Captain John Smith was an Anglican Missionary—-WHAT?!

Posted on February 6, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Captain John Smith was arguably the greatest of the English explorers, discoverers, and colonists of America. He was as well the first American historian. His human and natural histories include: A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Hapned in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Collony, published in 1608; A Map of Virginia, published in 1612; the Description of New England, published in 1616; New Englands Trials, published in 1620; The True Travels, published in 1629; the Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, published in 1631; and his most ambitious effort, The General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, published in 1624. The General History has quite a story to tell, of journeys and battles, of harrowing escapes from enemies intent on torturing their captives, of explorers penetrating lands and waters hitherto unseen by Europeans, of dramatic episodes involving the American Indians. With so many possible themes—of adventure, romance, discovery—with which to open his book, it is instructive to see how Smith chose to open his General History.  The first paragraph reads:

“This plaine History humbly sheweth the truth; that our most royall King James hath place and opportunitie to inlarge his ancient Dominions without wronging any; (which is a condition most agreeable to his most just and pious resolutions:) and the Prince his Highness may see where to plant new Colonies. The gaining Provinces addeth to the Kings Crown: but the reducing Heathen people to civilitie and true Religion, bringeth honour to the King of Heaven.”[1]

            Contained in this first paragraph of the General History are the three fundamental assumptions that guided the life and activities of John Smith, and indeed of all the English explorers who journeyed to America in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, during the Elizabeth and Jacobean ages. Smith identified himself, as well as the English, as a conqueror, a colonizer, and a commissioner: a conqueror who will “reduce heathen people,” a colonizer who will “plant new colonies,” and a commissioner who will “bringeth honour to the King of Heaven.” Further, conquest, colonization, and commission are “just and pious” works that, rather than “wronging any,” will bring “civilitie and true Religion.” Smith argued, in short, that the work of conquest and colonization is the work of the Great Commission, which was the commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, as recorded in the Gospels, to go, and spread the Gospel to all nations. God directs the English to conquer and colonize a land already inhabited. But in so doing they do not wrong anyone because in carrying out the Great Commission they are carrying out God’s will, which cannot be wrong or evil. God’s will is that the English spread the Gospel to people hitherto ignorant of Christ, thereby bringing Good News of peace, happiness, love, and life to a people, it was presumed, who do not have them, and bringing as well a new culture, a civilization that far surpasses the silvan culture of the American Indian. Smith’s assumption, like those of his contemporaries in Jacobean England, was that civilizing a people goes hand in hand with Christianizing a people. 

            To use civilization and conversion as the ultimate ends to justify conquest and colonization seems disingenuous to say the least, a crass example of an expedient moral system that defends evil because it results in an ultimate good. Forcing others to convert to Christianity was not Smith’s style, and English discoverers anyway tended not to force religion down the throats of disbelieving Indians. Even so, it often appears that, of the three apparent reasons for European colonization, God, Glory, and Gold, God was least important, mere window-dressing, something that sounded good in theory but was in reality little practiced.

            If, however, we allow the words of the English to explain their motives and assumptions, and refrain from judging not lest we be judged, we find that the narratives of English colonization repeatedly cite the Great Commission as the ultimate end for the means of conquest and colonization. 

Captain Smith was not, of course, ordained and commissioned by the Anglican or any other Church to spread the Gospel according to the tenets of the Great Commission. But Smith did believe that Jesus’s commandment to his disciples to go, and spread the Gospel to all nations, applied to English colonizing efforts. Smith was, we might say, an ad hoc commissioner who, because of his Anglican beliefs, felt compelled not only to journey to America and colonize the land, but to do so because the Great Commission commanded it, and, as a consequence, to bring knowledge of the teachings of Christ to the American Indians. Smith was joined in this endeavor by other explorers, colonizers, and scientists, such as the voyagers who founded Roanoke in the 1580s, and the men of the Martin Frobisher, Humfrey Gilbert, and George Waymouth voyages. Smith is the best known of the early American explorers, and a person that on the surface would not appear to be inclined toward the concerns of the missionary to spread the knowledge of Christianity to others. But the Anglican worldview had quite an impact on Smith, and he responded with a strong sense of the importance of the Great Commission in the work of colonization.

            During Smith’s time, scholars and theologians took the words of the Great Commission literally, at face value. Jesus’s Commission required commissioners who were willing to travel, explore, discover, and engage the peoples and places of hitherto unknown lands. Commissioners spread the word to an unknown people in an unknown world of unknown geography, flora, fauna, and natural history. Some were commissioned by monastic orders or church agencies. Others were ad hoc, commissioners who in the process of exploring, discovering, fighting, investigating, and studying also spread the teachings of Jesus.

            The Church of England was involved in the Great Commission from the true beginning of English activities in North America under Queen Elizabeth I. The Church commissioned some missionaries to go to America in an official capacity; yet many other missionaries were self-appointed, commissioners simply because they were Anglicans. Martin Frobisher, for example, soldier and adventurer, made three voyages to North America in the 1570s seeking the Northwest Passage. He made contact, and had pitched battles, with the native Inuit people. One contemporary account of his second, 1577, voyage, explained that Frobisher and his men sought, “that by our Christian study and endeavour, those barbarous people trained up in paganism, and infidelity, might be reduced to the knowledge of true religion, and to the hope of salvation in Christ our Redeemer.” The ordained agent in this goal of spreading the Christian message was Robert Wolfall, an Anglican priest, who was chaplain and missionary with the Frobisher voyage to Canada in 1578. Wolfall, according to contemporary chronicler Richard Hakluyt, “being well seated and settled at home in his owne countrey, with a good and large living, having a good, honest woman to wife, and very towardly children, being of good reputation amongst the best, refused not to take in hand this paineful voyage, for the onely care he had to save soules and to reforme these infidels, if it were possible, to Christianitie.” Wolfull was busy on the voyage with homilies, prayers, and communion: “Wolfall,” Hakluyt wrote, “made sermons, and celebrated the Communion at sundry other times in severall and sundry ships, because the whole company could never meet together at any one place.” There is no record that Wolfull actually converted any of the Inuit to Christianity, though he did counsel Frobisher’s men and performed the “divine mystery” for the crew.[2]

            Wolfull was by and large a chaplain, and the relations between the English and the Inuit were more of conflict than peace. A decade later, however, in another part of North America, another commissioner, not ordained but ad hoc, had friendlier relations with the Native peoples, and enjoyed more positive results. Scientist Thomas Hariot accompanied the Grenville voyage, sponsored by Walter Raleigh, to Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, in 1585. Hariot wrote A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, of the Commodities and of the Nature and Manners of the Naturall Inhabitants: Discouered bÿ the English Colony there seated by Sir Richard Greinuile Knight In the yeere 1585. Hariot was a naturalist and mathematician, a learned man who communicated, through interpreters, with the native Algonquians about their religious beliefs and tried to impart his knowledge of Anglicanism in turn. He described the Indians as intelligent, having an anthropomorphic and a polytheistic system, including a belief in Heaven and Hell. They were, he wrote, quick to abandon their beliefs in the face of more compelling ideas. Christianity and the Bible fascinated them. “Through conversing with us,” Hariot wrote, “they were brought into great doubts of their owne [religion], and no small admiration of ours, with earnest desire in many, to learne more than we had meanes for want of perfect utterance in their language to expresse.” Hariot, not a priest but devoted to the Great Commission, wrote that “manie times and in every towne where I came, according as I was able, I made declaration of the contentes of the Bible; that therein was set foorth the true and onelie GOD, and his mightie woorkes, that therein was contayned the true doctrine of salvation through Christ, which manie particularities of Miracles and chiefe poyntes of religion, as I was able then to utter, and thought fitte for the time. And although I told them the booke materially & of itself was not of anie such vertue, as I thought they did conceive, but onely the doctrine therein contained; yet would many be glad to touch it, to embrace it, to kisse it, to hold it to their brests and heades, and stroke over all their bodie with it; to shew their hungrie desire of that knowledge which was spoken of.”[3]

            Hariot believed that the Indians were attracted to Christianity in part because English science and technology so impressed them that they admired all of the possessions and beliefs of the English. That the Indians succumbed to diseases of which the English appeared to be immune was also impressive. The chief “called ‘Wingina’, and many of his people would be glad many times to be with us at our praiers, and many times call upon us both in his owne towne, as also in others whither he sometimes accompanied us, to pray and sing Psalmes; hoping thereby to bee partaker in the same effectes which wee by that meanes also expected.”[4]

            Hariot’s Briefe and True Report implies the interaction of two cultures imparting godly knowledge, one to the other. Of course, one was attempting to colonize, to discover, to exploit, while the other was attempting to survive and thrive in a place they already possessed. During the reign of Elizabeth, the English turned from exploration to colonization, from bringing the Gospel to pagan peoples during voyages of discovery to settling among them and Christianizing them. Such a process was marred by sin. The promoter of colonization and Anglican priest Richard Hakluyt wrote in the Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation that the English failed to establish the colony at Roanoke because they were driven away by “the hand of God,” which “came upon them for the cruelty and outrages committed by some of them against the native inhabitants of that country.”[5]

            Such was the typical response of an Elizabethan Christian who believed in God’s active Providence. Failure was obviously a product of God’s will, and failure could best be explained by sin.  Hakluyt’s comment implied a larger question: Was it valid to conquer, colonize, and bring the Great Commission to the indigenous inhabitants of America?

