Plymouth church celebrates its 400 years
The Church of the Pilgrimage, a Plymouth United Church of Christ parish, traces its roots not only to the Pilgrims, but to the English Separatist congregation from which the Pilgrims’ New World colony of Plymouth derived. The church will conclude its celebration of Plymouth’s 400th anniversary with a special worship service on Sunday, Oct. 30, at 10 a.m. featuring a guest minister and a reception.
A concert performance of “The Pilgrim Canticle” on Saturday was dedicated to the memory of the Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, a prominent friend of the congregation and the founding chairman of the town’s 400th Anniversary Committee, and of the Rev. Gary Marks, the church’s minister for 40 years.
“The plaque on the facade of our church states we are rooted in the Scrooby Covenant of 1606,” said Kathy Marks, a cochairman for the church’s 400th anniversary celebration committee. The covenant was a declaration of independence from the Church of England, a national church subservient in all matters to the King of England, by “a small self-declared congregation which gathered in the tiny English hamlet named Scrooby,” according to the late Rev. Marks.
Harassed by the king’s government, the congregation emigrated to Leiden in The Netherlands, a country that permitted freedom of worship. The next stop, for 31 members of the Leiden congregation, was the New England settlement they named Plymouth.
The church calls its quadricentennial commemoration weekend “Celebrating 400+ Years of Pilgrimage.” Kathy Marks cites her husband’s words for guiding the church’s planning for the 400th anniversary, a celebration delayed by COVID.
The church’s commemoration included a day-long series of events on Oct. 29, concluding with a talk on “The Search for a Usable Past” by Bridgewater University professor Ian Saxine, and a choral performance of “A Pilgrim Canticle,” which the church describes as a collection of anthems, hymns, narration, and readings that follow the journey, arrival, and challenges of the first settlers in the new world.
By dedicating the work’s performance to Marks and Gomes, the church also honored two men of the cloth who were close friends and colleagues. Plymouth native Gomes, a Harvard Divinity School professor and rector of Harvard’s Memorial Church, was widely regarded as one of the greatest preachers of his generation. The author of two bestselling books, “The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart” and “Sermons, the Book of Wisdom for Daily Living,” Gomes was also a Black, publicly gay Republican who offered prayers at the inaugurals of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He died in 2011.
The two men became friends after Marks became minister of the Church of the Pilgrimage in 1971 and Gomes asked the new minister to preach at his mother’s funeral. Gomes later preached the sermon at the service marking the retirement of Marks from the ministry of the Church of the Pilgrimage after four decades.
The 400-year celebration concludes with a special worship service and a reception on Sunday, Oct. 30, beginning at 10 a.m., at the church located at 8 Town Square, Plymouth. The Rev. John Dorhauer, president of the United Church of Christ denomination, will preach at the service.