In 2006 my wife, Tracy, and I joined a group of about 50 from First Covenant Church of Sacramento, including their Senior Pastor, Ted Smith, on a Christian legacy tour of Washington, D.C. and various sites in Virginia. One of the primary purposes of the trip was to rediscover the history and particularly the Christian heritage of America's Founders, early settlements, and nation's capital. Unfortunately the greatest thing we discovered was that our Christian heritage was being abandoned. (I'd like to thank "World Net Daily news" for breaking this revisionist story nationwide.)

The first place we visited on the tour was the Jamestown Settlement, owned and operated by "Jamestown Settlement," owned and operated by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation for the Commonwealth of Virginia, not to be confused with the adjacent "Historic Jamestowne," co-administered by the National Park Service and the APVA (Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) -- which will also be addressed in part in this treatise.

While the tour guides at the Jamestown Settlement and Museum were cordial and informative on many points, we were all caught off guard by their unwillingness (yes, unwillingness) to discuss Jamestown's religious roots. As one of the tour guides was leading us through the very heart of the replica of the community, the Anglican Church, we asked if she could speak about the significance of the three religious plaques on the wall in the front of the church: the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed (the same are in the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg).

Our guide responded to our inquiry by saying that she was "unable to speak about the plaques. We are only allowed to say they are religious plaques." We were noticeably shocked by her comments and challenged her that these were very important in the lives of the colonists, and not educating others about them is a deliberate avoidance and minimizing of Christian history. We were all appalled, and shared so with her, especially understanding that this was an educational tour, on which students from across the country were being taught every week. In fact, it seemed whenever there was an opportunity to address any of the religious characteristics or zeal of this first community, it was avoided. (UPDATE Jan. 2009: At last, on the Jamestown Settlement website's " A Brief History of Jamestown," the religious mission or motive of the colony was added: "converting the Virginia Indians to the Anglican religion"--though it is listed there third in purpose when the actual original 1606 charter listed it as first, which you will see and read further on.).

Another guide repeated on several other occasions that the primary reason the first settlers came here to America was "to make money." In fact, he expected and prodded our group to replicate his three-word answer like a mantra, as he frequently asked us, "And why did these settlers come to America?"

Throughout the tour, we were given absolutely no religious information from Jamestown guides about this first colony in America. Without our own well-educated, informative guides from Christian Legacy Tours (Sacramento), we would have left Jamestown with the impression that these settlers were nothing more than predecessors pressed from the capitalist-greed molds of the 21st century. But were they? The historical evidence shows likewise.