Court, and that Supreme Court majority has limited an established right based on their particular religious objections to abortion, ruled in favor of Christian prayer at school events, and ruled in favor of using taxpayer funds for Christian schools. This country has avoided the religious and sectarian violence and oppression common elsewhere, by granting the right to freedom of conscience, and it is a frightening step backwards almost 500 years for the court to grant favored treatment to one religion. We have never been a Christian nation, and voters are wrong to vote for one.

New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park

/ bigdiff / 12 Comments

Why am I showing a mural of the Massachusetts 54th instead of the blue whale or the model ship Lagoda from the Whaling Museum? Well, this park covers a lot of history, and most of the recruits for the famed 54th (see the movie Glory) joined here. They were here in part because the whaling industry had long employed people of all kinds, including free African Americans and escaped slaves, and because this was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Before the Civil War, New Bedford was an abolitionist city, run by Quakers with people of color making up 7.5% of the population . A young Frederick Johnson escaped slavery and stayed in Nathan Johnson’s house here in 1838. To avoid confusion, he accepted the new name “Frederick Douglass”.

And the whaling history may be even more interesting. Today New Bedford is the largest scallop port, but from 1825 to 1925, its major commodity was whale oil, which once powered lamps across the country and had a hundred other uses. Besides the whaling museum, there’s the Seaman’s Bethel with memorials to those lost at sea, historic homes, living history, the Ernestina-Morrisey schooner along the fascinating wharf, fast ferries to the islands and many other interesting things to see and do. And, there are plenty of seafood places, including the Black Whale, which has both an excellent sit-down restaurant and a more casual dockside stand.