The Myth of the Cape Henry Cross
On April 29, the White House released a statement commemorating commemorating the erection of a cross on Cape Henry in 1607 by the founders of Jamestown, Virginia. I’ll return to that statement in a moment, but first I want to talk about the Christian mythology and the false narrative that has grown up around that event.
Facts and Myths
Here’s what we know about that event and how we know it. George Percy was one of the settlers who at the Virginia coast on April 26, 1607. In 1608 he wrote,
The nine and twentieth day we set up a Cross at Chesupioc Bay, and named that place Cape Henry.
So that’s all we know. That’s the only contemporaneous witness to the event who wrote about it, and that’s the entire description in a very word narrative about the first days of Jamestown.
We don’t know who was present on Cape Henry on April 29. Most of the settlers were living on the ships while landing parties searched for a suitable place to settle. We don’t know what was said or done as the cross was raised, or by whom. We don’t even know what the cross was made of. Historians and others have inferred details not present in the evidence. The cross was wood. A prayer was offered. Those are reasonable inferences if you are telling a story, but these details are not present in the documentary evidence.
The Cape Henry cross raising seems to have been a perfunctory event. The settlers’ writings don’t indicate that it was a big deal or a momentous event. Captain John Smith, a more famous settler, never mentioned it. Smith describes the first worship service that took place at Jamestown in May and tells his readers about Robert Hunt, the English priest sent to be the vicar of the colony’s parish. He says nothing about the Cape Henry event even though he does relate the story about another cross raising, this one in Maine, in 1605, by Captain George Weymouth.
Nevertheless, Christian nationalist myth makers have invented a much more detailed - but false - narrative. The vicar Robert Hunt, they say, was present and offered a prayer dedicating the land and establishing a covenant between the American people and God.
“We do hereby dedicate this Land, and ourselves, to reach the People within these shores with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to raise up Godly generations after us, and with these generations take the Kingdom of God to all the earth. May this Covenant of Dedication remain to all generations, as long as this earth remains, and may this Land, along with England, be Evangelist to the World. May all who see this Cross, remember what we have done here, and may those who come here to inhabit join us in this Covenant and in this most noble work that the Holy Scriptures may be fulfilled.”
The prayer is a total fabrication but widely shared in Christian nationalist circles.
The First Landing 1607 Project includes numerous other fabricated details: the settlers took communion, knelt, and dedicated the land to God when the cross was erected. In reality, seventeenth century Anglicans did not treat communion that casually. Communion occurred much less frequently. The Episcopal Church date the first communion to June 21.
One source that the 1608 project cites says that Rev. Hunt required the landing party to remain on the ships for 3 days of personal examination, repentance and fasting before going ashore to consecrate the land for God’s purposes. We know that isn’t true because both Percy and Smith contradict it.
All of this is pure baloney, but that didn’t stop the Virginia House of Delegates passing a resolution based on these lies in 2025. The myth is pervasive in certain circles.
To Spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ
The three ships arriving at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in April 1607 were sent by the Virginia Company of London, a mutual stock company, under a 1606 charter granted by King James I. For the king’s part, the presence of an English colony on the east coast of North America would serve as a check on Spanish power in the south and French power in the north and provide tax revenue to the cash-strapped crown. The Virginia Company itself existed to provide a profit to its investors. Most of the charter’s 3827 words were legalese dedicated to that end.
The charter did indeed, however, include a nod toward the Christianization of the “infidels and savages.”
We, greatly commending and graciously accepting of their desires to the furtherance of so noble a work which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in 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 humane civility and to a settled and quiet government, do by these our letters patent graciously accept of and agree to their humble and well intended desires.
Converting the natives and civilizing them always seem to go hand in hand in the vision of the English leadership. That pairing continued through most of the 19th century and the later missionary movement.
Over the next two decades, the charter would be updated and regulations issued for the governance of the colony.
Instructions issued in the fall of 1606 encouraged the settlers to draw “the savages and heathen people … to the true service and knowledge of God” and that those who were willing to live in peace with the settler were to be treated with justice, kindness, and charity.
By 1609, however, the tone changed. “Procure” their children and raise them in English ways. Kidnap their spiritual leaders and hold them as prisoners. “And in case of necessity or conveniency, we pronounce it not cruelty nor breach of charity to deal more sharply with them and to proceed even to death with these murderers of souls and sacrificers of God’s images to the devil”.
In 1621, the tone moderated. Encourage the natives to do business with the English so that they may grow to like our civilized ways and eventually bet drawn to true religion. Procure some of their children, but just means it now says, and educate them and prepare them for college. A 1618 instruction granted a license to create a university for native education.
Whether gentle or harsh, the early American model of spreading a gospel tied to a particular culture or a particular nation can hardly be commended today.
The Established Religion of England
While the Virginia charter speaks of propagating the Christian religion to the natives, it means only English Protestant religion. Both France and Spain were Catholic realms. Both hand long ago planted their own crosses and begun missionary efforts among the native populations. James’ desire to plant the English version of Protestantism in North America cannot be separated from his desire to reduce the power of those competing empires.
It is ironic that Christian nationalists in the United States push their myths surrounding Jamestown to undergird their own forms of religion. Their versions of Christian community and practice would have been prohibited by the Jamestown authorities. Their religious institutions and practices were criminalized. Only under the Church of England were Christians allowed to organize and conduct religious activities in Jamestown.
