1607 - Englishmen and Christianity Come to Virginia
In 1607, a crew of Atlantic-weary sailors and their passengers anchored in Chesapeake Bay, on a point they named Cape Henry.  Just north of a failed settlement attempt on Roanoke Island, they hoped to find better ground here to establish England’s first colony in the new world.  Unlike the Spanish, who had been exploring the new world for several decades, this group did not consist of soldiers looking for conquest; rather they were entrepreneurs with the Virginia Company. They wanted to establish trade relationships with the inhabitants of Virginia, and perhaps find a lucrative crop or two that might pay the cost of their journey and their upkeep in the new colony.  Like the Spanish, who carried Catholic priests with them, the Englishmen carried an Anglican priest whose task was to deliver the true gospel to Virginia’s inhabitants, lest they be corrupted by Spanish Catholicism.  Tucked into their charter, between permissions and claims of the crown is this understanding of mission work among the present inhabitants of North America:
Wee, greately commending and graciously accepting of theire desires to the furtherance of soe noble a worke which may, by the providence of Almightie God, hereafter tende to the glorie of His Divine Majestie in propagating of Christian religion to suche people as yet live in darkenesse and miserable ignorance of the true knoweledge and worshippe of God and may in tyme bring the infidels and salvages living in those parts to humane civilitie and to a setled and quiet govermente, doe by theise our lettres patents graciously accepte of and agree to theire humble and well intended desires;
While it was certainly not the first thing on King James I’s mind, this paragraph represents the first English effort to spread the Christian faith to people who were not aware of God’s work in Jesus Christ.  The language is certainly Anglo-centric and presumes that that those in “darknesse and miserable ignorance” must be civilized so that they can understand the gospel.  Before we become too judgmental of their motives, recall that the Anglican church had emerged during Elizabeth I’s reign as an effort to have a pure church, soundly based on scriptures with practice set upon that foundation alone. The Anglican church was a reforming body and their missionary zeal was based on a desire to make sure that new world Christians got it straight from the beginning.  However, like others before them, they equated their culture with Christianity. Prior to the Renaissance, the church had become entrenched in the various European cultures.  These transplants to Virginia soil saw themselves as Englishmen. It was expected that any convert would also be a willing subject of the Crown.  Hence the tension between biblical Christianity and its cultural expression was transplanted to the new world, even before contact was made with the indigenous culture they would encounter.
