Newsweek- “The Other Jamestown Party”
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.”
“Dominion†is a scriptural term taken from the “Genesis command” to be fruitful, multiply and take dominion of the earth. Some critics associate ministries such as Vision Forum with the so-called “Dominionist” or “Christian Reconstructionist” movements, which advocate a return to biblical government (with varying degrees of fidelity to Old Testament law and punishments). But Phillips says that, in the context of Jamestown, “dominion” has a special meaning. “We’re talking about [settlers] believing with all their heart that part of their mission is to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion of the earth. To come and to claim—dedicate—the land to Christ. So that’s exactly what they did. They planted a cross [on Jamestown's beach] and said we are dedicating all work and all we do to Christ.”
Phillips emphasizes that the colonists were motivated by a sense of religious, and not racial, superiority (thereby casting Jamestown as an early model of “racial unity”). He admits that such mission-oriented settlers “did see a tension between their God and the gods of the pagans,” and allows that the resolutions to those conflicts may have been “imperfect.” But he maintains that as a Christian he is nonetheless proud of Jamestown’s evangelical history.
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