Walter Martin, a Christian minister, once said, “A key to strengthening spiritual muscles and enduring hardship is finding strength in the Word of God.” Life in the American colonies was incredibly hard for early settlers, especially to combat sin and abuse from others. However, this fight against the struggles was made possible through the help from the Word of God. Life in the American colonies was harsh and challenging for settlers because the whites tried to be as holy as possible and the blacks were overexploited.
The early white settlers had a hard time defying their own sinful desires and striving for holiness. This was especially seen in the works of Edward Taylor, who was a puritan pastor during the early days of America. In his poem, I Am the Living Bread, he mentioned, “This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise Had peckt the Fruite forbad: and so did fling Away its Food; and lost its golden dayes;” In this context, Edward Taylor is struggling to defy sin that his body offers because it will kill him eventually, and strives to acquire the grace of God that would sustain him. In
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On his poem, On Being Brought from Africa to America, she declared, “'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,” Here, African-Americans were kicked out of Africa, a land of paradise to these people, to be sold to slavery in America and treated like dogs. In the poem, he revealed that White people commentated on Blacks by saying, "Their colour is a diabolic die.". These black people were viewed as related to sin, and they were treated very poorly. Additionally, this poem stated, “Some view our sable race with scornful eye,”. Whenever white people saw these black people, they would undertreat these African Americans and treat them as lower level
In the 1700’s the Puritans left England for the fear of being persecuted. They moved to America for religious freedom. The Puritans lived from God’s laws. They did not depend as much on material things, and they had a simpler and conservative life. More than a hundred years later, the Puritan’s belief toward their church started to fade away. Some Puritans were not able to recognize their religion any longer, they felt that their congregations had grown too self-satisfied. They left their congregations, and their devotion to God gradually faded away. To rekindle the fervor that the early Puritans had, Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan ministers led a religious revival through New England. Edwards preached intense sermons that awakened his congregation to an awareness of their sins. With Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he persuades the Puritans to convert back to Puritanism, by utilizing rhetorical strategies such as, imagery, loaded diction, and a threatening and fearful tone.
Christopher Columbus discovered the America’s for Spain in 1492. The explorers and settlers that settled in Central and South America were mostly Spanish and Portuguese. The English took notice of the Spanish success in the America’s, so they decided to explore the upper part of the America’s, North America, in the late 1500’s.
In 1608, a group of Christian separatists from the Church of England fled to the Netherlands and then to the "New World" in search of the freedom to practice their fundamentalist form of Christianity (dubbed Puritanism). The group of people known as the Native Americans (or American Indians) are the aboriginal inhabitants of the Northern and Southern American continents who are believed to have migrated across the Bering land bridge from Asia around 30,000 years ago. When these two societies collided, years of enforced ideology, oppression and guerrilla warfare were begun. The great barriers of religion, ethics and world-views are the three largest factors which lead to the culture clash between the Puritans and the Native Americans.
By the time the colonists had settled into their new land they had established some order such as small governments to keep the colonies in line. The ocean separating England and the colonies made it difficult though for England to guide the colonists successfully the way they had wanted. The main thing the British tried was implementing taxes, but they also went so far as letting the colonies on their own for awhile and using military to keep them in place. On the other hand, the colonists saw that the British were stalling their attempts at self-governing so they worked together to disregard any British policies. By the eve of the Revolution, colonists had developed a sense of their identity and unity as Americans that was brought about by the British parliament. Exasperated by British efforts to hinder their growing self-reliance, colonists began pushing them away by doing various things such as rioting, boycotting, or voicing their opinions on paper.
The presence of God is evident in the passage from The History of Plymouth Plantation in every event significant or not. In his diary, William Bradford describes several occurrences in which God played a major role in deciding the outcome. According to Bradford, God can help or hurt according to His will.
Considering historical evidence, the notion: Native –Americans was not the first inhabitant of America is a complete false. For centuries, history kept accurate and vivid accounts of the first set of people who domiciled the western hemisphere. Judging by those records, below are the first set of Native-American people who inhabited America before the arrival of another human race; the Iroquois: The Iroquois of Native Americans was one of the tribes that lived in America before other people came. Based on historical evidence, it is believed that the Native Americans came from Asia way back during the Ice Age through a land bridge of the Bering Strait. When the Europeans first set foot in America, there were about 10 million Native Americans
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
During a most dark and dismal time in our nations history, we find that the Africans who endured horrible circumstances during slavery, found ways of peace and hope in their religious beliefs. During slavery, Africans where able to survive unbearable conditions by focusing on their spirituality.
In early America, socio-economic class, agriculture, religion and gender played four very important roles in regional distinctions of this newly developing country. Even though agriculture, religion, and gender were extremely important, the biggest factor was socio-economic life. A person’s socio economic class was what determined their life style from a wealth, treatment, and dress style and home, which are major aspects of human life. In Everyday Life in Early America, David Freeman Hawke explains how each of these four factors determined the life style of each early resident of America as well as the overall development of the country in its beginning years to emerge into a growing and improving nation (continue)
In Of Plymouth Plantation, a work quoted in Mayflower, William Bradford attributes the death of a “proud and very profane” sailor aboard the Mayflower to “the just hand of God” (pp. 30–31). What does this almost jubilant response to another person’s suffering suggest about the nature of Bradford’s religious beliefs? How did this attitude continue to reveal itself in the other experiences of the Pilgrims and the Puritans?
The poem “Negro” was written by Langston Hughes in 1958 where it was a time of African American development and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Langston Hughes, as a first person narrator tells a story of what he has been through as a Negro, and the life he is proud to have had. He expresses his emotional experiences and makes the reader think about what exactly it was like to live his life during this time. By using specific words, this allows the reader to envision the different situations he has been put through. Starting off the poem with the statement “I am a Negro:” lets people know who he is, Hughes continues by saying, “ Black as the night is black, /Black like the depths of my Africa.” He identifies Africa as being his and is proud to be as dark as night, and as black as the depths of the heart of his country. Being proud of him self, heritage and culture is clearly shown in this first stanza.
Throughout the colonial period, both economic and religious concerns contributed to the settling of British North America. The statement that the "economic concerns had more to do with the settling of British North America than did religious concerns" is valid. These economic concerns, as a cause for the colonization of British North America, outweighed the notable religious concerns that arose, and dominated colonial life during and up until the very end of the British colonial era in North America.
Edward Taylor’s Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children and Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold are similar in their approach with the illustration of how beautiful and magnificent God’s creations are to humankind. However, each poem presents tragic misfortune, such as the death of his own children in Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children and the cold, enigmatic nature of human soul in Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold. Taylor’s poems create an element of how cruel reality can be, as well as manifest an errant correlation between earthly life and spiritual salvation, which is how you react to the problems you face on earth determines the salvation that God has in store for you.
The clash between racial reality and idea is what is artistically shown in “on being brought from Africa to America”. Wheatley is a subtle rebel. At the beginning of her poem she shows thanks for being enslaved because it brought happiness to her life in finding Christianity, but as time goes by we start to see the true tone of Wheatley, which clearly show in the last two lines of the poem, now Wheatley begins to take a big position of power as if she already has the attention of the reader. Wheatley continues by saying that Africans may not be perfect but the Christians who enslave human beings aren’t
It is relatively easy to see the repression of blacks by whites in the way in which the little black boy speaks and conveys his thoughts. These racial thoughts almost immediately begin the poem, with the little black boy expressing that he is black as if bereaved of light, and the little English child is as white as an angel. The wonderful part of these verses is the fact that the little black boy knows that his soul is white, illustrating that he knows about God and His love.