We do especially ordain, charge and require the said Presidents and Councils and the ministers of the said several Colonies respectively, within their several limits and precincts, that they with all diligence, care and respect doe provide that the true word and service of God and Christian faith be preached, planted and used… according to the doctrine, rights and religion now professed and established within our realm of England; [1606]
You shall take principal order and care for the true and reverent worship of God that his word be duly preached and his holy sacraments administered according to the constitutions of the Church of England in all fundamental pointes, and his ministers had in due observance and respect agreeable to the dignity of their calling. And that all atheism, profanes, popery, or schism be exemplarily punished to the honor of God and to the peace and safety of his Church, over which, in this tenderness and infancy, you must be especially solicitous & watchful. [1609]
And since our general endeavors and designs have not yet effected a due establishment of the honor and rights belonging to the Church and ministry, we must require your most earnest care to advance all things appertaining thereunto, seriously endeavoring the establishment of due order in administering of all services according to the usual form and discipline of the Church of England and carefully avoiding all factious and needless novelties tending only to the disturbance of peace and unity; and that such ministers as have been or shall be sent from time to time may bee respected and maintained according to the orders made in that behalf, also for accommodating the churches or places for divine service. [1621]
This is exactly what the colony at Plymouth was trying to get away from. Jamestown is not a model of religious liberty. The concept true religious liberty did not emerge until much later in colonial life.
To Extend Christendom’s Dominion
I will turn now to the president’s most recent proclamation celebrating the anniversary of the “First Landing and the Raising of the Cape Henry Cross.” The president repeats a version of the false Cape Henry myth as fact.
On this day 419 years ago, America’s birthright of faith was anchored in the sand when a courageous group of adventurers, explorers, and settlers planted a glorious wooden cross at the crest of Cape Henry, Virginia—a consecration of the new frontier that laid the foundation for the greatest Republic in the history of the world. Today, our Nation pays tribute to the heroes who landed at Cape Henry in the spring of 1607, and we pledge to pioneer a future that once again upholds our traditions, cherishes our values, and places our trust in Almighty God.
On April 26, 1607, 104 men completed a daring voyage across the Atlantic in search of opportunity in the Americas. Commissioned by King James I and the Virginia Company of London, they were guided by a noble mission: to extend Christendom’s dominion in the New World, secure their prosperity, and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Following their safe arrival, three days after first setting foot on American soil, on April 29, 1607, they raised a commanding cross on the Chesapeake shore in a mighty act of reverence and devotion. Upon fixing the cross into the ground, the settlers, led by Reverend Robert Hunt, humbly bowed their heads in prayer as they prepared to embark on a bold and costly endeavor. They later traveled west to establish Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Despite facing unimaginable hardship—including drought, starvation, and disease—Jamestown endured, America’s gritty character was forged, and less than 200 years later, our Nation was born on July 4, 1776.
Today, a granite cross stands in the place of the First Landing in honor of the resilience and heroic Christian witness of the Jamestown settlers. More than 4 centuries later—as we celebrate 250 years of glorious American independence—we follow their example, echo their resolve, and commit to restoring a Nation that honors our rich spiritual inheritance, advances the common good, and offers rightful praise to our Creator above.
Dominion is exactly what many of the president’s Christian supporters want. There are many forms of dominion theology, primarily in Calvinist and Pentecostal circles, but they all boil down to power. The dominionist versions of Christianity seeks to be the dominant force in politics, culture, and everything else in society. Dominionism demands recognition of Christianity as a central component of national identity.
My manner of Biblical interpretation, my theology, my understanding of the reign of God, my politics, and my practice of Christianity look starkly different than that of the dominionists. In many respects, my religion looks more like the Book of Common prayer of the Jamestown settlers than it does like American evangelicalism. I do not wish to impose my beliefs on others, and I do not wish to have their false beliefs imposed on me.
The president’s goal, it seems, is to please the Christian dominionists. In doing so, he tramples on history, embraces genocidal and colonialist forms of evangelism, and champions a form of Christianity foreign to the actual kingdom of God. That’s the only kingdom that matters.
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Spelling in most quotes has been modernized.References:
Presidential Message on the Anniversary of the First Landing and the Raising of the Cape Henry Cross, The White House, April 29, 2026
The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London
Discourse of the Plantation of the Southern Colony in Virginia by the English, George Percy, 1608
The Generall Historie of Virginia,New England & The Summer Isles, John Smith, 1624
Advertisements for the unexperienced planters, John Smith, 1631
Chaplain Robert Hunt and His Parish in Kent, Charles W. F. Smith, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 26, No. 1, “The 350th Anniversary of the Founding of Virginia, 1607-1957” (MARCH, 1957), pp. 15-33, Published By: Historical Society of the Episcopal Church
Robert Hunt, Vicar of Jamestown, Lewis Wright, Brenda Gardner,Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol. 66, No. 4, THE ENGLISH REFORMATION: THEOLOGY, SOTERIOLOGY, AND EMPIRE (December 1997), pp. 500-519
The Planting of the Church in Virginia, E. Clowes Chorley, The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jul., 1930), pp. 191-213
The Foundations of Church and State in Virginia, William Stevens Perry, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 26, No. 1, “The 350th Anniversary of the Founding of Virginia, 1607-1957” (MARCH, 1957), pp. 34-64
[A free JSTOR account required to access the previous four references.]
The First Landing 1607 Project