            The English, and Captain John Smith, answered in the affirmative, in part because the Elizabethan and Jacobean English believed that England was an Elect nation, in part because of their tremendous sense of God’s Providence at work in their own lives and in the world at large. The English Reformation and founding of the Church of England under Henry VIII, its repression under Mary Tudor, and growth under Elizabeth I, had convinced many English that God particularly blessed England, which would carry out His will. God’s providential role in English voyages of discovery and the English assumption that the Great Commission was of necessity the driver of such voyages can be seen in many of the narratives of voyages of discovery from that time. Edward Hayes, for example, who wrote the account of the 1583 voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, argued that planting “the seed of Christian religion . . . must be the chiefe intent of such as shall make any attempt that way”–”whatsoever is builded upon other foundation shall never obtaine happy successe nor continuance.” He admonished adventurers who prosecuted such voyages to beware such journeys for material rather than spiritual gain. Hayes associated the fulfillment of the Great Commission to all corners of the world with the Second Coming of Christ; hence he believed that God had chosen the Elizabethan age as the time to begin to prosecute the Commission in earnest. Likewise a contemporary of Smith, James Rosier, who voyaged with and penned accounts of the journeys of Bartholomew Gosnold and George Waymouth, wrote of the ultimate goal of the Waymouth voyage: “a publique good, and true zeale of promulgating Gods holy Church, by planting Christianity, [was] the sole intent of the Honourable setters foorth of this discovery.”[6]

            Smith’s actions and writings reveal that he agreed that England, the Elect Nation, had a particular role to play in the Great Commission of converting a people ignorant of Christ. He defended the English conquest and colonization of America in his book Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England: “Many good religious devout men,” Smith wrote, “have made it a great question, as a matter in conscience, by what warrant they might goe to possesse those Countries, which are none of theirs, but the poore Salvages. Which poore curiosity will answer it selfe; for God did make the world to be inhabited with mankind, and to have his name knowne to all Nations, and from generation to generation: as the people increased they dispersed themselves into such Countries as they found most convenient.”[7] To Smith, the Great Commission is a historical plan, a commandment of the past guiding people in the present and into the future. Jesus came to earth when the population was not great enough, at that time in the first century, to spread the message of the Gospel to all people. But as time passes and the world’s population increases—and England’s population increases—people have the human and material resources to carry out the Commission. The English colonization of America is therefore part of a great plan. Not to journey to other lands, not to extend the Gospel to other peoples, is to disobey God, indeed to reject God’s plan for history, which in Smith’s time was an even greater sin that using intimidation and violence by which to bring about God’s will.

            Part of God’s historical plan is civilizing the human race. Smith wrote, in Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, that, “had the seed of Abraham, our Saviour Christ Jesus and his Apostles, exposed themselves to no more dangers to plant the gospell wee so much professe, than we, even we our selves had at this present beene as Salvages, and as miserable as the most barbarous Salvage, yet uncivilized.”[8] It took the courage of other great men, sojourners like Abraham and the Son of Man himself, Jesus, to conform to God’s plan in the face of great danger, even death. Smith and his contemporaries, such as the French explorer and colonizer Samuel Champlain, referred to the Indians as salvages, which appears on the surface to be a a misspelling or inaccurate transliteration of savages. Salvage is, rather, a rendering from the Latin, silva, referring to those who live in the forest.[9] Forest-dwellers rather than city-dwellers will be less sophisticated, lacking accoutrements of civilization such as literacy and metallurgy. Forest-dwellers are not necessarily savage, though Smith was not afraid to use that word; but he more often described the Indians by the less judgmental salvages. He believed that God’s plan, the Great Commission, aims to bring salvages from their ignorant state of pastoral simplicity into a civilized world, the world, that is, of the English and other Christians. God of course first brought knowledge of His Son to the civilized Roman Empire, to the sophisticated Jews. From here, over the centuries, Christianity spread outward to less civilized peoples in northern and eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia; now, in the early seventeenth century, Christianity was spreading to the uncivilized salvages of America.

            How actively involved was Smith himself in bringing the Gospel to the Indians?          There are many examples in Smith’s writings of his attempts to convince the American Indians of the truth of the Christian God. “Our order was daily to have Prayer,” he wrote, “with a Psalme, at which solemnitie the poore Salvages much wondered.” “To divert them from . . . [their] blind Idolatry,” Smith and his companions “did our best endevours, chiefly with the Werowance of Quiyoughcohanock [Popohanock], whose devotion, apprehension, and good disposition, much exceeded any in those Countries, with whom although we could not as yet prevaile, to God as much exceeded theirs, as our Gunnes did their Bowes & Arrowes, and many times did send to me to James Towne, intreating me to pray to my God for raine, for their Gods would not send them any. And in this lamentable ignorance doe these poore soules sacrifice themselves to the Devill, not knowing their Creator; and we had not language sufficient, so plainly to expresse it as make them understand it; which God grant they may.” Smith believed that his words and actions illustrated the power of God in his life, as he wrote “That God that created all things they knew he [Smith] adored for his God: they would also in their discourses terme the God of Captaine Smith. ‘Thus the Almightie was the bringer on, The guide, path, terme, all which was God alone’.”[10]

            Smith never felt that the Indians showed aggression as a counter to the Great Commission. In Advertisements he explained that the Indian attack on Jamestown in 1622 did not occur because the Virginians were Christian; rather, the Indians wanted to plunder the accoutrements of white civilization. Indians would kill to acquire and steal, but not to counter Christianity. Indeed, he wrote, the Indians were attracted to white civilization. Smith implied that to bring Christianity to the Indians was warranted because it did not repel them and they would not kill because of it.????

            Smith supported the New England Puritans in their work to establish religious societies and convert the natives. God has decided, he wrote, “to stirre up some good mindes, that I hope, will produce glory to God, honour to His Majesty, and profit to his kingdom.” Smith had himself journeyed along the coast of New England in 1614, and believed that the land was reserved by God for some special purpose, that is, English colonization and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. He thought it was possible that God had purposefully spread disease throughout New England prior to the Pilgrims’s coming, preparing the way for the Lord, as it were. The surviving natives of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts would benefit from the English goal of “civilizing barbarous and inhumane nations to civility and humanity.” Indeed, the English owed this work to the New England Indians; it would otherwise be a “want of charity to those poore Salvages, whose Countries we challenge, use, and possesse.” Personally, Smith felt that it was his Christian duty to pursue this work. “Our good deeds or bad,” he wrote in Advertisements, “by faith in Christs merits, is all wee have to carry our soules to heaven or hell.”[11]

            Smith wrote Advertisements toward the end of his life, when he was reflective about his accomplishments and role in history, and considered what were his greatest achievements. Significantly, he dedicated Advertisements to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York. In this his final work, he wished to show his dedication to the Anglican Church, prefacing his book with a similar statement of commitment to the Great Commission as he had prefaced the General History. He hoped that the “Plantation of New England” would lead to “the increase of Gods Church, converting Salvages, and enlarging the Kings Dominions.” He called the two archbishops his “Fathers and Protectors unexpectedly.” Smith felt compelled to defend himself for doing whatever he could to begin and sustain the Anglican Church in Virginia during the two years he was there. He wrote: “Now because I have spoke so much of the body, give me leave to say something of the soul, and the rather because I have been often demanded by so many how we began to preach the Gospel in Virginia, and by what authority, what churches we had, our order of service, and maintenance of our ministers, therefore I think it not amiss to satisfy their demands, it being the mother of all our plantations.” The Jamestown colonists established Church as they knew it the best way they knew how: “When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, we did hang an awning (which is an old sail) to three or four trees to shadow us from the sun, our walls were rails of wood, our seats unhewed trees till we cut planks; our pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees; in foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better.” “This was our church, till we built a homely thing like a barn, set upon cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth; so was also the walls; the best of our houses (were) of the like curiosity, but the most part far much worse workmanship, that neither could well defend wind nor rain, yet we had daily Common Prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, and every three months the holy Communion, till our minister died. But our prayers daily with an homily on Sundays, we continued two or three years after, till more preachers came.”[12]

            Contemplating the continuing growth of Anglicanism in England, Smith worried that such would not be the case in New England, and counseled readers of his Advertisements in what he considered to be the true approach to Christianity, both in England and in America. Smith thought that the strength in Christianity lay in its unity to a common creed and unified authority, both of which were found only in “one God, one Christ, one Church”–of England of course. Dissensions from the Church splintered the belief, making it prey to non-Christians.[13]

