Well, welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church history.

On this episode, we are going back to December 27, 1657, and the Flushing Remonstrance.

Let's look at each of those words.

First, flushing is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City.

Remonstrance means to remonstrate against something,

which is sort of demonstrating against something,

but maybe a little bit more strong. So what was this thing that was being

demonstrated against in Flushing New York in 1657? Well, before we get there, let's do a little

history of the colony of New York. We spend a lot of time talking about the New England colonies and American church history,

but New York plays quite a role. And so we go back to 1528, and the Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano

discovers New York. Then, many decades later, in 1608, the first Dutch settlers arrived,

and by 1624 they founded the capital New Amsterdam.

This was on the southern tip of what is today Manhattan Island, and that was the capital

of the colony that was first known as New

Netherlands. This was largely a trading colony and part of the operations of the Dutch West Indies

Company. And of course, much of what was traded and what was exported from this colony were

furs. The English took over this colony were furs.

The English took over the colony in 1664,

and they renamed it from New Netherland to New York,

after the Duke of York,

who had then become King James II of England. But before all that with the English, we have the flushing remonstrance

in 1657. We have to start with the governor of the colony, or perhaps more technically accurate,

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