Seeking to Save Place Where the Pilgrims Prayed

The New York Times
National News Section
February 17, 2001

Religion Journal: Seeking to Save Place Where the Pilgrims Prayed
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR

In religious traditions, symbols play a powerful role, identifying for people elements that lie at the heart of their faith. To illustrate, one can cite some very obvious examples, like the cross for Christians and Jerusalem's Western Wall for Jews.

But some symbols - even when they exist as physical structures - may go unrecognized as having a special, sacred value by all but a limited number of people.

Take, for example, the partial remains of an old church in the Dutch city of Leiden, which have become an object of considerable concern for members of some American denominations recently, on account of plans by local officials to demolish them in an urban development project. What is left of the church, known as the Vrouwekerk, or Church of Our Lady, is not much, more or less a single wall, but it is nonetheless the site where the Pilgrims prayed while they were refugees from religious persecution in England and before they set sail on the Mayflower for Massachusetts. Last year, the United Church of Christ, aided by the Unitarian-Universalist Association and the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, drew up a petition to send to officials in Leiden, pleading with them to save the structure, preserving it as a memorial. All three denominations trace some of their roots to the Pilgrims and to the Puritans, who followed them to Massachusetts.

Eventually, nearly 2,000 people signed the petition but, officials at the 1.4 million-member United Church of Christ said, the churches never received a response to the document.

Earlier this month, the church announced it had heard that legal efforts to block the demolition had failed. At that point, the Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination's president, decided to appeal directly to the Dutch head of state, Queen Beatrix, for support. In his letter, he described the ruins as a "precious symbol" of ties between the Netherlands and the United States. "It reminds us," Mr. Thomas said, "of the hospitality and kindness with which the people of the Netherlands sheltered the Pilgrims and other refugees of the Reformed faith."

In a telephone interview, Mr. Thomas said the remains of the Leiden church carried several meanings, from the particular to the universal. On the one hand, he said, the ruins, because of their relationship to the Pilgrims' experience, are tied to the larger story of the United Church of Christ and other denominations.

But he also saw in the site a broader meaning, a tangible reminder of religious refugees who experienced a vital sense of being protected during their sojourn in a foreign country. That, he said, is a story with clear contemporary resonance, of people finding sanctuary from persecution. So far, however, Mr. Thomas said the church has not heard anything from its latest plea.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company