            The Stuart kings who granted charters for colonies made the Great Commission a priority of colonization. For example when James I granted Virginia a new charter in 1612, he declared the purpose of the colony was “for the Propagation of Christian Religion, and Reclaiming of People barbarous, to Civility and Humanity.”[14] The Virginia Company declared their intention, in True and Sincere Declaration of the Purposes and Ends of the Plantation “to preach and baptize into Christian religion, and by the propagation the Gospell, to recover out of the arms of the Divell a number of poore and miserable soules, wrapt up unto death, in almost invincible ignorance.”[15] The 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, published during the reign of Charles II, prayed: “GOD, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men: that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations.”[16]

            Alexander Whitaker, the so-called Apostle of Virginia, who pastored to Smith at Jamestown, wrote Good News from Virginia in 1613, proclaiming in the Dedication that Virginia is a “godly Plantation.” Whitaker compared the English fighting to spread the Gospel in the New World with the early Apostles spreading the Word in the wake of Pentecost. God’s Providence underlies the English colonization of Virginia. Whitaker argued that good works are the foundation for the colony’s success. Good works are a sanctifying process for the English, who are not unique in their ability to be converted to an understanding of the gospel. The American Indians, Whitaker wrote, although hitherto worshipers of Satan, are like Europeans descended from Adam; “they have reasonable souls and intellectual faculties as well as wee,” and are as convertible to Christianity as the English were in the distant past of their idolatry. “The promise of God,” he wrote, “is without respect of person.” Like the promise God made to Israel, if the English conform to God’s wishes then He will bless their endeavors.[17]

            John Smith shared Whitaker’s view about the importance of good works, and the role of Providence in human affairs. “If you but truly consider how many strange accidents have befallen those plantations and my self,” he wrote in Advertisements, [you] “cannot but conceive Gods infinite mercy both to them and me.” Smith saw himself as a playing an important role in acting upon the Great Commission. God’s “omnipotent power onely delivered me to doe the utmost of my best to make his name knowne in those remote parts of the world.”[18]

             Of course, published works are always suspect as a guide to feelings and personal motives, and historians are rightly suspicious to put too much value in the words of a man so concerned with his personal reputation as was Smith. At the same time, people of Jacobean England often wore their hearts on their sleeves, and Smith in particular was a passionate man who could scarcely hide his feelings of anger, despair, hope, and faith. As his published works, and those of his contemporaries, are all that we have to go on with which to reconstruct his life and work, it is best to scrutinize his words and to get under his skin, as it were, to discover who was the real John Smith, and what were his motives. I believe that historians who empathize with the past, to engage in a dialogue with past humans, can reach a level of understanding that echos, fairly accurately, what really happened.[19]

            At the same time one must always be on guard against unintentional anachronism. It is all too easy to judge people in the past by means of what happened after their deaths, and what their actions led to in time. This is particularly true of the relationships between Europeans and the American Indians. The horrible things that happened to American Indians cannot be forgotten: the spread of disease among them, brought by the invaders; the aggression in words and actions of the invaders toward the Indians; the destruction of a way of life over the course of centuries. Humans do not, however, always know what their actions will result in. Do you and I know what our words and behavior will lead to in ten years, twenty years, or further in time? No, and neither did Smith and his contemporaries. Smith could not peer ahead in time to see a future United States of America, a future of Indian despair, a future of what has come to be called “cultural genocide” perpetrated by whites against the Indians. He can hardly be held to blame. His worldview was circumscribed by his experiences and the experiences of the English up to that time. He was born right after the Spanish Armada and grew up knowing how precarious was England’s position in the world. He was born at a time when Elizabeth I was attempting to solidify the foundation of the Church of England against a strong Roman Catholic presence and growing Puritan presence in England. In his world, Christians were still struggling to compete against each other as well as other religious systems, the believers of which were aggressive and just as convinced that they knew the truth. The Great Commission was still very much a commandment yet to be realized. Smith lived before Biblical exegesis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought people to doubt the infallibility of the Bible as well as the constancy of Divine Providence in human affairs. To Smith, God was watching his actions even as He compelled time forward and Christ was the Savior welcoming a valiant man home after the work of his life was complete. Civilization as Smith knew it was Christian—there were few if any alternatives. Jesus commanded the spread of His Word and who was Smith or any one else to challenge Him? The Indians were not civilized, that is, not Christian, did not make proper use of the land, and it was inconceivable to Smith that they would want to be left alone. As he wrote in the General History: “But we chanced in a Land even as God made it, where we found onely an idle, improvident, scattered people, ignorant of the knowledge of gold or silver, or any commodities, and carelesse of any thing but from hand to mouth, except bables of no worth; nothing to incourage us, but what accidentally we found Nature afforded. Which ere we could bring to recompence our paines, defray our charges, and satisfie our Adventurers; we were to discover the Countrey, subdue the people, bring them to be tractable, civill, and industrious, and teach them trades, that the fruits of their labours might make us some recompence, or plant such Colonies of our owne, that must first make provision how to live of themselves, ere they can bring to perfection the commodities of the Country.”[20]

            In short, John Smith had little reason to hide his true motives or deceive his readers in the General History and his other works, for he wrote in the shadow of God’s grace, and could scarcely evade the searcher of hearts. He lived his life aware of Providence and aware that at some point he would have to account for his deeds. England was an Elect Nation that was clearly appointed by God according to His pleasure that at this time in human history the English were to settle America, make it productive, Christianize the native people, and bring them into the orbit of English civilization.

            John Smith’s writings provide a perfect inside look into the motives for exploration and colonization, in which we find that alongside the expansion of English power and wealth is the spread of Christianity. Brute force and the pursuit of wealth and power were insufficient justifications; the teachings of Christ were after all the cornerstone of Elizabethan and Jacobean culture. Smith’s writings shows that the spread of Christianity had to be a foundation in the mix of English exploration and colonization.

            The Christian/Anglican worldview was so much a part of each person’s fundamental assumptions about life and work that the English explorers were, like religious leaders in England, completely wedded to the idea that the expansion of English power had to be accompanied by the Great Commission, that it was a fundamental justification for expansion and conquest. The Great Commission here was not merely a convenient excuse, window-dressing to justify more nefarious motives, but was rather a raison d’etre for exploration and colonization. 

[1]     John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, in Works, 1608-1631, Edward Arber, ed. (Birmingham, 1884), 278.

[2]     Richard Hakluyt, Voyages and Discoveries: The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; reprint ed., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972), 190; William Stevens Perry, The History of the American Episcopal Church 1587-1883, vol 1 (Boston, 1885), 7.

[3]             Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia  (London: Privately Printed, 1900), 57, 58.

[4]              Ibid., 59.

[5]             Hakluyt, Voyages and Discoveries, 304.

[6]     “A Report of the Voyage of Sir Humfrey Gilbert, Knight, 1583, by Master Edward Haies” and “A True Relation of the Voyage of Captaine George Waymouth, 1605, by James Rosier,”in Early English and French Voyages, Chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534-1608, ed., Henry S. Burrage (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1906), 180, 181, 183, 388.

[7]     John Smith,  Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters, in Works, 1608-1631, Edward Arber, ed. (Birmingham, 1884), 934.

[8]     Ibid., 935.

[9]     David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2009), 143.

[10]   General History, 76, 105, 126.

[11]   Advertisements, 926, 933, 935, 936.

[12]   Advertisements, 920, 957-958.

[13]   Ibid., 959.

[14]   Howard W. Preston, ed., Documents Illustrative of American History, 5th ed. (New York: Putnam’s, 1886), 22.

[15]   Alexander Brown, ed., The Genesis of the United States, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1890), 339.

[16]   Book of Common Prayer, 1662 edition: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1662/pray&thanks.pdf

[17]   Alexander Whitaker, Good News from Virginia (London: 1613), Dedication, 6, 24, 25, 27, 32, 34

[18]   Advertisements, 944, 945.

[19]   For more on this approach to historical inquiry, see my The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past (Praeger, 1998).

[20]   General History, 172-173.

For more, see my book, The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England: https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Mark-Captain-Smiths-England/dp/1611685168

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Donald Trump and American Politics

Posted on February 4, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

For two hundred and thirty-seven years, American politics has been vitriolic, even more so in the twenty-first century, where anybody anytime anywhere can post or speak their mind in online media, television, the news, &c, making nonsensical accusations of misogyny, homophobia, racism, fascism, and every type of vitriolic hatred directed toward the political candidate that they have deemed unqualified and unsupportable.

Or, they can make reasonable and rational blog posts. 😉

Donald Trump has received an extraordinary proportion of such vitriol, and for what reason? I would assume that most people who voted for/supported Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris are not leftwing Socialists and those who voted for/supported Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are not corrupt baby killers. Nor are most people who voted for/supported Trump right-wing extremists.

