The Journey to the Mayflower: God’s Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom

Journalist Tomkins (A Short History of Christianity) delivers a painstakingly detailed history of the Separatist movement, from the launch of Queen Mary’s “campaign to burn Protestantism out of England” in 1555 to the pilgrims’ departure for the New World in 1620. Tracing Mary’s crusade to the decision of her father, King Henry VIII, to split from the Roman Catholic Church in order to divorce her mother, Tomkins claims she burned roughly 300 Protestants at the stake over a four-year period, inadvertently sewing the seeds for a “fanatical” religious movement. After Mary’s death, Queen Elizabeth I restored Protestantism to England, but her “idiosyncratic and unusually moderate” version of the faith disappointed puritans who “want[ed] the church more precisely to model itself on the Bible.” Tomkins wades deep into debates over sacraments, vestments, and prayer books, as well as rifts within the Separatist movement itself. Eventually, Elizabeth banned all forms of worship other than those practiced by state-appointed bishops, forcing the Separatists into exile, first in the Netherlands and then at Plymouth colony in New England. Tomkins’s exhaustive chronicle fills in the background to America’s origin story, but general readers may find themselves overwhelmed by theological minutiae. (Jan.)