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Thursday, April 26, 2007

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This year marks the 400th anniversary of the establishment of Jamestown in Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America – and two Christian groups are working to ensure the landmark event's religious heritage is celebrated.

The Vision Forum is sponsoring a weeklong celebration entitled "Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of America's Providential History" from June 11 to 16. Events will occur throughout the Jamestown/Williamsburg/Yorktown triangle.

The Grand Marshal is Harrison Tyler, whose grandfather President John Tyler spoke at the 1857 event and father Lyon Tyler, President of William and Mary College, spoke at the 1907 celebration. There will be "Mini-Faith and Freedom" history tours, fife and drum music, colonial firearms demonstrations, reenactments and speeches from Christian orators.

Another group, The Assembly 2007, is holding its Jamestown quadricentennial events in Virginia Beach on April 26-29, the actual dates of the landing of the Jamestown settlers.

Events during Assembly 2007 weekend will include a consecration conference with prayer and preaching by popular Christian speakers, and on April 29 there will be a historic reenactment of the "First Landing" of the settlers.

When the Virginia Company's settlers landed at Virginia Beach on April 26, 1607, they were immediately attacked and injured by Chesapeake Indians. Upon returning to their ships, the settlers fasted and prayed for three days, then came ashore at Cape Henry, where chaplain Robert Hunt planted a makeshift cross and dedicated the new colony to God's work and the preaching of the Gospel.

Some organizations, however, are evidently seeking to downplay the religious aspect of Jamestown and its settlers.

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Ann Barry, spokeswoman for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, told NewsMax all the events at Historic Jamestown on May 11-13 would focus on three cultures – English, African-American and Native American. She also said the Virginia Indians will have a religious ceremony.

And Jamestown 2007-America's 400th Anniversary's Web site states Jamestown was not founded primarily for religious reasons and is important because of the traditions established at "our nation's birthplace," which include "representative government, the rule of law, free enterprise and cultural diversity."

Vision Forum Ministries President Doug Phillips scoffed at that notion.

"For nearly two centuries our leaders have recognized the importance of celebrating the providential goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ through our nation's birth at Jamestown in 1607," he said.

"But this year during America's Quadricentennial, officials are intent on belittling our nation's Christian past and painting the Jamestown settlers as blood-thirsty cannibals, environmental terrorists, and worse."

Assembly 2007 Executive Director Rev. John Blanchard said: "There is tons of historical evidence that you have to almost deliberately ignore that show that the original founders and pioneers had as their primary intent a desire to evangelize and preach the Gospel in North America."

"As a matter of fact, in their first charter … the King acknowledges their desire to preach the Gospel."

The 1606 Charter that King James I granted the Virginia Company states: "We, greatly commending and graciously accepting of their desires to the furtherance of so noble a work which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in propagating of Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God and may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to humane civility and to a settled and quiet government, do by these our letters patents graciously accept of and agree to their humble and well intended desires."

Blanchard said regarding the settlers: "In their minds they were hoping to civilize and Christianize. Their vision was a Christian vision. Entrepreneurship was only a practical means to fund it."

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