Many people voted for Donald Trump not because they think he is the best possible candidate, rather because of the available candidates, they respect his stance regarding the sanctity of human life, the extreme power of political parties, the corruption of career politicians, the corruption throughout American life, immigration, drug abuse, the decline of the family, and the ridiculous extremes we have seen in many moral issues.

Moreover, once Trump garnered the Republican nomination (three times), he did what most such nominees do, that is, toned down the rhetoric, and began to have a more statesman-like attitude toward international trade, domestic order, paying the federal debt, kick-starting the American economy, fighting crime and lawlessness, and securing America’s place in the world. I don’t believe America is the “policeman of the world,” as FDR wanted to make us. But I do believe that America is the country that, of all countries in the world, has had the best motives for securing world peace and prosperity.

To be President of the United States is an awesome responsibility. I believe it is possible that Trump is a self-made man who late in life has decided to serve his country and give back to others. Believe me, most of my adult life I have watched Trump on talk shows, being interviewed about this and that, hawking his books on money, etc. I have never really respected him.

I also have never been convinced that this country was founded upon the principle of career politicians having constant control of our federal system. There is so much political corruption and political cronyism. Perhaps it is good to elect a person with much life and business experience but little political experience. Some of our greatest presidents were such people.

I have had my doubts about Donald Trump, and still do, but I consider the alternative–Clinton, Biden, Harris–and I continue to believe in giving him a chance to see if he can succeed as President. I’m not convinced he is as horrible as many Americans believe. If we have a historical perspective, we would find that even the great Lincoln was accused of being an evil man, a gorilla, an ignoramus, both before he was elected president and during his presidency. Indeed the Federalists portrayed Jefferson as the epitome of evil. Democrats thought that Teddy Roosevelt was a lunatic. Republicans were convinced Lyndon Johnson was destroying American youth in an unwinnable war. Democrats thought that Reagan was about to end humanity with his attitude toward nuclear weapons.

Nowadays, we have the unfortunate situation of constant social media filling our eyes and ears with absurdities. It is hard to know what to believe. I try to have a balanced perspective, and reserve judgment. Let’s see what happens.

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What the Sport of Fishing Taught Me

Posted on February 4, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Many years ago, when I was in the Boy Scouts, on a particular camping trip in Oklahoma in late autumn, I recall fishing at a small pond, and catching a fairly large bass. For some inexplicable reason I proceeded to experiment with the fish. I took a stick and begin poking it in the eyes, and face, essentially torturing it, and watching it die.

I learned how to fish from my Dad and his parents, my grandparents, who loved to go to area lakes and fish for bass, bluegill, perch, and crappie. They would bait hooks with small fish, minnows, or fat worms, not caring whether or not the minnows or worms cared, then cast the lines in the lake or stream, and wait for the bobber to bob, then descend under water, which meant a fish had taken the bait. The excitement of reeling the fish in was exceeded only by pulling it out of the water, watching it struggling at the end of the hook, and feeling the pride of the catch. Extracting the hook from the fish’s mouth was often difficult; sometimes the fish had swallowed it; other times it was too deep in the mouth. Notwithstanding the hook, the fish was either kept or thrown back—kept if it was fat and healthy enough to eat, thrown back if too small or insignificant. Maiming, killing, discarding the fish was never considered by the fishers.

Children are taught the power, if not the love, of God from the beginning. Any creature below a human is subjected, on a whim, to pain, torture, or death. Flies are swatted, mosquitoes slapped, bees and wasps sprayed with poison, spiders crushed, worms stepped on; besides the disregard for life in the insect world, children are taught as well that the lives of other vermin are unworthy—mice, rats, moles, rabbits, squirrels, frogs, toads, fish, birds, coyotes, foxes, skunks, opossums: it is a mighty list of the animals that are discarded and put to death without a second thought. Hunters build their ego by seeking trophies of various sorts: deer, panthers, wolves, moose, bear, and more. Only a few animals deemed near extinction receive any kind of consideration, usually from government and not individuals.

Because humans in America over the past several centuries destroyed many of the predators that preyed on animals such as deer, there is an overabundance of deer, and hunting is a useful way to reduce the numbers to maintain a balanced ecosystem. Killing for the sake of maintaining nature’s balance is justified, though it can be taken to extremes as well. For example, the federal government pays killers of barred owls in the northwest to reduce their numbers so that the spotted owl will not go extinct. Killing one animal to save another: quite a moral dilemma! I have a very simplistic view about such a situation. I feel that if it is part of God’s plan that one species dominates another, what am I to do about it? Am I to be responsible for the survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom? It seems that humans have imposed themselves already way too much in nature’s original order as created by God, and that continued or increased imposition by humans in nature might be more negative than positive.

It is just one more step, in the disregard for life, for a child to learn that human life itself is subject to individual whims to terminate or discard. Humans have reached a point of moral depravity wherein we must decide if an unborn human in the womb is more or less important than the mother’s ease, freedom, and life. The arrogance of humans has, in fact, advanced even farther than ever before. We have tests to determine the health and viability of the fetus, which if it appears to have defects, can be terminated.
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Life is so prolific that it has become cheap.

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Christian Missionaries–Books to Read

Posted on January 23, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

I am a historian, and one of my favorite topics to write on is the Christian missionary experience in America.
I have just reissued on Amazon a book about Baptist missionaries in America, particularly in Oklahoma: “Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years.”
This is the story of Bacone College, founded as Indian University in 1880. Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, reached out to the American Indians of Oklahoma and beyond to provide a Christian liberal arts education. The initial goal of the college was to train missionaries, but as time passed the college embrace students from dozens of tribes to provide a primary, secondary, and college education. Bacone College recently closed in its 145th year due to mismanagement and poor decision-making by administrators and trustees. But its legacy remains for those thousands the school educated over so many years. It was a school that showed that missionary work to the American Indian did not have to be brutal and heart-rending, rather a good, productive experience that many alumni looked fondly back on. The narrative is told with an emphasis on the stories of those students over the many decades: their learning, their writings, their general experiences in this small college in Creek Nation, Oklahoma. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/0977244806

Another book I’ve written, which is forthcoming in August 2026, to be published by Bloomsbury, is “American Catholics.” Beginning with North America’s contact with three imperialist powers (Spain, France, and England), this narrative account tells the story of how Catholicism became and continues to be part of the basic religious and cultural fiber of North America. The book follows a narrative chronological and thematic format, focusing on people, events, practices, social and cultural phenomena, and institutions. People discussed include the well-known, such as Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, and the not-so-well-known, such as Juniper Berthiaume and Jean Louis Berlandier.
With 32 chapters divided into 7 parts and all drawing on primary sources, this book engages with topics such as the overwhelming violence against Indigenous people and the religion’s role in wars, politics, and modern-day culture–but also, in the basic love for the American Indians that most Roman Catholic missionaries had. See https://www.amazon.com/American-Catho…
In my extensive research on missionaries, I have discovered that they were generally good people who simply wanted to introduce people to God–nothing more. An example is Daniel Little, a Protestant clergyman in 18th century Maine. Naturalist, scientist, pastor, missionary, Daniel Little became known as the “Apostle of the East” by his contemporaries and admirers for his many missionary journeys along Maine’s eastern frontier. He spent much of his life ministering to the English settlers and Indians of the Penobscot valley. See https://www.amazon.com/Apostle-East-J…
Find out a side to American history that is often portrayed negatively but rather is positive and a joy to learn about. Happy reading!

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Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: An American Character

Posted on January 23, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Philip Marlowe, as presented in Raymond Chandler’s novels, especially The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely, presents a distinctly American character.
Marlow has a personal moral code. It does not seem to be based on anything—authority, scripture, law—besides his own experiences with life. His life as been a struggle: with success, with insubordination, with putting himself in difficult situations. He knows he will not find the truth unless he takes risks. And the truth is not a grand all-encompassing truth (at first glance) but a truth covering a specific issue in time and place. It involves someone, a nobody, being hurt. Marlowe himself is a nobody (as people keep telling him), trying to help nobodies, like war veteran and alcoholic Terry Lennox, or the dying, forgotten old man, General Sternwood, or a sleazy blackmailer who is killed, Lindsay Marriot, or other low-life’s.
Life is a priority to Marlowe. If someone’s life is taken there has been a basic crime against Marlow’s sense of morality. If someone is trying to lie, such as the authorities, he wants to find the truth. Truth, like life, is a priority. Self-respect is also part of his moral code. He is not Christian, but he clearly believes in “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” He wants people to treat him honestly and with respect, as he does others. He believes in hard work. He does not believe in handouts. He believes we deserve what we get—what we put into life we get back accordingly. Hard work leads to results. Laziness gets no results.
But as he lives according to his personal moral code, he struggles. With boredom, loneliness, anonymity, insufficient income—and he deals with it by self-medication with booze and cigarettes.
Sometimes his honesty gets him in trouble. No dissimulation with him. He tells it like it is and has to deal with the consequences. He wants honesty back, no matter how painful it is to hear.
Is he a representative of the American character? He has no birthright. He fights for what he can get. He is no nonsense. He believes in truth. He believes in honesty. He believes in work. He believes in minding his own business. He believes in treating others as he wants to be treated. He has an inherent sense of equality respecting the poor, racial and ethnic groups, the law, and justice. Equality applies to all—the only exceptions are the degenerate and criminal, and they still deserve justice. Justice is hard to come by; one must work for it. Do not give up. Truth, honesty, self-respect, justice, are all often out of reach. But they are still there; they still exist.
This is the moral point of view as formed by the Great Depression, World War II, and its aftermath. It is the moral point of view of 1776, the new nation, the American as Crevecoeur defined it, as DeTocqueville defined it, as Lincoln annunciated it, as Wilson expressed it in appealing to Americans, and to the world, to fight for and defend it.
Mobsters, dirty cops, politicians, the wealthy, druggies, ideologues, degenerates, any enemy, cannot get in the way of this Americanness. Marlowe fights for the America that he believes in.

