Did you actually feel sympathy for this woman?

Finding sympathy for Mary Rowlandson was difficult for me. She'd been held in captivity for merely eleven weeks and six days. Her tale just sounds like a really bad camping trip to me. Many people may disagree with me, but I feel a little information on our world today will shed some light on my argument.

Pictured above is a girl by the name of Jaycee Lee Dugard. The photo was taken in 1991, when she was eleven years old. That year she was abducted by a man named Phillip Garrido. Of course, officials didn't find out the kidnapper was him until 2009. During those eighteen years, she'd been hidden in a compound in the man's backyard. I'm not going to go into major detail, but the reader should try to remember her age. When she was rediscovered, two more girls were also found. One was fifteen years old, and the other was eleven. They were Jaycee's daughters, fathered by Garrido. I'd say Rowlandson's captivity is close to a walk in the park. She'd probably talk about her Indian captors a little more respectfully with this tad bit of knowledge. (http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/08/girl_kidnapped_at_11_and_held.html)

In Mary Rowlandson's time a woman may have been seen as weak and unable to protect herself, but even today a child is always seen this way. Compared to statistics of today, the couple hundred people kidnapped by Native Americans is a laughable number to the tens of thousands kidnapped every year in the Americas today. (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_kid-crime-kidnappings)

This trailer is from the 2004 film Man of Fire. The film is set in Mexico, which has one of the highest abduction rates worldwide. I'm hoping that my point is coming across more clearly now. When we read these old stories about people long gone, it makes it easy for us to detach ourselves from the crisis. I personally felt no sympathy for her, and I actually hated her for the way she spoke of the Native Americans. As if you couldn't be more ignorant. The only reason we still read this stuff today is because we like to fool ourselves into believing the writing bears importance. (http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/rownarr.html) I doubt anyone my age actually cares about some Puritan woman being captured by Native Americans. The Puritans deserved everything they received from the Natives. Anyone would agree if they knew about all the terrible things the Puritans did to the Indians.

My final argument is this. Trapped in a trunk sounds worse than a walk in the woods!

Why should I care about Thomas Paine?

While reading sentence after sentence of seemingly never-ending torture, I started to ponder a few things. Why are students required to read this junk? I mean to me "Common Sense" just sounded like a bunch of common sense. How am I supposed to know if Thomas Paine was truly a patriot or a master of propaganda at the time?     Maybe I'm just annoyed that we're given a little bit of information about these authors, and then we are expected to actually care about their writings. Perhaps if I use this blog assignment to hopefully find out more about Paine, then I'll care. Is that not the biggest nose you've ever seen on a human being?

Paine was a white man born in the eighteenth century, and he was anti-slavery. Now that's definitely a unique trait of the time. Even "The Great" General Washington owned slaves. (I use that sarcastically, because history shows us that Washington was a terrible military commander.) At twelve years of age, Paine had failed out of school. Paine also failed as a soldier in the continental army, but he was very influential in motivating the other troops. Paine was poisoned by his brilliance. Far ahead of the thinkers of his time, Paine was frequently criticized and even imprisoned once for his outspoken original views. At a time when most of the world was under the rule of kings, Paine spoke out against monarchies. Back when the church was never questioned, Paine questioned it.(http://www.ushistory.org/paine/) (http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/paine.html)

During the time of our revolution, troops did not fight during the winter. Armies would shack up for the winter. When the American cause seemed pointless after a series of defeats, Paine's "The Crisis" rallied the troops for an unheard of winter battle. Below is the famous painting of Washington and his men heading to battle.

Paine was an outspoken deist. He would die a lonely man due to this. Today it would be less serious to write about religious views. There will always be devout extremist though. Men who will never respect another man's beliefs, although neither offer concrete proof. In Paine's time, almost everyone alive was an extremist. It's surprising that church officials didn't behead him an scatter his limbs to the four corners of the country. Yeah, they did worse. I must admit that I now partially understand why I should care about this influential man.(http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/B/tpaine/paine.htm)

How many Great Awakenings are there? How have they impacted the United States?

In reading Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", I noticed that his sermon is dramatically different from many preached today. Most churches speak of God's love and limitless mercy in today's world. This made me wonder about how much the Christian world has transformed in the past three hundred years. There must have been other grand revivals in America to have changed the worlds delivered behind the pulpit so dramatically.

Jonathan Edwards is one of the more renowned preachers of the First Great Awakening. He started the preaching style to become associated with the type of sermons given in this era. George Whitefield and the Wesley Brothers are sometimes credited with the beginning of this mass revival. They were the ones to bring a strongly emotional style to their congregations.(http://www.conservapedia.com/First_Great_Awakening)

 
The initial Great Awakening started when some people started preaching of a personal relationship with God. This broke away from the old connection with God. It blocked out the old middle man, the church. Christians began to realize they could determine right from wrong with their consciousness. They no longer found it necessary to talk to a preacher about their questions. The First Great Awakening helped put Americans in the mindset to break away from English rule. The colonists started seeing themselves as Americans for the first time. Many historians credit this great revival with the existence of the United States as a nation. (http://www.great-awakening.com/?page_id=22)

The Second Great Awakening began shortly after the American revolution in the early nineteenth century. The United States was rapidly changing, and many people were uneasy about the sudden changes surrounding them. America's population had increased from five million to nearly thirty million people. Cities were emerging out of the Industrial Revolution. To address these changes the Second Great Awakening spoke strongly of good work ethic and the chances of advancing in rank in society. Along with this came the belief of the American dream and temperance. Anti-slavery groups, feminist groups, and the Civil War are all strongly connected to these great tent revivals of this time period. The realization of equality among all people eventually formed and was reinforced thanks to the sermons of this Great Awakening. (http://www.ushistory.org/us/22c.asp),(http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/256626.html)

Most historians agree that these are the only Great Awakenings up to date. There are arguments that there was a third in the early twentieth century, and many people believe we are currently going through one. I disagree, but the whole concept is disputable. The percentage of the World's Christian population is falling. Many people claim to be non-religious. The estimated worldly percentage of this group stands around thirteen percent. Below is Glenn Beck of Fox News arguing his belief on the situation.