Last fall archeologists digging near the marshy riverbanks of Jamestown, Virginia, located what they believe is the site of the 1608 church where stood the altar at which Pocahontas married John Rolfe in 1614. -- Whether your religion happens to be Protestant Christianity, American nationalism, or celebrity culture, it's hard to underestimate the import of the find. -- "“I’m standing where Pocahontas stood,” William Kelso, the archeologist to whom we owe a decade and a half of ur-discoveries relating to the early colonial America, told the New York Times.[1] -- "I can almost guarantee you that.” -- The response to the Times piece by the *Christian Post* on Monday suggests the alertness and eagerness of Christianists who are actively promoting the an ideology according to which America was meant to be a Christian nation. -- In the hours following the New York Times Jamestown piece, the Christian Post produced not one but two pieces related to and apparently inspired by it.[2,3] -- In the first, Michael Gryboski sought to interpret the discovery as evidence that the spread of Christianity was part of the original Americn project, quoting Crandall Shifflet, professor emeritus at Virginia Tech: "British colonists considered the spread of Christianity a central part of their mission. Popular culture tends to stereotype Jamestown as a group of adventure capitalists motivated by greed and materialistic gain without regard to the souls of colonists or Indians.”[2] -- Gryboski also quoted scholars emphasizing that religious tolerance was not part of the American colonial mission, thank you very much. -- In a second piece on the Jamestown find published in the Christian Post on the very same day, Nicola Menzie reproduced elements of the New York Times piece that comfort perspectives of Christianists and leaving out those attuned to what Christian Post columnist Charles Colson likes to call "the secular elite."[3] ...
1.
U.S.
JAMESTOWN THOUGHT TO YIELD RUINS OF OLDEST U.S. PROTESTANT CHURCH
By Theo Emery
New York Times
November 14, 2011 (posted Nov. 13)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/ruins-of-oldest-us-protestant-church-may-be-at-jamestown.html
[PHOTO CAPTION: A visitor reading about the early colonists' burial ground inside the reconstructed palisades that mark the walls of James Fort.]
JAMESTOWN -- For more than a decade, the marshy island in Virginia where British colonists landed in 1607 has yielded uncounted surprises. And yet William M. Kelso’s voice still brims with excitement as he plants his feet atop a long-buried discovery at the settlement’s heart: what he believes are the nation’s oldest remains of a Protestant church.
The discovery has excited scholars and preservationists, and unearthed a long-hidden dimension of religious life in the first permanent colony.
It may prove to be an attraction for another reason: the church would have been the site of America’s first celebrity wedding, so to speak, where the Indian princess Pocahontas was baptized and married to the settler John Rolfe in 1614. The union temporarily halted warfare with the region’s tribal federation.
Last week Mr. Kelso, the chief archaeologist at the site, hopped into the excavated pit topped with sandbags and pointed to where Pocahontas would have stood at the altar rail. Orange flags marked the church’s perimeter. The pulpit would have been to the left and a baptismal font behind, with a door opening toward the river.
“I’m standing where Pocahontas stood,” Mr. Kelso said, gesturing to the earth at his feet. “I can almost guarantee you that.”
It would have been unthinkable for the intrepid settlers, as ambassadors of country, crown, and church, not to erect a building for worship and conversion of Native Americans in their Virginia Company encampment.
Nor ['Nor'? did we miss something? --H.A.] is it the nation’s oldest house of worship: Britain’s earlier “lost colony” in North Carolina may have had a church, and remnants of 16th-century Catholic churches and missions have been identified, according to Mr. Kelso. But the 2010 discovery and continuing excavation has generated excitement partly due to the size of the 1608 structure -- at 64 feet by 24 feet, it was an architectural marvel for its time -- and also because of how little has been understood about religion in Jamestown.
Some scholars lament that popular knowledge of colonial-era religion has been flattened into a view of the Virginians as greedy and indolent, while later colonists in Plymouth, Mass., were pious and devout.
The distinction is rooted in their origins. While Virginians were largely loyal to the Church of England, the pilgrims in Plymouth repudiated the church and came to America to escape it.
“Fundamentally, they’re different places,” said David D. Hall, a scholar of colonial religion at Harvard Divinity School. [COMMENT: A Ph.D. is needed for insights like that one. --H.A.]
Religion would still have been central to Jamestown, and theories abound as to why there has been scant attention. Histories tend to emphasize commercial pursuits of its colonists, and scholars also point to the Civil War: with the Union victory, the story of Northern colonial virtues -- including piety -- triumphed over those of the South. Another view is that Plymouth had a prolific printer and Jamestown did not.
