The Rev. Thomas James, minister of the East Hampton’s first church in the mid-17th century, “came to the New World in search of religious freedom but found that freedom was not enough.”
So says an announcement for a lecture next Thursday provokingly titled “The Convict Pastor: Thomas James and the Puritan Roots of Christian Nationalism.” Part of the Tom Twomey series put on by the library and the East Hampton Historical Society, it will take place at 5:30 p.m. at the library. The presenter, the Rev. Jon D. Rodriguez of East Hampton’s Presbyterian Church, will examine James’s contradictions: Was he a “beloved minister” or a “Christian nationalist zealot”?
James was “friendly with his Indigenous neighbors and at odds with the colonial authorities,” according to the announcement. He was arrested in 1686 and jailed for three weeks after giving “a fiery sermon supporting his parishioners who were stirring up the rebellion,” reads a history on the church’s website.
The lecture is free but reservations are requested at tomtwomeyseries.org.