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Robert Hamilton, Baptist Missionary, and the Jesus Road

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Robert Hamilton, a friend and associate of Mary P. Jayne and Joseph S. Murrow, was one of the first missionaries sent by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to western Oklahoma; Hamilton worked with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people from the 1890s to the 1920s. Hamilton, who had been ordained a Baptist missionary in 1892, was a man of tremendous drive and devotion, energy and patience, curiosity and courage. He, like other missionaries in Oklahoma before and after statehood, cared for the indigenous people, whom he considered to be like children; he was their missionary father, and indeed the Indians themselves adopted the designations of “children” and “father” when addressing him. Hamilton understood that “the Indians are by nature religious, mystical, ritualistic, reverent,” as he wrote in The Gospel Among the Red Man, a partially autobiographical account of Baptist missionary activities in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. “It is one of the evidences of the divine nature of the gospel, and of the efficiency of the Holy Spirit to ‘guide into all truth,’ that the missionary to a primitive people, with an unskilled interpreter, can get the message to them, and the resultant surprising grasp they have of divine truth.” In the manuscript account, Sketch of Work Among Cheyennes and Arapahos, Hamilton narrated in third person the scene when in 1892 he began to meet with the Cheyennes: 

These Indians had only nineteen years before quit the warpath, and were living in the midst of a people, who if they had understood them, might have been a great blessing and help to them, but who viewed them with suspicion, and only visited their camps out of curiosity or to trade with them. For these reasons, they continued to live apart from their white neighbors, practicing, in Hamilton’s view, the most disgusting of heathen customs in the name of religion. Mr. Hamilton attended an Indian burial, at which a woman cut gashes in her arms and legs for the dead, until the blood ran down to the ground. He saw women, who in their grief for their children, had cut off a joint of their fingers one after another until their hands were but stubs. 

More astonishing was the Sun Dance ceremony “at which twenty men stripped of all their clothing, danced continuously for three days and nights without food or water. . . . Others had places cut in their breasts, and a skewer put through under a muscle, and this tied to a rope which was attached to a central pole of the dance lodge. Throwing their weight upon the rope, they would dance until the muscles were torn out.” He also witnessed the Ghost Dance, “where all night long, they formed a large circle, going round and round keeping step to the weird, plaintive music as they sang their Messianic songs. He saw a woman go inside the circle and stand for more than an hour with her hands stretched out toward the north, praying most fervently, while the tears ran down her face, pleading for the coming of the Indian Messiah. Her tone and posture expressed the most intense longing. Finally exhausted, she fell in a swoon.”

Into this environment, Hamilton came preaching the Gospel, comparing himself to the Apostle Paul. Although Hamilton was vain and full of himself, he nevertheless believed wholeheartedly in the Great Commission given by Christ to His disciples. Delivering the Gospel was the sole object to him, and he and his family endured privation and the environmental extremes of western Oklahoma to succeed in this self-appointed goal. Hamilton witnessed the conflict and confusion that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes experienced over the correct path to happiness: the traditional road or the Jesus Road. He heard firsthand accounts from Indian men and women, a few of whom could speak English; for others, Hamilton relied on interpreters, such as the Cheyennes Philip Cook and Moore Vanhorn, the latter of whom was an early convert and enthusiastic Christian, despite having suffered many wrongs in his youth at the hands of white soldiers. In the manuscript pamphlet Christmas with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Hamilton described the anguish of two women, who had been through much sorrow because of personal loss of family, including their children: “One who had lost her son said that when he died, she had been tempted to throw away the Jesus Road, and take up again her old heathen religion, but that now she could see that it was better to trust in Jesus, and that she could see that His way was right, she asked the church to forgive her for her sinful thoughts, and promised to walk in the ‘Road’ more carefully.” In the manuscript Sketch of Work Among the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Hamilton described the personal experience of “one old man,” who “told the missionary that in the olden times it was thought an honorable thing to steal from those who were not their friends, and the man who could steal the most horses and cattle, and thus make the best feasts and presents to his people, had the greatest respect. . . . How Jesus had changed his heart from that way of doing[!] Now he had learned to love his enemies, and to do good to all men, and his life bears out his testimony.” In the same manuscript, Hamilton described how some Cheyennes, “who started in the way ‘went back and walked no more with Him’,” and began to persecute those who stayed on the Jesus Road. Such antagonists rejected Christians who were to join a delegation of the tribe going to Washington because they considered the Christian Cheyenne to be too close to the white man, and therefore influenced in the wrong way by Christianity. Moreover, “Christians were told by the Ghost Dance prophets that when the Indian Messiah came and restored the Indians and the buffalo, that all the Indians, who were found in the white man’s religion, would be destroyed with the white people.” Even so, some Ghost Dancers, such as the Arapaho, Hail, in time rejected their beliefs to follow the Jesus Road. The Plains Indian “medicine man,” however, graced with the knowledge of the mystical selection of himself to influence the powers of nature, was less inclined to renounce his pagan beliefs, and was the most formidable opponent of Indian converts. Hamilton recorded the case of a Cheyenne “medicine man” who went so far as to hex a Christian Indian couple: “this medicine man had an arrow, called the arrow of jealousy or hate. When dipped in a certain preparation known only to the fraternity, and shot in the direction of his victim, though miles away, the substance would search him out, and his destruction was certain.” Hamilton rode miles to find the couple, then told them that the medicine man’s threats were the work of Satan (Eahwo), and believers in Christ could put off Satan. “After prayer they were able to cast off the delusion, and peace of mind was restored.”

               Hamilton recounted another example of religious change among the Cheyennes of Oklahoma: “[One] old man . . . on being received for baptism, related the following touching incident. ‘The first religious act that impressed itself on my childish mind [the old man recounted], was when a small boy on my mother’s back. At that time my mother made an offering of two buffalo robes to the Great Spirit, and prayed for me, asking that I might live and grow up to be a good man. Later when I was a young man, I met a white man with a kind face and a soft voice, who told me that I ought to love and worship Jesus. He gave me this[–the old man drew] from his breast a crucifix, which he wore next his skin, under his shirt, attached to a string about his neck . . . and told me always to keep it. I have worn it over my heart ever since. I do not pray to it, but have kept it to remind me of the good man and his words. When the missionaries came to our reservation, I was glad to learn that they knew about this same Jesus. I never miss an opportunity to hear them tell about Him, and I was glad when I learned that I could be His friend and follower’.”

The Plains Indians of western Oklahoma discovered, in the words of the missionary, explanations for human behavior, for mistakes and doubts, for unhappiness and suffering. Even the fiercest warriors sought to be embraced in overwhelming love. The closest experiences to such love that tribal beliefs offered were the promises of happiness in the next life, or the benevolence of the Great Spirit, or the means by which nature nourished, clothed, and sheltered them. The Kiowa Sanco adapted the natural theology inherent in Christianity to his own experiences of delight and satisfaction when finding a pure stream of bright, crystal water, or when coming from out of the darkness of a spring thunderstorm into the broad horizon of the plains covered by the ubiquitous rays of the sun. Not only did Christianity emphasize the importance of natural history in the scheme of redemption, but one’s personal physical and spiritual experiences were known to God, who watched to see whether or not these peripatetic people would keep to the Jesus Road, eschewing all other roads as distractions of ignorance, hubris, and idleness.

For more on the Baptist missionaries of Oklahoma, see Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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Mary P. Jayne, Baptist Missionary, and the Jesus Road

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Mary P. Jayne was long-time Baptist missionary to the American Indians, particularly the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Pawnee. She dedicated her life to directing American Indians, particularly in Oklahoma, along the Jesus Road.