“You have two very different Christian experiences; both of them can be equally rich and nuanced, but one tended to leave a much richer and more layered testimony about itself,” said Richard Pickering, deputy director of program innovation at Plimoth Plantation, the recreated colonial village in Plymouth that uses the historical spelling of the name. [COMMENT: Another deep scholarly insight: there was more than one "Christian experience" in the New World. --H.A.]
There is also a practical reason: until recently, relics of early Jamestown were underground. For centuries, the fort was believed washed into the James River. But Mr. Kelso, unconvinced, began digging along the river’s banks in 1994.
By 1996, he was certain he had located James Fort’s perimeter. The site has since yielded about 1.4 million artifacts, many of them stored in a locked, fireproof laboratory nearby.
But the original church remained elusive. Then, last fall, the archaeologists located remnants of a new structure beneath Civil War earthworks.
“Every one of our colleagues had goose bumps. It was something we’ve been looking for seventeen years,” said the senior staff archaeologist, Danny Schmidt, 33, who first worked at Jamestown as a high school intern in 1994.
The dig has continued through the fall. The graves [COMMENT: What graves? This article must be a truncated version of the original. --H.A.] will be investigated in the spring, Mr. Kelso said.
“This is as close as you can get to a time capsule,” he said.
The church would have been the fort’s biggest structure by far. Paul A. Levengood, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Historical Society, said a conspicuous church served a political purpose for the British.
“To put up a big church on this island in the Chesapeake region was a very clear political sign as well, saying, ‘We’re here, stay out, we claim this area, and we’re willing to fight you,’” he said. [COMMENT: No comment, though we confess this puts us in mind of what Gandhi said: "What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea." --H.A.]
The site will mark the spot of perhaps the best-known part of Jamestown’s history, the wedding of Pocahontas, who adopted the name Rebecca after her baptism and marriage.
Popular knowledge of that wedding could enhance attention to religion at Jamestown, said James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which manages the park. He said the church may be partially reconstructed atop the site.
H. Wade Trump III, a Williamsburg pastor who traces his ancestry back to the Jamestown colonists, sees the site as a New World Jerusalem where the nation’s religious heritage began.
“This church would be a place for Christians from all over the country to see where their roots are,” Mr. Trump said. “This is really the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian faith in America.”
Today, James Fort resembles an outdoor archaeology classroom, with school groups and tourists watching archaeologists at work just feet away.
Barbara Costin, 70, of Beaverdam, Va., made a circuit of the fort with her friend Marshall Healey, 82. Ms. Costin wondered if the discovery of the church was not an extension of the mission to convert native inhabitants, and exploit their land and wealth.
“Power, control -- that’s what it’s about,” she said.
Myron Semchuk, 64, visiting from Norwalk, Conn., took a different view, calling the discovery “fascinating,” another key to the nation’s origin.
“The rights that we enjoy today had their roots here. This is where they first started,” he said. “And those religious beliefs, I think, were the foundation.”
2.
RUINS OF OLDEST PROTESTANT CHURCH IN AMERICA FOUND AT JAMESTOWN
By Michael Gyboski
Christian Post
November 14, 2011
http://www.christianpost.com/news/ruins-of-oldest-protestant-church-in-america-found-at-jamestown-61763/
Researchers at Jamestown, Va., may have found the site where the first Protestant church in North America was built.
Dr. William Kelso, head of the research team at Jamestown, which was founded as a settlement established by the Virginia Company of London in the 17th century, explained in an interview with the Christian Post that the group began excavating at the site where they may have found the church in the summer of 2010.
Kelso, an American archaeologist specializing in Virginia’s colonial period, believes the ruins found are the church because of a “Record of construction in Spring of 1608, burials in the east or chancel end” and that it “matches dimensions recorded in 1610.”
He discovered the site along with three field supervisors: archeologists Danny Schmidt, Dave Givens, and Jamie May.
In addition to being the site of the oldest known Protestant church in the United States, the building would have also likely been the location for the wedding of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, a marriage that temporarily brought peace between settlers and Native Americans.
The church, which was 64 feet by 24 feet, also runs contrary to the common narrative on religion linked to Jamestown colony.
“[The] standard story is that Jamestown was all about secular pursuits and making money with the spread of religion far down the priority list,” said Kelso.
“The sheer size and early construction makes a dramatic statement that the establishment of the Church of England in the ‘new world’ was far more in the forefront of the colonists thinking than has previously been recognized by many historians.”
Historians at Virginia universities echo the sentiment of Kelso regarding the accuracy of the popular narrative of Jamestown.
