There were many wonderful foundational and negative things that grew out of emigrating to the New World for both the Puritans and Strangers. Unfortunately, pushing the Native Americans off their land, sickness, and breaking promises was a dark part of it. No excuses are to made for the actions 400 years ago, but it was an era when warring and conquering new lands abounded, even among the natives.
Among the new found freedoms in the New World, there was also a defective view of Christianity with its roots in the “Pietist” movement under P.J. Spener in the 17th Century (Francis Schaeffer, 1981. Christian Manifesto).
At first pietism was a healthy protest against formalism and a too abstract Christianity. You can think of it as the Reformation II. The Puritans had become the Protestants of Protestantism, and called themselves Separatists. But it was “platonic spirituality” in that Pietism which made a sharp division between the spiritual and the material world—offering little, or no, importance to the material world. The totality of human existence wasn’t afforded a proper place and it neglected the intellectual dimensions of Christianity.
Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Interestingly, even though Christians established Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, William and Mary, Rutgers, Brown & UPenn, they have mostly been taken overtaken by a secular agenda. Why? Have we become Pietists or just plain lazy? No matter how you see it, Christian stopped rowing long ago and have mostly abandoned the ship.
It's time to get back on board and discover Veritas!
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