Jayne grew up in Iowa in the Baptist heritage, though there was no church nearby. Her parents owned “an old brown book of Indian stories. By the dim light of the oil lamp she pored over the incidents that told of the life of the Red Man, and there grew in her heart a great love for that people and a longing to see the scenes pictured in the stories.” Later teaching at a small school in Nebraska, “her path to the school . . . led her over the very ground on which Cheyennes, Arapahoes and Pawnees had fought their battles since time immemorial, and down through a wooded ravine their fallen warriors were buried. It was a daily echo of the call to take the gospel to the Indians.” She taught in Iowa from 1891 to 1893 and worked as a missionary in Chicago before attending the Baptist Missionary Training School. From 1896 to 1913, she was a missionary to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes of western Oklahoma, working with Robert Hamilton. The day she first joined Hamilton to visit the Indians, it seemed to her “like a picture from her old brown book come to life”; “she felt as if she, too, were in a story, for it was awfully hard to realize that at last her dreams of telling the story of Jesus to the Indians was a reality.” Work among the Cheyennes was difficult in part because of their poverty and anguish, and difficulty in letting go of the old ways. It required perseverance and stamina; Jayne worked among the Cheyenne and Arapaho for almost twenty years, then worked among the Pawnees and Otoes of north-central Oklahoma until 1924; during this time she also “was director of the Christian work in the Chilocco Indian School.”

In 1924 she moved to Bacone, where she became Barnett Hall matron. Her room at Barnett had a library that “is one of the most valuable in existence on Indian history and tradition. By those who know, she is accounted one of the best informed persons on Indian life and history.” Jayne was a dormitory matron for boys of Barnett Hall. According to one story, printed in the Bacone Indian in 1929, the Barnett boys were constantly sneaking about after hours, getting together to tell funny stories and laugh. “Suddenly a weird whisper comes from the lookout, ‘Miss Jayne.’ the words fairly crackle and hiss down the hall. As if by magic, the hall is empty. Boys vanish into the nearest doorways like rats into their holes. Once inside, they seek refuge in bed, behind doors, in closets and any other available places. Woe be unto the poor lad who is caught in the hall. Such a tongue-lashing as he does get!” Miss Jayne dealt with boys from numerous tribes.

Jayne retired from her work at Bacone in 1933, moving to California to try to rebuild her failing health. The traveling Red Men’s Glee Club of the College visited her in the summer 1934; homesick, she returned to Bacone in January, 1935, to live in a small two room house that was newly built by her. Immediately upon arriving, she suffered illness requiring hospitalization. She recovered to live two more years, dying January 5, 1937; she was buried in the Bacone cemetery. The funeral was in the Bacone chapel, conducted by President Weeks, with the students singing her favorite hymns. Of the pallbearers—Lewis Rhodd, Roy Gourd, Acee Blue Eagle, Jack White, Richard and Harvey West—Rhodd, Gourd, and Blue Eagle were former students, now faculty at Bacone, while the latter three “were sons of Cheyenne and Arapaho parents whom she had served in earlier years.”

She left “a considerable sum” of her savings “to the Home Mission Society for the training of Indian youth at Bacone College”; her valuable papers recounting her days as a missionary in Oklahoma were preserved in the Indian Room of the Bacone College library.

The above narrative is taken from Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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Patrick Hurley, Secretary of War under Hoover, and the Jesus Road

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Patrick Hurley was soldier during World War, Secretary of War during the Hoover administration, a lawyer for the Choctaw people, a diplomat for Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, and a philanthropist. One of the special objects of his philanthropy both materially and spiritually were the American Indian students at Bacone College.

Hurley matriculated at Indian University (Bacone College) in the early 1900s, graduating in 1905. Hurley was Caucasian, from the small coal town of Phillips in the Choctaw Nation. His father was a coal miner, an occupation that Patrick was forced to embrace when he was eleven years old. He also worked as a mule driver and cowboy before getting a chance to attend Indian University. When Pat was seventeen, he worked with two Cherokee boys “at Brush Mountain, Oklahoma, feeding cattle for a Mr. Hellinghausen.” The two boys attended Indian University; they invited Pat to accompany them to the campus to have a look. He met President Scott. “The next day,” Hurley recalled for a reporter forty-five years later, “’Father’ J. S. Murrow . . . and President Scott drove a surrey to where ‘Pat’ was branding calves. ‘Would you like to go to school?’ they asked the young man. ‘Yes, but I have no money,’ he replied.” The men nevertheless invited him to the college, where he could work to pay his tuition. “These two gentlemen literally picked me off the prairie and started me on the way to an education,” Hurley remembered. Hurley’s mother had instilled in him studious habits and the love of books, which enabled Hurley to thrive at Indian University. Fellow students saw in Hurley a dedicated worker, faith-filled man, articulate orator, and energetic leader. He was gregarious and likeable, loud and outgoing. He played the french horn in the college orchestra formed by Professor Collette. Years later, Hurley recalled one time when he had missed class while nursing a broken arm. He had to take an algebra test, and his professor, J. G. Masters, allowed the young man all afternoon and evening to complete the test. When during World War II President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Hurley how he had acquired his abilities as a thinker and statesman, Hurley responded that Indian University, along with the study of history and religion, were the ingredients of his success.

Hurley was Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, the Baconian, in 1905, which allowed him to explore and elaborate on the many ideas he was developing and crystallizing at Indian University. In the February issue, for example, he wrote about the Bible: “There is no literature of modern times that has not been ennobled and enriched by it or has not felt its inspiration and power.” He said of good books, “that the man’s actions are those which have been produced from his reading, for the actions are only the outward manifestation of what is within.” Of Indian University, he wrote: “Our school is a body of great complexity. Each individual throbs with life and energy. In a measure each lives to himself, yet the life of the school is the resultant of the life of each individual member enrolled.” Of the prospects that Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory would combine into one state, Hurley predicted: “The new state will have all the attributes necessary to give it a high rank among the commonwealth, to insure its prosperity and in all to make it a strong factor in national politics.” Hurley’s editorial revealed  his awareness of the seminal issues involved in the problem of statehood.

After graduation Hurley studied law and made his home in Tulsa. He became the Choctaw tribal attorney. In 1914, Hurley returned to Bacone in November to help dedicate a new chapel on campus, located in Rockefeller Hall. He spoke before the students, after which Rev. Van Meigs preached, and the college chorus sang.

Since his graduation in 1905, Hurley had maintained ties with the college, sometimes supporting needy students financially, sometimes appearing on campus to speak and encourage. In 1928, he became president of the Alumni Association at the same time as he crossed the state campaigning on behalf of Herbert Hoover. In 1929, Hoover rewarded Hurley by appointing him Assistant Secretary of War. Hurley had fought in World War I, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Upon the death of Secretary of War James Good, Hoover elevated Hurley to the cabinet position. The Secretary of War returned to his alma mater in June, 1931, to deliver the commencement address. The Index-Journal of South Carolina headlined that “’Paleface’ Hurley Soon to Revisit His Indian School.” Hurley arrived in June. It was the silver, 50th anniversary, of what had been Indian University when Hurley attended. President Weeks, who had previously invited Hurley to speak at commencement, this time successfully so, admired Hurley for many reasons, one of which was his frankness and transparency. When Hurley had arrived at Oklahoma in 1928 to campaign for Hoover, he had stopped at Atoka to meet with Father Murrow. Murrow, who had helped Hurley attend Indian University, had known his mother; he told Hurley of “her gentleness, her refinement, her superiority, and her hopes for him.” Mary Kelly Hurley had died when Patrick was eleven. That evening, after his meeting with Murrow, Hurley broke down and “wept” at the hotel dinner table. “He threw aside all reserve, power and poise as he spoke of his appreciation for his mother, and of how he had tried to be true to the ideals she had cherished.” Hurley had “promised his mother on her deathbed that he would get an education and make something of himself.” Weeks wrote that “in that moment I saw the greatness of his soul as I had never seen it before.” 

The Bacone College Company of the National Guard greeted Hurley upon his arrival to the hill-top in June, 1931; a nineteen-gun salute of heavy artillery brought tears to his eyes. “Who would ever have believed thirty-five years ago when I was a penniless little charity student up there on that hill that the day would ever come when the Guard would be called out to meet me and the guns be firing on my account?” Addressing the numerous guests, including Governor W. J. Holloway, state and local officials, dozens of prestigious Bacone alumni, and the faculty, staff, and students of Bacone College, Hurley spoke of his gratitude to Samuel Murrow and J. H. Scott “for the opportunity they gave me to receive an education.” Why did they care to give him, an insignificant youth, an education? He pondered this question when Weeks asked him to consider, “why should we educate the Indians?” Weeks’ question raises “every element of the Indian problem and the relationship of the Indians to the Government and to their fellow citizens.” The Indian problem Hurley referred to involved Caucasians spending centuries trying to figure out what to do with these different people—embrace them, civilize them, or destroy them? For civilized Christians, as Bacone once said, the only option is to civilize and Christianize them—to leave them be is out of the question, partly because of the acquisitive nature of white civilization. Although of Irish ancestry, Hurley said: “I know the Indian. I know his characteristics. I was reared among the Indians. I went to school with them. I served the Choctaws for years as National Attorney. The then Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation gave me my first opportunity for public life. I have served in the Army with many of them. I am under a debt of gratitude to the Indians. I am willing to analyze the Indian’s character as a friend who is deeply interested in their welfare.” The Indian character as Hurley understood it was agreeable, kind, calm, dignified, courageous, stoic, loyal. If so, then why would there continue to be an “Indian problem”? The “problem,” Hurley said, is as follows: the Indian does not understand private property or the “acquisitive sense of our own race.” The United States government was in error in assuming that Indians could own their land and could operate and make profitable their property without being educated in white property values. The Allotment program failed in part because Indians were not taught about personal property values. Only education can do this.”

