The New York Times is reporting on the fact that “now, two months before the 400th anniversary festivities begin , the monumental hardly matters anymore, and neither, it seems, does John Smith. Other kinds of commemoration have been prepared. It isn’t that Jamestown is being treated as less important: it is still regarded as the place where the DNA of a nation was first laid out, where, in 1607, England established an early beachhead against the expanding empires of Spain and Portugal and so determined the main language we speak and many of the ideas we share....

“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.” Throughout this introductory exhibition Jamestown is not the beleaguered settlement cheered on against all odds, but is a hothouse laboratory for conflict, oppression and perhaps accommodation.

So what exactly is being celebrated here? A closing gallery makes some suggestions... “Displacement of Indigenous People” and “Servitude and Injustice.” What a change from the Tercentennial when Jamestown was the symbol of America’s birth and President Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington spoke. On the 350th anniversary Queen Elizabeth II made her first royal trip to the United States, and she is expected to come this time as well. But what will she find? Not the triumph of British influence, but the triumph of ambiguity, discomfort and vague multiculturalism...

For a breath of fresh air, and a message of hope, Christianity and providential history, learn about the Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of Our Providential History. For a joyous family vacation and an event that comes once in a century, come to Jamestown this June 11-16th.