How do you build a free society which encourages people to  be good? How can a good society also make room for dissenters willing to deny themselves nothing?  How does a ruler of a divided society keep the peace? 

A great society without violence persuades us to say no to the many ways of doing wrong while saying yes to the few ways to be decent. An ideal state, thought Plato, is led by adult Guardians. Through their personal example and by their laws, these rulers pass on time-tested habits to young people. In  a utopia things go best when all citizens freely accept the same religion and the same moral code and when a morally good government coerces dissenters to follow community standards.

Historian Carlton Hayes used to say, “Europe is the Faith.” Women and men who felt called to live lives of perfection and godliness could enter a Benedictine monastery or a Dominican or Franciscan convent. In England, after the schism of King Henry VIII, in a flash the monasteries were gone. Many people still felt drawn to lives of perfection. So laymen created new paths to God.

In 1620 on November 11th a chunky vessel of 180 tons named Mayflower dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod. Aboard were officers and a crew of 30 or more rough, at times ungodly and intemperate seamen. There were also 102 passengers, all from the lower classes. The dominant minority divided the immigrants into two groups. There were, first, themselves, whom they called Visible Saints or Saints and the rest, styled Strangers. Along with the paying passengers also came workers for hire and indentured servants.

The Strangers were always the majority. On the Mayflower they came mainly from London and southeast England. Most belonged to the Church of England. Some were “lusty yonge men, and many of them wild enough.” Although technically just an ordinary Stranger, the enigmatic Captain Miles Standish was probably something even stranger, a Roman Catholic. He went on to make himself into a kind of Third Force. Other Strangers  were the famous lovers Priscilla Mullins and John Alden. The Strangers immigrated to New England to make a better economic life for themselves. They were conservative in religion and inherited values.

The Saints of Plymouth, by contrast, were religious innovators. They were  radical Puritans. Visible Saints came to New England to build a heaven on earth within which they prepared to ascend to God after death. They were Separatists, believing in the independence of each small church. They also rejected infant baptism. We now call them Pilgrims.  With another 30,000 more moderate and better educated Puritans who soon came to the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony, Saints came to be called Congregationalists.

The Saints aboard the Mayflower made rules for all the passengers. But just before disembarking, some malcontents proclaimed that “when they came ashore, they would use their own libertie, for none had power to command them.” A  written accommodation was quickly reached: the laconic, justly famed Mayflower Compact. In it Saints and Strangers papered over differences and agreed to “covenant & combine ourselves togeather into a civill body politick.” The Colony, however, quickly made itself into a theocracy. In Plymouth, no one might be a magistrate, policy-maker or even a citizen who was not first a member in good standing of a local congregation. The Saints, virtually required Strangers either to convert or to leave the colony. 

But the ruling Saints made one exception.  Nowhere listed as a communicant,  Captain Miles Standish nonetheless remained commander-in-chief of Plymouth’s armed forces.  So even in God-intoxicated Plymouth, Saints could surprise you.  And for thirty years the colony was governed by a remarkable, diplomatic, untypical Saint, William Bradford.

Even now in America accommodations erupt and surprise, as citizens contend for power to define right and wrong. In Asheville civic spaces are shared by factions differing about reproductive behavior, abortion, euthanasia, religion in the public square and other issues. Sometimes a majority rallying behind a common standard of morality persuades the civil power to take their side and coerce minorities. Increasingly, on other issues, vocal minorities go to the courts and make majorities back off.

Most humans on most issues are conservative. Like the Strangers, we are content to live as our parents and grandparents taught us. Hence, even in Asheville, there is still consensus on most issues. There is, for example, no current outcry claiming some human right to rob banks, to drive on the left side of the road or to kill young, healthy, innocent humans who have survived the womb. It is not new that many people fail to observe society’s standards. What is new is how many shout that whatever they want to do must be good, and glorious and is to be celebrated. End of discussion. 

Once Englishmen fought to establish religion. Now citizens contend  for the power to define bad behavior. Ultra-individualists argue that no synagogue or church may keep me out merely because I will not do something Moses’ way or St. Paul’s way. I am I, and therefore cannot be wrong. Asheville is courteous enough while consensus remains about most  behavior. But confident, unceasing shouting by militant minorities may convert today’s crime into tomorrow’s treasured self-expression. 

Can today’s Saints and Strangers police themselves indefinitely? If not, then, standing above their clashes, preventing violent value wars there looms Leviathan, Big Brother, Government: City, County, State and Federal. 

Wherever there are Saints and Strangers, there must also be a Third Something to keep the peace. There must be an aloof Miles Standish with his little army. And there must also be today’s version of  William Bradford. Repeatedly, the men of Plymouth elected him Governor because his common sense transcended his status as Saint, because of his tact and because of the balanced judgment behind the pen which wrote “Of Plimoth Plantation.” In that classic,  Bradford recorded most of what we know about America’s original Saints and Strangers.

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 for ASHEVILLE TRIBUNE