Church History learning circle
with Rev. Julie Johnson Staples, J.D.
Thank you for visiting us! Welcome to our Learning Circle website.
This is the place to find texts, handouts, links, lists, archival materials and other information associated with our four-part series entitled “Understanding our Church History and Heritage in Red, Black and White.” In our brief time together, we will focus on Christian “missionary" expansion from the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies to Martha’s Vineyard in the 17th Century.
In a few short years, our church will celebrate its 350th anniversary. We hope these conversations will add depth, richness and information to your understanding of the moving of God’s Spirit on the island.
What you will find on this site in no way attempts to be comprehensive. I do hope you find it to be experiential. My passion for this topic is an outgrowth of my research at Harvard University, where I obtained a Th.M. in advance of my ordination in 2012. I continue to wonder and remain curious about the interactions between all people — but, most particularly, women, blacks and Indians in the Colonial period.
This journey is not intended to be a critique of history, race or racism. I am, however, interested in being inquisitive, expansive, imaginative and open to my feelings and those of others. In looking at these materials from where we stand today, we do not have to say that what was done was right. Some of the material will be difficult, both to understand and digest.
I invite respectful and loving dialogue as we together walk back in time. Learning from one another I pray we will understand more fully the stories, truths, myths, facts and events that brought us to today. I also encourage gentleness and tenderness in remembering that all things work together for good.
In our learning let there be good. In our striving, let us seek good. In our togetherness, let us invite the one who is good, for that is God.
In peace.
Rev. Julie
Above Images include:
The original Massachusetts Bay Colony Seal, 1629.
An early publishing of “Psalms of David with the Gospel of John in Columns of Indian and English, Being an Introduction to Training up Aboriginal Natives, in Reading and Understanding the Holy Scriptures.”
Photo of Frederick Douglas, c. 1855-1858.
Article from “The Vineyard Gazette,” Friday, December 4, 1857, regarding an island visit and lecture at The Congregational Church.
“The Mayflower Compact, 1620,” painted by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863-1930)
Resources
Click any of the Titles for downloadable .pdf’s for more information.
List of the earliest Congregational Churches on Martha’s Vineyard
Narratives of the Lives of Pious Indian Women Who Lived on Martha’s Vineyard - by Rev. Experience Mayhew, published 1830.
Narratives of the Lives of Pious Indian Children - by Rev. Experience Mayhew, published 1830.
Pilgrim “Others:” Reclaiming the Agency and Identity of Women, Negroes and Indians in Puritan Massachusetts - thesis by Rev. Julie Johnson Staples
“Cultural Bias in the New England Puritans’ Perception of Indians” - by William S. Simmons.
“Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in 17th Century Martha’s Vineyard" by David J. Silverman.
A Selected Reading List (with Amazon links)
1. First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament by Terry M. Wildman and a cross-section of Native North American tribal elders, pastors, young adults, men and women from diverse geographic locations.
2. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America by Gary B. Nash
3. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and The Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore
4. Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World by Edward E. Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/Name-War-Philips-American-Identity/dp/0375702628
5. These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore
6. This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by David J. Silverman
7. Whaling Captains of Color: America’s First Meritocracy by Skip Finley
8. The History of Martha’s Vineyard: How We Got to Where We Are by Arthur R. Railton
9. An Inventory of the Records of the Particular (Congregational) Churches of Massachusetts Gathered 1620-1805 by Harold Field Worthley
https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Inventory_of_the_Records_of_the_Parti.html?id=InnYAAAAMAAJ
10. Hidden History of Martha’s Vineyard by Thomas Dresser
11. Discovering a Lost Vineyard House: Archeology and History of the John and Experience Mayhew House Site on Martha’s Vineyard by James B. Richardson III and Richard L. Burt, Vineyard Haven, Mass.: Martha’s Vineyard Museum, 2021.
12. Conn, Steve. “Heritage is Not History,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 2015.
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/thinktank/313315391.html
13. Any book review or summary of your choosing focused on a book by Lowenthal, David. Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, New York: Free Press, 1996 or Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998 (print), 2012 (online). Please note that this book was published in the U.S. and the U.K. with two, slightly different titles. The “Free Press Version has “Possessed by the Past” at the beginning of the title with “The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History” as a sub-title. The Cambridge University Press edition dropped the ghoulish “Possessed” title and simply went with the sub-head.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/215234
The book is, of course, on Amazon.
14. Dictionary definitions of “heritage” and “history”. Unfortunately the Oxford English Dictionary is not easily accessible as a link. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of “heritage" is mentioned in this blog:
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/what-heritage/content-section-2.1
Prayers
VIDEO RESOURCES
1. America’s Territorial Expansion Mapped (1789-2014) - (video runs 1 minute, 18 seconds)