Shades of the Scarlet Letter

mustang

On one of the PBS stations last week, I saw a program of those reenactments of life in old colonial settlements. They were trying to enforce the "laws" or "Regulations of the Compact" of the "company" that sponsored and funded the colony. Most of these "laws" were religious in nature.

The company appointed "Guv'nor" started with the Sabbath, which had a mandatory religious service. Some of the local atheists decided not to attend (they went skinny-dipping instead). In the long run, he either put so many people on restriction or got so ignored that no work was being done: he rescinded the enforcement of the policy.

Then there is the matter of cursing or taking the Lords' Name in vain. Oh, the Blasphemy!!!

Anyway, for various offenses, the "sinners" were sentenced to wearing white cloths with red letters signifying their "crime".

Did anybody else see this??? I was reminded of this by Nos's Apostate logo in another post.

Mustang

Lili

That sounds interesting....

bikerchic

Yeah I saw that, it was a cool but man I'm so glad we don't live in those times talk about repressive!

BTW read the book, saw the movie too.

Kate

joannadandy

Yeah...I saw that...it was intersting to me how bucky we 21st century folk are.

Back then, even if anyone was harboring athiestic thoughts...they NEVER would have rocked the boat. So much for trying to be "realistic" to the time period. Haha!

There is a later episode where one of the colonists came out of the closet. Again...had we been striving for authenticity...they probably would have killed him...

It's interesting to see how far we have come, and yet how some things never change.

William Penwell

It was a very repressive time but there are a lot of wacko Christian Fundimentalists that would like to turn the clock back to those times.

Will

blondie

I watched it. It was the "Colonial House" segment of a series of shows about life in other times. It was interesting that these people volunteered knowing supposedly what life was like then. They were selected out of 10,000 applicants. Yet, they were not prepared to live by the rules that were standard back in those times. The women found it very difficult to live in a society that deferred to men in all decision making. They should have selected some JW women.

Blondie