We might “deplore” our acquisitive culture, Hurley went on, nevertheless it is reality, and to have Indians be a part of this culture, we have to educate them accordingly. “We have taught the Indian the Christian religion. We have taught him our system of government. We have taught him our manual of arms. We have taught him our code of ethics. But we have not instilled in him the attributes of our civilization pertaining to property. . . . As a race the Indian has not learned that he must be self-sustaining before he can successfully discharge the duties of citizenship.” Of course, Indians were self-sustaining in America before the coming of the Europeans. But in American society, to be a citizen—granted to Indians only seven years before in 1924—they must either own property by which to make a living or work for another who owns property by which many people earn a living; there is no other option, and the failure of many to do this made them dependent upon government.

“Why should we educate the Indian?,” Hurley asked again. “We should educate him because it is the only thing that we can now do that will make any permanent contribution to the welfare of the Indian. . . . Education will make the Indian a good citizen. It will make him self-sustaining. It will assure to him a life of service of happiness. . . . Schools have become the great levelers in America. Education eliminates class distinction.” Since Indians are now citizens, education will bring them up to par with other citizens. 

Hurley told the Class of 1931 that character is determined by common sense, courage, and work, which is the key to self-respect. “Be yourself. Do not try to act a borrowed part. If you do so, you will deceive no one but yourself.”

In March, 1936, Hurley returned to campus and spoke to students in the chapel of Rockefeller Hall. He praised Bacone College as the institution that “has furnished more idealism to Oklahoma” than any comparable institution. Changing his tune slightly from his address of 1931 celebrating the college’s fiftieth anniversary, Hurley proclaimed that because Indians lack “the acquisitive sense, the attitude that success is based on material gain,” he “is superior to the Caucasian race as a student of real art and as one capable of Christian living at its best.” Hurley said that besides his mother, Bacone was closest to his heart, for here he learned the great lessons of life, including that “the highest attribute of humanity is clean, honorable sentiment, for as a man thinketh in his soul, so is he.”

Hurley, a purple-heart recipient in World War I, in World War II was promoted from Brigadier General to Major General, sent by President Roosevelt to the Pacific theater in 1942, where he organized supply logistics from Australia to Bataan in the Philippines in a failed attempt to keep the Philippines out of Japanese hands. While in Australia he experienced the fierce Japanese air attack on Port Darwin, and was injured by shrapnel in the hand; he also survived a Japanese attack on his plane when flying over the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). He briefly served as U. S. Ambassador to New Zealand, before being sent as President Roosevelt’s personal representative to the Soviet Union. There he met with Joseph Stalin and had a chance to view Soviet troops in action fighting against the Germans. Hurley served on the U. S. diplomatic entourage at the conferences at Cairo and Tehran, where the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China met to discuss war strategy. In 1943, he also met with David Ben Gurion and the Zionists of Palestine who were pressuring the British and Americans to grant an independent state to the Israelis. Hurley was not impressed by the forceful imperialism of the British upon the Palestinians, nor by the imperialist, expansionist claims of the Soviets. His anti-imperialistic views were deepened when now Major General Hurley was sent by President Roosevelt as his personal representative to China in 1944. There he met with the Communist Mao Zedong and the Nationalist Chang Kai-Shek, who represented a divided Chinese people at civil war at the same time as they were fighting Japanese aggression. Hurley distrusted the Communists and threw his support behind the more democratic Nationalists. 

Patrick Hurley returned to Washington after his busy diplomatic activities during the war. Hurley was adamant with anyone who would listen to him that Bacone deserved the attention of donors to help it build an endowment for the future. He believed that “few if any institutions in Oklahoma or in the entire Southwest have produced stronger leaders than Bacone.” The school’s recent war record would bear him out on this claim. Hurley had tremendous admiration for the founders of the school, Bacone and Murrow. Bacone “is a Christian school that grew on a rough and turbulent frontier, and yet maintained its Christian qualities. Killing was prevalent then. Out there it was not considered such a bad thing to kill a man, until Bacone got to talking. Bacone sent men out who preached from the pulpits, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.” Sometimes love can lead to exaggeration: Hurley’s derived in part from Bacone’s seclusion, a small oasis of learning amid the Oklahoma prairie.

In the 1960s, Hurley donated funds to Bacone College to build a new President’s home, subsequently called Hurley House. He died in 1963.

The above narrative is taken from Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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Pious Scientists in the Late Middle Ages

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Piety, the awe and respect for God and His Creation, drove philosophers and scientists throughout the Christian era beginning during the Roman Empire and continuing through the European Middle Ages—and beyond. Christian philosopher-scientists relied heavily on their Greek and Roman predecessors throughout this thousand-year period. The most important ancient scientist was the Greek Aristotle. His work as the premier scientist in Western Civilization continued for over two thousand years after his death in 322 ante christos. Part of the reason for this were the thoughts, books, and works of the philosopher-scientists of the late Middle Ages: Anselm of Canterbury, Bonaventure of Paris, Albert Magnus, and especially Thomas Aquinas.

The eleventh-century Saint and philosopher-scientist Anselm of Canterbury like all great Medieval thinkers was influenced by ancient scientist-philosophers, including the last ancient and first medieval philosopher, the theologian St. Augustine. St. Anselm’s famous dictum that God is that being “something greater than which we can conceive of nothing,” merely expanded on Augustine’s question, “if you find nothing above our reason save what is eternal and unchangeable, would you hesitate to call this God?” Anselm, trained in the Trivium, used the simple logical deduction that even the fool knows that God exists, for in denying the existence of God the fool, in recognizing the idea of God, that humans have conceived of a supernatural being, “God,” gives credence to the existence of the idea. The fool might respond, “I conceive of dragons, therefore they exist.” Anselm responds, dragons are not an entity or idea greater than which cannot be conceived, but God is. To think and to understand are the same; Anselm argued a proof for the existence of God by his words and thoughts, which to him formed his understanding. Likewise, as the Apostle John said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.”

An advance in the thinking of the commensurability of piety and science occurred in the thirteenth century in France, where there were great thinkers at the University of Paris, two of which were John of Fidanza, called Bonaventure, and Albertus Magnus. Philosopher-scientists during the late Middle Ages benefited from the work of pious Muslim scientists who were heavily influenced by works of Aristotle that survived the Fall of Rome in the eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, the capitol of which was Constantinople. There was much interchange between Christian philosopher-scientists in Constantinople and Muslim philosopher-scientists in Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo. Aristotle’s works were translated from the Greek to Arabic, which spread throughout Muslim lands, such as in North Africa, to Spain, where his works were translated from Arabic to Latin. The Andalusian Ibn Rushd (Averroes), an Aristotelian commentator who believed that “he who studies anatomy increases his belief in God,” had a huge impact of scientists such as Albertus Magnus. Like Ibn Rushd, Albertus Magnus was an encyclopedic synthesizer of the work of Aristotle, seeing the connections between Aristotle’s scientific methods and Christian theology. He believed that the encyclopedic knowledge of Aristotle and the ancients would add to, rather than detract from, Christian piety.

There was an intellectual revolution, then, in 13th century Europe as theologians embraced the thought of the pagan empiricist Aristotle and tied it to Christianity, the thinking being that Christianity would not be the sine qua non of thought unless embraced by philosophy and science.

That Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica, the Sum of Theology, was the logical outcome of the centuries of Christian and Muslim philosopher-scientists who slowly synthesized ancient and medieval knowledge, pagan philosophy and science and Christian theology. Aquinas’ Summa attempted to reconcile Greek philosophy and science with Christian theology. He had at his disposal a vast corpus of Aristotle’s works, making great use of them in his writing and thinking, Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotelian methods to arrive at logical proofs about the existence and nature of God and His works. The Sum of Theology was, for Thomas, devoted to approaching an understanding of God.

