Church’s Thanksgiving Spirit Endures

Thank you so much for joining us for this broadcast! One correction: Center Church voted in 2007 to offer DESK a permanent home in our Parish House (and to completely renovate this area in 2014), but the founding story of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen is a very ecumenical and interfaith story of "thanksgiving" as well (Center was just one partner among many). Here's a bit from their website:

http://downtowneveningsoupkitchen.com/about/

Thanksgiving for the 1639 Puritan founders of New Haven's first church, Center Church on the Green, wasn't about turkeys. It was all about prayer, humility, and expressing gratitude, no frills attached.

It also was about this.

THE REAL STORY OF THANKSGIVING
by Susan Bates

But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

http://www.manataka.org/page269.html

Thank you for this story of sharing and the beautiful photos.

3/5's For a good account of early New England and native relations, read "Mayflower" by N. Philbrick. Neither the Indians nor the English were monolithic, united groups. The first English were welcomed by local Indians eager to enlist them as allies against their own, rival Indian tribes. The Pequot tribes own site accurately describes the Pequot war, which led to the deaths or enslavement of most Pequots, as as much a intra-Indian war as a war between the English and Indians. Alliances between tribes and the English shifted throughout the conflict. Moreover, while different English colonies did not war against one another as the Indian tribes did, there were vastly different levels of enthusiasm and participation between the colonies. Plymouth was extremely reluctant, in vast contrast to Massachusetts. Note, also, the Plymouth settlers were not Puritans, but Separatists. http://pequotwar.org/2009/10/the-pequot-war/

posted by: 1644 on November 24, 2016 12:01pm

3/5's For a good account of early New England and native relations, read "Mayflower" by N. Philbrick. Neither the Indians nor the English were monolithic, united groups. The first English were welcomed by local Indians eager to enlist them as allies against their own, rival Indian tribes.

All groups have there trades and Sell outs.Case and point look at the Jews in the German army call Mischlinge.

Read Hitler's Jewish Soldiers The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military

by Bryan Mark Rigg

Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought--perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals.As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht

In fact check these pictures out.

http://whale.to/c/jews_in_german_army.html


POLITICSThanksgiving Is an Origin Myth That Whitewashes Native American Genocide

Tom Cahill

In 1937, the war on the Pequot villages of Southeastern Connecticut began, and settlers savagely slaughtered Pequot men, women, and children by the hundreds. Bradford's own notes described the savagery of his men in graphic detail:

http://usuncut.com/politics/thanksgiving-is-an-origin-myth-that-whitewashes-native-american-genocide/

Bottom line this day is genocide.

Why does the independent publish on every holiday except Jewish holidays?
I'm fully supportive of all religions. But this smacks of bias, which in turn makes me question the integrity of this organization to be fully independent.
Sorry.
[Paul: Thank you for the comment. Out of curiosity: What bias do you see in my observing Jewish laws that prohibit me from using electricity or doing work on certain religious holidays? Did you see an excessively pro-Jewish bias in our publishing an article about a church on Thanksgiving?
[Have you ever noticed that most businesses are open on Jewish holidays but not Christmas and Easter? Does that concern you? Or is that the non-biased "normal" way of doing business?]

3/5,

Harvest festivals long preceded US thanksgiving and as 1644 noted, the Americas were ridden with internecine warfare before European colonists got here. So don't be such a Debbie Downer.

https://youtu.be/44l0qrHED4I

posted by: robn on November 25, 2016 9:17am

3/5,

Harvest festivals long preceded US thanksgiving and as 1644 noted, the Americas were ridden with internecine warfare before European colonists got here. So don't be such a Debbie Downer.

https://youtu.be/44l0qrHED4I

But the Harvest festivals when it came to the native americas was genocide.

Thanksgiving": "The untold genocide of the Native Americans"

https://youtu.be/sb9BgXmeX3s

Most secular news sources report news 365 days a year.
My concern is that organizations like the Christian broadcasting Network and other news sources that make exceptions for one particular religious event or holiday, in my opinion, cannot be 100% open minded. The credo for religion in true reporting should be respect all give preference to none.
That goes for Muslim, Christian, Jewish or any other religion.
If the independent was fully secular then it would either publish every day, or woukd also alter publication during Ramadan, on good Friday, Easter, summer solstice.
That's my beef.
And by the way. My wife is jewish, I myself am a devout atheist.

[Paul: We don't report news 365 days a year. In fact, we usually take off the weekends. Because we have only a handful of reporters per edition. We can't cover shifts 16 or 24 hours a day seven days a week the way "most secular news sources" can. Small organizations need to make due. We have had people affiliated with various religious backgrounds in our organization. No one is ever asked to work on a religious holiday. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the different rules different religions have for different holidays -- for instance, Muslims do work on Ramadan; Jews do work on Hanukkah, but not on, say, Rosh Hashanah or Passover or Sukkot. We have never told people we will work and publish stories 365 days a year. Nor does any comparable newsroom I know of anywhere in the country, from CT News Junkie and CT Mirror here in Connecticut to every not-for-profit news site similar to ours, including ones with significantly larger budgets, like the Voice of San Diego. You can't sustainability run a newsrooms with a handful of reporters and try to work around the clock every day. And I question your assumption that someone is "100 percent open-minded" by dint of being "secular" and that someone else is by definition less "open-minded" by observing a religious. I would characterize your assumptions about religious practice and newsrooms less than "100 percent open-minded.']

3/5's Bradford was Governor of the Plymouth Colony, neighbor to, but separate from Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Battle of Mystic Fort took place May 26, 1637. Plymouth did not join the war effort until June of 1637, so any assertion that "Bradford's men" participated in the Mystic killing is false. The Pequots were surrounded by men from Connecticut under John Mason and Narragansett, Mohegan and other Indian nations, who were seeking to overthrow their Pequot overlords. These nations were in no way traitors, but in fact continuing national struggles that predated the arrival of the English. Massachusetts Bay was the original English colony warring against the Pequots, later joined by Connecticut after the Pequots attacked Connecticut people though even though Connecticut was not at war with the Pequots. As for this story, it is about New Haven, which, again, did not exist when the Mystic fort was attacked. Davenport and Eaton did not arrive in Boston until June of 1637. Settlement of New Haven commenced April 14, 1938. As for the Pequot war being genocidal, yes, it was. In facts, their very name outlawed, and survivors parceled out among the English and other Mohegan and Narragansett.