Crandall Shifflet, professor emeritus at Virginia Tech, told CP that he believed the church ruins “could be an opportunity to re-examine the role of religion at Jamestown in particular and in seventeenth-century Virginia in general.”
“British colonists considered the spread of Christianity a central part of their mission,” said Shifflet, who oversees an online learning project called “Virtual Jamestown.”
“Popular culture tends to stereotype Jamestown as a group of adventure capitalists motivated by greed and materialistic gain without regard to the souls of colonists or Indians.”
Early American historian Dr. Jane Merritt of Old Dominion University said that the find was valuable for understanding life in the English colonies.
“The church will certainly help historians better map out the community spaces of the early settlement,” said Merritt.
“Archaeological work at Jamestown has been underway for decades and has uncovered wonderful evidence of the material life and culture of early colonists.”
Merritt explained that many misconceptions about life in Jamestown exist in modern society, noting that although often considered “a seedbed for democracy” Jamestown was a strictly structured and hierarchical society.
“Religion was an important part of this equation,” said Merritt, who added that “colonists were required to go to church (at times daily services) by threat of punishment.”
Merritt also noted the strong misconception commonly found with English settlers arriving to North America is that they were there for “religious freedom.”
“While religion was central to many of the settlements … the religious freedom they sought rarely included religious tolerance,” said Merritt.
3.
HISTORIC CHRUCH FOUND IN JAMESTOWN IS 'BIRTHPLACE' OF NATION'S JUDEO-CHRISTIAN FAITH?
By Nicola Menzie
Christian Post
November 14, 2011
http://global.christianpost.com/news/historic-church-found-in-jamestown-is-birthplace-of-nations-judeo-christian-faith-61811/
A team of archaeologists has been digging for decades at a site in Jamestown, Va., believed to be home to the United States' first Protestant church.
In December 1606, a group of about 104 settlers known as the Virginia Company sailed from London and landed on Jamestown Island on May 14, 1607. This group went on to establish what came to be known as Jamestown, a colony along the banks of the James River (just 60 miles from the Chesapeake Bay), according to the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project.
Among some of the structures built at the settlement, which was under frequent attack by the Algonquian natives, was a 64 feet by 24 feet church, constructed in 1608.
It was also at the Jamestown church that "the first representative assembly in the New World" gathered on July 30, 1619, to establish laws to "govern Virginia," according to Jamestown Rediscovery Project.
William M. Kelso, chief archaeologist at the site, insists that his group has found evidence that the site of the nation's first permanent colony is also home to the nation's first Protestant church - or what remains of it.
According to Kelso, Jamestown is also the birthplace of another first; it is believed that Indian princess Pocahontas, daughter of the Algonquian chief, was baptized (and renamed Rebecca) and married to John Rolfe in 1614 at the Jamestown church.
"I'm standing where Pocahontas stood," Kelso told the New York Times during a recent tour of the site. "I can almost guarantee you that."
Kelso has been digging at the site since 1994 and his team has since unearthed about 1.4 million artifacts, many of them stored in a locked, fireproof laboratory, according to the Times.
While Kelso has said "the church would have been a statement about how important the colonists considered religion," according to Archaeology magazine, some experts contend the wooden house of worship was likely erected by the British settlers as a show of force.
"To put up a big church on this island in the Chesapeake region was a very clear political sign as well, saying, 'We're here, stay out, we claim this area, and we’re willing to fight you’," Paul A. Levengood, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Historical Society told the Times.
One visitor to the region the Times spoke with agreed with Levengood's assessment, while another saw the Jamestown church as the birthplace of religious liberty.
"The rights that we enjoy today had their roots here. This is where they first started," Myron Semchuk, 64, said. "And those religious beliefs, I think, were the foundation."
The historic house of worship is seen as a sort of "New Jerusalem" by H. Wade Trump III, a pastor in Williamsburg, Va., who has ancestors listed among the original colonists.
"This church would be a place for Christians from all over the country to see where their roots are," Trump said. "This is really the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian faith in America."
Although the nation's oldest Protestant church, the Jamestown church is not the oldest house of worship, according to Kelso. The archaeologist informed the *Times* that a church may have been erected in North Carolina much earlier and that remains of 16th-century Catholic churches have been discovered.
Archaeology magazine has named the Jamestown church one of the 10 most significant archaeological discoveries of 2010.
According to the publication, Kelso and his team were searching or a men's barracks when they came upon the remains of the church.
The Jamestown Rediscovery Project published a video of the church's excavation over the summer, which features William Stracey, secretary of the colony, describing the its construction:
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