Imagine all your friends being invited to a birthday party, and once they arrive, they’re forbidden to be happy. Instead of leading everyone in song, the hosts complain about the birth, criticize the parents and demand an apology from the guests.

Welcome to the 400th anniversary commemoration of the founding of Jamestown—the English settlement in Virginia that is, for some liberals, ground zero for evil in America.

Please ignore the fact that the men and women of Jamestown knew they were far from perfect, or that they were remarkable in so many respects. They demonstrated an indefatigable spirit against unrelenting hardships. They brought the Gospel of peace to warring tribes, acting under the authority of their 1606 Charter, a document explicitly based on the Great Commission. And what makes their story so compelling is that the Jamestown settlers were the instruments of God to impact the lives of hundreds of millions as they introduced a lasting Christian witness to the future United States of America.

And please don’t call the anniversary events scheduled for this month a "celebration." That would be insensitive, according to Mary Wade, secretary for the Virginia Council of Indians and a member of the Monacan Indian Nation. She explained in a 2000 interview with Voice of America Radio that paying tribute to the founding of Jamestown is inappropriate because "you can’t celebrate an invasion" in which "whole tribes were annihilated."

Wade was referring to the war that broke out between Jamestown settlers and the Native American chief Powhatan in 1609. She didn’t mention that Powhatan was a warrior who had slaughtered a rival tribe in the Chesapeake watershed just as the Jamestown settlers arrived in their three ships—Godspeed, Mary Constant and Discovery.

Even so, some members of the Virginia General Assembly were considering earlier this year an apology on behalf of the long-dead settlers to the Indians, in time for the anniversary.

Some in the media would prefer that America dispense with a commemoration of Jamestown altogether. The New York Times last May described the settlement as historically insignificant—"a town which disappeared into the mud."

The Virginia Gazette published an article last July entitled "Jamestown not worth it." The author opined:

Let’s face it. We’re spending millions of dollars and entirely too much energy on a place that few people outside of Eastern Virginia ever heard of, much less care about. Thus for a whole year or more we shall celebrate the fact that a bunch of British buffoons who knew nothing of what they were doing colonized a swamp for the sake of Christianizing Indians.

But America hasn’t always looked at Jamestown with disdain.

For nearly two centuries, American leaders honored the explorers who established Jamestown as a Christian outpost, with a legal code drawn extensively from the Bible. The settlers participated in the first republican representative government, a model adopted by the founding fathers of a later generation and incorporated into our Constitution. And they baptized the first Native American converts to Christianity, including the princess Pocahontas.

All of this earned Jamestown the moniker, "The Cradle of the Republic" (Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 2, October 1900, p. 138).

Significant celebrations of Jamestown began in 1807. For the 250th anniversary celebration, on May 13, 1857, thousands gathered on Old Jamestown Island to hear former President John Tyler, Jr., give a three-hour keynote oration. He proclaimed:

Here amid the graves of our ancestors, we renew our pledges to those principles of self-government, which have been consecrated by their examples through 250 years; and implore that great Being who so often and signally preserved them through trials and difficulties, to continue to give our country His protecting guardianship and care.

This was not the first time that John Tyler had come to Jamestown for a jubilee. If you were standing on the hallowed grounds of the James River for the 1807 Bicentennial, you would have seen the 17-year-old future president standing at the same location. You may even have seen his father, John Tyler, Sr., the man who regularly gathered his children under a willow tree and "regaled them with awe-inspiring tales of the American Revolution."

John the elder—a three-time governor of Virginia and close friend of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and James Madison—took seriously his sacred trust to pass on the heritage of God’s providences to his children.

President Tyler’s son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, envisioned the grandest celebration yet in 1907, a plan that caught the attention of President Teddy Roosevelt, who decided to open the event to the public. Other notable speakers included Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain and William Jennings Bryan. Off shore, America’s "Great White Fleet" put on an unprecedented naval display.

In all, more than 3 million people came to the Jamestown celebration in 1907—one out of every 29 Americans.

Today’s revisionists, including the reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, will dish up sour grapes for what will likely be a much smaller audience. But thousands of families will gather the week of June 11-16 for an alternative celebration sponsored by Vision Forum Ministries, a Christian outreach to families, based in San Antonio. Harrison Tyler, the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler and the grandson of America’s 10th president, will preside as grand marshal for this event.

Those who gather on the banks of the James River that week will participate in a historic event—the laying of a monument paid for by the one-dollar donations of mostly homeschooled children. The Jamestown Children’s Memorial is crowned with a sculpting of Holy Scripture opened to Psalm 78.

On one side of the monument, there is an acknowledgment that echoes the Psalmist: "In gratitude to the Lord our God for the mercy and kindness bestowed upon the American people and the children of the twenty-first century, through His providential direction and care of our Jamestown forefathers. Erected on the four hundredth anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement by the grateful children of America."

Douglas W. Phillips is president of Vision Forum Ministries, and the founder of the Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of America’s Providential History. Learn more about the event and the children’s memorial at www.jamestown 400th.org.