Jamestown and Christianity

I did a Google News search on Jamestown a couple of days ago and I ran across a complaint about the festivities (actually there were several but most were from Native Americans). This site WorldNetDaily complained that President Bush had ignored Christianity in his speech about Jamestown.

A friend of mine refers to some people as "perpetually outraged". These people are already upset over something and spend their time looking for justification. WorldNetDaily spends time and energy looking for slights to Christianity.

This is a case where there is no slight. Jamestown was founded by private investors with the goal of making money. Along the way they were given a list of goals including spreading Christianity (specifically the Church of England) but this was not a priority nor was it practiced until years after the colony was founded.

This does not mean that the colonists were not religious. They were. Their first act when they reached the Chesapeake was to plant a large cross. Shortly after deciding on Jamestown Island, they constructed a make-shift church from a large piece of canvas which they held a service in. Short services were held daily and long services were held on Sunday. There were harsh penalties for missing a service.

Despite these actions, they were slow to try to convert the Indians. When some natives asked why they had nailed a cross to a tree (it was meant to mark the English territory) they told an outrageous fiction about the arms of the cross symbolizing the meeting of the two cultures.

Because the best-known colonists were the Pilgrims, there is a tendency to see all English colonists as extensions of that group. Even the Pilgrims were not as religious as is often believed. Only half of the Mayflower passengers were Separatists. The rest were Church of England people who wanted to seek their fortune in America. The Pilgrims never made a serious attempt to convert the Indians. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay did include an Indian school as part of Harvard which was to teach interested Indians about Christianity.

Like the New England colonies, Maryland was founded on a religious basis but it was intended to be a refuge for English Catholics.

The French were probably the most serious about bringing Christianity to America (rather than just bringing Christians). Catholic missionaries were given control of the fur trade through the 1660s. They used this to finance a series of missions. Other missionaries branched out from the missions.

Even here, there is a little question about motives. Many of the missionaries were hoping to become martyrs. One sure way of doing this was to be killed while spreading the word of God. This led some of them to take great risks, often meeting a grisly end.

In the meantime, the English at Jamestown were more likely to display Indians than convert them.