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The chief counsel of the authorities behind the Jamestown settlement focused on serving and fearing God. John Smith gives us the following account of their instructions:
Lastly and chiefly the way to prosper and achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind of the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God the Giver of all Goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out.
Jamestown’s contribution to the American legacy of Christianity is significant.
The vision for settlement at Jamestown was first communicated in the 16th century by a British cartographer and preacher named Richard Hakluyt who hoped the Virginia settlement would be a beacon for religious liberty. Hakluyt is the man primarily responsible for persuading the monarchy and a generation of explorers that Virginia was the most optimistic place for the spreading of the Gospel through exploration and settlement on pagan soil not occupied by a Christians monarch. Years later, Hakluyt’s Great Commission vision was enshrined in the Virginia Charter of 1606. This charter, both empowering and governing the Jamestown settlement, was expressly rooted in the Great Commission of Holy Scripture. In addition to the Charter, the very legal system on which the colony was governed incorporated a millennia long Christian common law tradition. Most notably, the Jamestown settlers brought with them the Holy Scriptures.
Before the arrival of these Protestant Christians and the successful planting of the first permanent English settlement, North America was dominated by tribes engaged in demonic spiritism, paganism, cannibalism, and ritual torture. The coming of Christianity and the Holy Scriptures would change the make-up of North America, and would provide the free grace offer of the Gospel to men and women immersed in soul-destroying demonic activity.
The Jamestown settlers gave the Holy Scriptures a permanent home in America. This is perhaps the most enduring legacy of Jamestown. The coming of the Bible to America fundamentally changed the history of the North American continent. It was the Bible which communicated the hope of personal redemption and the basis for stable civilization. This is one reason why Jamestown would become the first settlement to establish the enduring legacy of Christian Common Law. The Christian common law was predicated on the transcendent principles of justice outlined in the moral law and the case laws of Scripture, but applied to local custom.
Jamestown gave America her first Protestant house of worship, first Christian conversions and baptisms and first “inter-racial” marriages based on the Christian Faith. Jamestown also gave us a vision of republican representative government, a form of government later enshrined in the United States Constitution which finds its origins in the Hebrew Republic of the Old Testament of Holy Scripture.
The following was posted on crosswalk.com.
NY Times Highlights Jamestown ‘Celebration’ Problem; Vision Forum Responds with Christian Celebration
As America turns 400 this year with the founding of Jamestown in 1607, officials leading America’s 400th birthday commemoration have banned the term “celebration” in conjunction with their efforts and sought to discredit the Christian influence of the Jamestown Colony, a Vision Forum release says. Mary Wade of the Virginia Council of Indians said in a Voice of America interview, “You can’t celebrate an invasion.” In a March 2 article in the New York Times entitled,”Captain Smith, ‘The Tides Are Shifting on the James,’” Edward Rothstein wrote the following of PC shift Wade’s statement represents: “The [National Park Service] has just added a modest historical exhibition in its visitors’ center [at Historic Jamestowne]... [with a] panel [which] emphasizes the point: ‘Past Jamestown anniversaries were referred to as ‘celebrations.’ Because many facets of Jamestown’s history are not cause for celebration, like human bondage and the displacement of Virginia Indians, the Jamestown 400th Anniversary is referred to as the Jamestown 2007 Commemoration.” As an alternative, Vision Forum Ministries is hosting an alternative event on June 11-16 in Virginia’s historic triangle that will celebrate God’s providential hand in the founding of America four centuries ago. To learn more, visit: www.jamestown400th.org.
In 1928, the grateful daughters of one generation, honored their Jametsown fathers with this monument.
We greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherence of so noble a Work, which may, by the Provience of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, propogating 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 human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government... 1606 Charter
Much has been said about the motivation for settlement at Jamestown. Herb Titus, fomer Dean of Regent Law School, explains that the express purpose for colonization was to fulfil the Great Commission. According to Titus: “So, the express purpose and the only one written in the Charter, was to establish colonies in the new world as a Christian evangelical witness to the native peoples.” The First Charter of Virginia: Seedbed for the Nation, The Forecast, Volume I, No. 14. April 15, 1994