Many Medieval philosopher-scientists, such as Anselm, and including Thomas Aquinas, relied heavily on the Greek philosopher Plato’s arguments for a transcendent being, completely immaterial, to comprehend which required an intuitive metaphysical approach by the philosopher. Thomas embraced Aristotle’s view that human senses are the fundamental source of knowledge. Hence the body and the mind are joined to understand the nature of being. God the Creator is the first mover creating all material things, which are the effects of His creative acts. The human can study the effects to derive knowledge of the cause, even the First Cause. This was the principle Thomas used to prove the existence of God—not just by faith, but by reason and the scientific method. In this he relied on Aristotelian logic. Movement occurs from a potential to move to actual movement. How? Whatever is moved is moved by another. A mover and the moved cannot be the same. God is the First Mover. There is no such thing as eternal movement. There has to be a beginning, a First Mover. This Mover, God, exists out of His own necessity; there is no possibility of His nonexistence. He moves and causes movement by the force of necessity. All beings are more or less than compared to God; there exists a hierarchic realm of being. God is the most being. Things in nature, caused by God, act invariably toward their designed end. This is the teleologic view of Creation and existence.

To descend a bit from metaphysics to more concrete examples: Thomas asks, “Does God exist?” Yes, because movement is caused by a mover, which cannot be the same. This is “evident to the senses.” Nothing can be both “potentiality and actuality.” Fire is actually hot, while wood is potentially hot. Fire can transform wood, but then wood is no longer potential fire, but actual fire. In existence, there are different degrees. There must be something that is not just more or less but absolute. How can we say, “more hot” if there is not “hot,” the basic absolute principle? “Whatever is superior in any class,” Thomas wrote, “is the cause of all things which are in that class, just as fire, which is hottest of all, is the cause of whatever is hot.”

Now combining science and philosophy with theology: All movement derives from the First Mover, God. This movement is directed by His providence. Thus all human intellect is moved or acts ultimately because it is derived from God. The human intellect knows only what God bestows on it; anything more comes from Grace. Nevertheless, humans have free will. Human judgment to act is not just instinct, “but some act of comparison in reason.” By free will humans erred, but after The Fall, some Good still prevailed in humans, which is the basis for humans continually striving for the ultimate Good. Human will reaches a point, however, where Grace alone is necessary for The Good.

Much of the thought of the thirteenth century, including the thought of Thomas Aquinas, was involved in reconciling the different philosophical traditions of Plato and Aristotle. Thomas was clearly influenced by both. In his study and use of Aristotle, he saw what Aristotle saw, that Plato’s deduction alone is insufficient, but must include inductive analysis, which is to start at the basics and from there arrive at the pinnacle of human thought. Induction is a step toward modern empirical science. Thomas as a scientist, achieving vast knowledge, always realized that human reason is insufficient to know, to comprehend God and His Ways. Piety alone remained at the end of his inquiries.

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books

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Early Medieval Pious Scientists

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

The Fall of Rome had a profound effect on learning and knowledge. After the fifth century A.D. those who were concerned with philosophy, which at this time included science, scrambled to keep track of the great books of the Greco-Roman past. Most of the philosophers and scientists of the several centuries after the Fall of Rome were commentators, especially on Aristotle, and encyclopedists, preserving the information of the past. A few of these thinkers stand out, especially Boethius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Isidore of Seville. Early Medieval scientists like their forebears (such as Philo Judaeus), approached their scientific and philosophic labors looking into God’s creation with piety.

Early Medieval philosophers, including scientists and theologians, relied heavily on their Greek and Latin predecessors but provided advancements in the understanding of the Greek Logos, the Trivium and the Quadrivium, and Aristotelian thought. Boethius was a Greek philosopher living in the Latin West who was heavily influenced by Christian thinkers such as Augustine and pagan thinkers such as Aristotle. Like most ancient thinkers, Boethius believed that there is an ultimate supernatural cause for all things, which follow an inherent law; nothing is random. He therefore agreed with the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of an ultimate being or logos. He was especially influenced by the thinking of St. Augustine in his understanding of divine foreknowledge and free will, arguing that God is the creator of time, is beyond time, and therefore exists in the singular moment, able to see all events—past, present, and future—simultaneously. Before he was falsely executed for treason by the Gothic king Theodoric, Boetius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, and planned an extensive commentary on Aristotle, of which he completed part. He studied physics, astronomy, and mathematics.

John Scotus Eriugena was a philosopher, scientist, and theologian who was active in the ninth -century Carolingian Empire. He believed, in such works as On the Division of Nature, that faith in God is insufficient without reason, meaning the philosophy of, especially, Aristotle and Plato. He believed wholly that Christ the Logos fulfilled ancient philosophy and science: the Logos is the Creative Word through which all things come to be, and they can be understood only through faith informed through philosophy and science. Eriugena argued that the Creation is divided into five components: “a nature which creates but is not created; . . . a nature which creates and is created; . . .  a nature which is created and does not create; . . . a nature which neither creates nor is created. . . . The fifth and last division is that of man into masculine and feminine. In him, namely in man, all visible and invisible creatures were constituted.”* He believed in the Chain of Being, that God made all things possible, which never change; humans are midway between the spiritual and corporeal realms, therefore by having a body and soul represent all things.

Isidore of Seville the early seventh-century (Orthodox) Bishop of Seville was a Christian philosopher-scientist who declared that “philosophy is the knowledge of things human and divine.” Isidore put together a massive collection of writing, mostly derived from ancient philosophers and scientists, titled Etymologies, arguing that “a knowledge of etymology is often necessary in interpretation, for, when you see whence a name has come, you grasp its force more quickly. For every consideration of a thing is clearer when its etymology is known.” Believing therefore that proper nomenclature is the basis for identifying, hence coming to understand, all things, he set forth to acquire as much knowledge as he could. He was an encyclopedist at heart, a collector and commentator, especially fueled by Aristotle as well as other encyclopedic minds such as the Roman first century anno domini scientist the Elder Pliny as well as the Roman first century Ante Christos compiler Marcus Terentius Varro.

The work of the polymath Isidore had a lasting impact on human history, even to today, because he was one of the creators and promoters of the Trivium and Quadrivium of the ancient and medieval liberal arts. The Trivium—Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic—and the Quadrivium—Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy—were the bases of ancient and medieval thought, science, and education, as they continue to be the building blocks of modern educational practice. Grammar to Isidore was the study of language—Greek, Latin, Hebrew—because of which the scientist gains a working knowledge on how to proceed with analysis. Rhetoric is the expression of such knowledge so to impart it to others. Logic, or philosophy, focused on Aristotle’s dialectical methods. “Dialectic,” Isidore wrote, “is the discipline elaborated with a view of ascertaining the causes of things.” He proclaimed that “natural philosophy is the name given when the nature of each and every thing is discussed, since nothing arises contrary to nature in life, but each thing is assigned to those uses for which it was purposed by the Creator.” Arithmetic, Isidore believed, “is the science of numbers,” that is, to name and count a thing or things is the beginning of knowledge of said things. Geometry relies upon numbers to provide units of measure in spatial relationships, especially respecting distances on Earth. Music as a philosophy and science according to Isidore derived from the work of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras as understood by Plato, that a harmonic “proportion exists in the universe, being constituted by the revolving circles” of the heavenly bodies. The harmonies of “the microcosm” in life and nature have “such great power than man does not exist without harmony.” Astronomy was Isidore’s catch-all phrase for physical science, the understanding of which relies on Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Music. Astronomy encompassed his geocentric understanding of the motions of the planets (the wanderers in Greek) in perfect spherical orbits; the science of geodesy, the shape and divisions of the earth—regions of heat and coolness; and astrology, of which Isidore was suspicious, not because it seemed an imperfect science, rather because he believed it was associated with demonology.

Isidore was also a commentator on medicine, especially the work of the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen, believing fully in the four humours—phlegm, blood, black bile, yellow bile—and how disease and illness result from the humours being out of balance. He connected the four humours with the four elements of the Greeks—earth, air, fire, and water: “each humor imitates its element: blood, air; bile, fire; black bile, earth; phlegm, water.” He also argued in Etymologies that the human “body is made up of the four elements. For earth is in the flesh; air in the breath; moisture in the blood; fire in the vital heat.”^ Physicians, he concluded, must be trained in the Trivium and Quadrivium to practice their art well.

Early Medieval European philosophy as exemplified by Boethius, Eriugena, and Isidore was an important transitional period, a bridge between the great scientific and philosophic discoveries of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews and the early modern age when the Scientific Revolution occurred. Another transitional figure was Thomas Aquinas, who relied heavily on early Medieval philosophers because of their focus on the Logos, Aristotle, and the Trivium and Quadrivium. When we examine the work of Isidore, we realize that much of what he wrote was absurd: yet in its overall scope, the combination of ancient philosophy and science with Christian theology and his realization that scientific practice and thought are pious activities, his work was essential in the future realization that understanding Nature without understanding its Creator is similarly absurd.

* Translated Wolter: Wippel, John, and Allan Wolter, eds. Medieval Philosophy. (New York: Free Press, 1969).

^ Translated Ernest Brehaut, An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages: Isidore of Seville (New York: Columbia University, 1912).

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books

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