{"id":10645,"date":"2007-04-28T09:45:47","date_gmt":"2007-04-28T13:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10645.html"},"modified":"2007-04-28T09:45:47","modified_gmt":"2007-04-28T13:45:47","slug":"jamestown-christian-nation-or-cannibal-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/jamestown-christian-nation-or-cannibal-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamestown: Christian nation or cannibal island?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

This weekend, a collection of far-right religious figures is gathering in Virginia Beach to “rededicate” America to Christ.<\/p>\n

According to this gang, it’s a rededication because the first dedication took place 400 years ago, when a clutch of European settlers reached Jamestown, Va. Various Religious Right leaders have convened a conference called “The Assembly<\/a>” to commemorate this event. <\/p>\n

I suspect it will be quite a show. There will even be foot washing! (Hey, don’t get me wrong — these are consenting adults, and I support whatever kinky thing they’re into.) This will be the largest gathering of fundamentalist wackos in one place since the last Texas Republican Party convention.<\/p>\n

I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but these folks need a history lesson. The English settlers who waded ashore in Virginia 400 years ago did stick up a cross and promise to convert the natives, but the main goal of the expedition was to make money. <\/p>\n

It didn’t quite work out that way. Many of the settlers were “gentlemen” who had no idea what they were getting into.
\n
\nThe band settled on swampy, mosquito-ridden land with brackish water and little game to hunt. Many of the settlers were unaccustomed to hard work and just figured they’d dig holes and find gold. The company was plagued with disease and harassed by hostile natives.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the food ran out, and the colonists began to starve. Some ran off and offered to become servants to the Indians in exchange for a place to stay and some food. One man killed and ate his pregnant wife. In his book Lies My Teacher Told Me<\/em><\/a>, James Loewen writes that some desperate settlers dug up and feasted on dead Indians. (Yuck!)<\/p>\n

We don’t hear much about this stuff today because it’s not very heroic. In fact, we don’t hear much about the Jamestown settlement at all. The Pilgrims loom larger in our national mythology — yet they came along 13 years after Jamestown.<\/p>\n

This year, The Assembly and the “Christian nation” crowd hope to restore Jamestown to its proper place in history. <\/p>\n

I have no problem with that. Let’s take a good, hard look at our national origins — warts and all. But I doubt that’s what The Assembly plans to do. Rather, they’ll offer up another myth about the hand of Providence, manifest destiny and all that jazz. <\/p>\n

Looming over their gathering is an interesting question, one I doubt any of them will have the gumption to contemplate: If the United States was meant to be God’s favored nation, why did he let it get off to such a rotten start?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo This weekend, a collection of far-right religious figures is gathering in Virginia Beach to “rededicate” America to Christ. According to this gang, it’s a rededication because the first dedication took place 400 years ago, when a clutch of European settlers reached Jamestown, Va. Various Religious Right leaders have convened a conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}