Newsweek Magazine did a story on the Jamestown Quadricentennial. Though I take exception with some characterizations presented in the story, and the “ultra” liberal slant of the coverage is self-evident, I am nonetheless grateful that this reporter made efforts to cover this important story by actually traveling to the event and professionally interviewing us. [The sad truth is that there are people who profess to be Christians, but who show far less integrity and honesty than the secular world when it comes to faithfully and honestly reporting on the positions of Christians with whom they disagree.] Of course, it is impossible to separate bias from reporting, but it is not impossible for biased reporters to be fair. I will take a fair-minded, biased secular reporter every day of the week over an unfair, biased professor of Christ who uses the pen (or keyboard) as a license to slander in the name of Jesus.

Another thought: The idea of families (including lots of big families) celebrating the birth of America in the best traditions of the past celebrations, might seem strange to a cynical world which has lost its innocence, its love of history, and its love of the God of providence—but I see it is a sign of hope and blessing. Here again, I note that the reporter seems a bit shocked at the idea of so many big families in one place, as if this is a strange and possibly suspect occurance, but I am thankful that she did not resort to the hateful invectives (“baby machines,” et. al.) sometimes invoked by professors of the Christian faith to discredit through mockery and misrepresentation those with whom they disagree. Perhaps Christians have a few important things to learn from the secular press.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

They came to Fort Pocahontas—a plot of land appended to [former president] John Tyler’s family estate on the James River frequently used for civil-war reenactments—to celebrate the founding of the Jamestown colony 400 years ago. The Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of Our Providential History was organized by a Texas-based “historical home-school ministry,” Vision Forum, and its president, Doug Phillips. Phillips, the son of Conservative Caucus and Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips...Another famous son was also in attendance: Jonathan Falwell, son of the late Jerry Falwell and (along with his brother, Jerry Jr.) heir to the Liberty Baptist empire, came to deliver his father’s intended speech.

The nation held official ceremonies in May—but banned the word “celebration” in favor of “commemoration,” after black and Native American members of the planning committee protested that “you can’t celebrate an invasion.” Veteran activists such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton spoke at the commemoration, and new exhibits at the Jamestown Settlement museum spoke to the colony’s history of “human bondage and the displacement of Virginia Indians.” A The New York Times review of the exhibit noted that Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Jamestown would find, “[n]ot the triumph of British influence, but the triumph of ambiguity, discomfort and vague multiculturalism.”

....”Who wants to come to a birthday party where you’re angry at the parents and you lament the birth?” Or as he wrote in a May op-ed for a conservative news site, World Net Daily: “At what should be a crowning moment of blessing, celebration and thanksgiving to God, America is being held hostage by savage philosophies reanimated from the grave and marching on Jamestown.” “It’s down on Western Christendom, up with spirit guides,” he was quoted elsewhere on the site. During an interview with NEWSWEEK at Jamestown, he elaborated: “If you go on the [commemoration’s] Web site, you’ll find that not the natives, but the settlers were cannibals; that they were terrorists against the environment; that there was a holocaust; that the settlers were guilty of lynchings; that a genocide took place. You need something more than the oral tradition [of indigenous populations] to defend something like that.”

Rev. Joe Morecraft, III, a Georgia pastor and speaker at the celebration, summarized the gathering’s complaints more succinctly: “Jamestown, for the first time in the history of the nation, is getting bad press.”

Some might call it an overdue balancing of the scales, a much-needed nod to the varied experiences of a pluralistic society. But that wasn’t how it played at Fort Pocahontas. Traveling from as far away as Oklahoma and Washington state, thousands gathered to proudly defend the Jamestown settlement not just as the cradle of the republic and American free enterprise, but more importantly, as the “beachhead” of American Christianity: the site of its first church, first baptisms, First (Protestant) conversions and the first institution of the Decalogue-based Common Law.

In their addresses, Phillips and a number of his fellow speakers, including Falwell, approvingly cited Jamestown’s 1606 charter. That document explained their mission as “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 human civility, and to a settled and quiet Government.” They brought with them, said Phillips, not just the gospel, but also a “dominion vision for establishing a land of freedom.”

To read the rest of the story click here.