Editor’s note: This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in Virginia.
Off the coast of North Carolina lies Roanoke Island, whose Northern tip is the site of England’s failed colony in the 1580’s. Other than the sound of surf breaking against the shore, all is silence. You feel a palpable sense of loss.
Four hundred years ago, three ships — the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery — launched out of the Thames River from London toward the English Channel. The 105 passengers were men and boys; the women would come in later voyages. Five months later, on May 14, 1607, they founded Jamestown, England’s first permanent colony. The site was a peninsula 40 miles up the James River in what is now Virginia.
Troubles arose from the beginning. “Gentlemen” settlers were dependent on the labor of other settlers to sustain them. Brackish drinking water, fire, rotten food, disease, starvation, Indian warfare, incompetence and infighting among leadership took their toll. Capt. John Smith’s burn injury, a blow to the colony, may have resulted from a murder attempt.
The final blow fell during the winter of 1609-10, when 240 of the 300 settlers perished. There were incidents of cannibalism.
It was time to go home.
On June 7, 1610, the survivors headed down the James River in four boats. The plan was to work their way up the Atlantic coast and disperse themselves among the English fishing boats off Newfoundland.
The survivors spent that night at Hog Isle. The following afternoon they were approached by a lone man in a boat coming up river. He handed them a letter. As David Price says in his book Love and Hate in Jamestown, “The letter was about to hit the course of American history with the force of a meteor.”
Thomas West’s fleet with 150 new settlers and ample provisions had arrived at Point Comfort, at the mouth of the James River, on June 6. The survivors were ordered back to Jamestown; they made it there by nightfall. West’s fleet arrived two days later. Never again would things get as bad as they had been in the spring of 1610.
Financed by the Virginia Company of London, Jamestown was founded as a commercial effort to extract gold, silver, and other riches from North America; also, to find a trade route by river to the Pacific.
The commercial aspect of Jamestown is only part of the story. And here is where we encountered a surprise: Jamestown — not the Plymouth Colony (1620) or the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) — marks the arrival of the Puritans in America.
Before going any further, we need to pause and answer a question: Who were the English Puritans?
During the five years (1553-58) before Elizabeth I became queen, a Roman Catholic monarch ruled England. Several hundred Protestant leaders were burned at the stake and a number of others fled to the European continent. There they were embraced by the followers of John Calvin, the French reformer who surfaced a generation after Martin Luther. They found refuge in Geneva and several other cities.
For five years they drank deeply at the fountain of Calvinism. They studied the Bible in depth. They read Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, which philosopher Will Durant has called, “one of the ten books that shook the world.”
Summarizing Calvin’s teachings can be a risky business, but three things stand out. First, Calvin believed that, from a biblical standpoint, a human being is an undifferentiated unity. This means that every part of that unity, including the mind, has been tainted by sin. Second, Calvin was dazzled by Grace, the freely offered, undeserved gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. The contrast between our fallen human state and the depth of divine forgiveness stunned Calvin, leaving him almost speechless. Finally, Calvin stressed the deep Old Testament roots of our New Testament faith.
The typical Calvinist was a spiritual athlete with a probing mind and an incurable optimism.
In 1558 Elizabeth began her reign, and our freshly minted English Calvinists came home. She needed their help to purify the Anglican Church, the Church of England, hence, the name “Puritan.” For a full century (1560-1660) Puritanism would thrive as the most vibrant form of Christianity among the people of England. Most Puritans were Anglicans, until 1642. Some were sympathetic to Presbyterianism and Congregationalism.
And now back to Jamestown. The historian Perry Miller has done seminal work on the American Puritans. One chapter in his book, Errand Into The Wilderness, concerns Virginia:
“When Lord De la Warr (Thomas West) arrived, just in time to save the colony, his first act even before his commission was read, was to hear ‘a sermon made by Mr. Buck.'” (page 103, fifth printing 1976)
“The legend of Pocahontas is a classic of American mythology, but John Rolfe’s own version of his love for the Indian maiden is less widely known. Rolfe cannot for a moment entertain the thought of this marriage unless he is certain that he is ‘called hereunto by the spirit of God,’ no matter how much he fancies himself in love.”
“To discover a courtship conducted in this spirit is to realize that Virginia and New England were both recruited from the same type of Englishmen, pious, hard-working, middle class, accepting literally and solemnly the tenets of Puritanism.” (pages 107-108, fifth printing 1976)
Given its launching point in 1607, we can trace the trajectory of American Calvinism.
It was rooted primarily in the English Puritanism that grew first at Jamestown and then in Plymouth, along with the subsequent arrival of Scottish Presbyterian and European Reformed Church immigrants. For the first two centuries (1607-1800) of our history, they organized themselves into villages built around a church. Indeed, most Americans organized themselves into communal Calvinistic towns.
After the 18th century the communal aspect began to weaken as the new nation-state, the U.S.A., took root. But Calvinism maintained its strength, that is, until the 1860’s. In spite of its spiritual and intellectual firepower, American Calvinism, north and south, could not peacefully resolve the problem of slavery. A terrible Civil War was a consequence of this failure. Calvinism was discredited in the process.
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address (1865)–an awesome Calvinistic document that shames the celebrity preachers of that day–sings a swan song for the old Calvinistic kingdom. Thereafter, much leadership of the nation would come from Methodism, Lutheranism, Roman Catholicism, and other Christian traditions.
Can Puritan and Presbyterian Calvinism, such as took us from Jamestown to the battlefields of the American Civil War, reclaim its role as leader of the nation? If Presbyterian and Reformed Christians will commit themselves to prayer, serious Bible study, and a careful reading of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvinism can regain its dominant position in our churches and in the life of our nation.
With God, all things are possible- and that’s a statement John Calvin would affirm with all his heart and soul.
Wesley R. Harker is an honorably retired Presbyterian minister who makes his home in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
