The Boston Massacre. Accident or Murder?

You are part of a professionally trained military unit. You work for the king of Britain. The year is 1770. Boston, Massachusetts is a cold and snowy settlement with citizens who hate you. Your king is a tyrant. He taxes them without giving them any say in government and they have had enough. However, you are a professional. Despite the formation of a mob in a public square, you will not do anything unless ordered. This is not a situation where it is your decision to act and there are others gathered by your side along with your commander. The snow is cold at your feet, the air crisp. Every voice of the crowd can be heard as well as the breath of your comrades beside you. Their hearts race with nervous anticipation of battle and a slight fear of the crude weapons the citizens of Boston have gathered. Stones are thrown at you and your fellow soldiers. You suddenly are reminded of David and Goliath and how a stone could easily kill or cripple a giant, much less a man. The situation is quickly becoming dangerous. Your uniform is more for show than for protection and your head is poorly covered. A three pointed hat can be easily penetrated by a musket ball, but a pitchfork or shovel or other hard and heavy objects easily maim or kill.

The mob is getting angry. You and your fellow soldiers keep hearing that key word, the word you are afraid to hear, "FIRE!" The crowd has been taunting you, asking, no screaming for you to attack. Where is your commander? You have lost his position in the commotion. A fellow soldier's musket goes off and a member of the crowd drops to the snow covered ground, now splashed with fresh blood. Again you immediately hear the command, "FIRE!" but where is it coming from? There is no longer any choice. Your weapon has been trained on the crowd this whole time and you fire. You fire as commanded, as is necessary to keep order and to maintain your safety. Several more in the crowd seek the comfort of death as musket balls penetrate their winter coats, spilling their life about the cold dirt.

Few times in history do we hear both sides of a story. I hoped in presenting a soldier's view of this event, it could be better understood in a more thorough manner. Consider this perspective and decide for yourself if one of the most famous atrocities of the British during its colonization of the American continent was indeed a massacre or just an accident perpetuated by a crowd of inciters.

Organized Churches

Sometimes I wonder if this is what the goal aught to be for Christians around the world. Extravagant buildings that really just glorify people rather than a religious creator? I don't think so.

Ever tell someone that you are a Christian, Jew or Muslim just for them to ask you how often you go to church or temple or the mosque? This is a very close minded, uneducated type of question, especially if you are one of many protestant denominations of Christianity.

This is a history blog, so I won't talk about my personal beliefs. However, to the many protestant Christians out there who go around gauging your friends' faith by how often they attend a building filled with the supposedly faithful, consider this. First, before I go into the Lutheran reasons why you're being unreasonable, follow this logic. Not every person who goes to church or temple or the mosque is a good, faithful person of that religion. Going to church alone does not equal faithful, good or moral people. Plenty of people go to church and then behave in sinful ways, including homosexuals who are accepted in many congregations in modern churches.

Now to some historical examples. Martin Luther, father of the protestant movement in Europe, believed and proclaimed that each individual Christian aught to preach the word of the Christian Bible. He taught that the Church, while a great place for people to gather for worship and to hear the teachings of the Christian Bible, was not the epitome of faith and devotion to God. The main function of the organized Church during the period Luther lived, was likely to allow the illiterate masses to hear what was in a holy book that they could not read.

This is why asking people about their attendance is a poor method of judgment, that is, if judgment is what you must do in order to interact with others. I often find that the person doing the asking has not attended in years if not decades... nice. Way to be a hypocrite and try to make others feel guilty at the same time.

The root of the issue is this. Churches are political institutions made up of specific doctrines that are followed by specific groups of Christians. This has been true since the beginnings of the protestant movement that began in the Renaissance. Each likes to interpret the Chirstian Bible in its own way, make its own rules, create its own rituals and enact its own policies. Those who choose to become members are bound to that institution's decisions and specific beliefs. For those of you who choose to go to an organized church, great. For those of you who are faithful and choose not to be part of a political body, that's great too. How about you both stop asking the Church question and find another way to judge your peers.