Blinded By Contemporaneity

Our family always enjoyed visiting Colonial Williamsburg. My wife had visited it with her high school class long ago, so I had heard stories about it. When my wife and I were very young, prior to having children, we took a short vacation in which we tried to tour more of the southeastern states than was possible. On that trip, we stopped to look at Williamsburg—and “look” was all we had time and money to do, but the little I saw was fascinating. 

Thus, it was not many years later, during seminary years, my wife and I truly visited Williamsburg, staying a few days and finally getting to experience the place. At that time, they attempted to create a somewhat immersive experience of eighteenth-century Williamsburg. The place was filled with period costumed people who usually behaved like people of the time. It helped you at least imagine that you had gone back in time. 

Of course, that is always an illusion, but with some effort a helpful approximation is possible. When our two sons were on the scene several years later, we made more trips to Colonial Williamsburg. During the 1990s when our sons were school age, we visited Williamsburg almost regularly. When the sons were both married in the early 2000s, we made another trip with both sons and wives, and yet another one with our elder son and his wife. 

During this time, Colonial Williamsburg kept enhancing the immersive history experience, at least in my opinion. The staff tried to maintain character wherever you met them. For example, once we stepped into one of the many shops on Duke of Gloucester Street (the main street of the old town). The proprietor (a costumed employee) greeted us in eighteenth-century style. He conversed with us only as someone with the knowledge and even worldview of the time and place would. He asked if we were visitors in town. When we told him we were, he asked us where we hailed from. When we told him “Kentucky,” he reacted just the way you might expect at the time. He had heard of the place. He knew it was far away. He knew it was on the edge of any hint of civilization. He was amazed we looked so healthy, living the difficult life we must live compared to Williamsburg. 

On another occasion, when our sons were at home, we visited Williamsburg, meeting an old friend of mine who was then teaching at a Bible college not too far away. I will call my friend “John.” John taught history but was also a very amusing fellow. One day while we were all there together, we stopped in for one of the periodic “trials” at the courthouse. These were always fun. As people gathered at the appointed time outside the courthouse, a costumed employee explained what would happen inside. 

She told us we would experience a trial of the time. It was based on the record of an actual case back in the day. She told us some of us could be on the panel of judges, as they called them. She explained we would be screened in exactly the way used in colonial times. To be eligible, you had to be male, white, over twenty-one, and a property owner. That whittled things down quite a lot. John and I both qualified, so we took our place as “judges.” There was still one empty judge seat, so one of the costumed characters available filled that spot. Also, there was always one head judge, also a costumed actor who always remained in character and did all the questioning of the accused. 

Another volunteer role was always played by one of the visiting participants: the accused. The bailiff stepped out of character just long enough to ask if anyone would like to play the role of the accused woman. One younger woman volunteered. The case involved a lady who had not attended the Bruton Parish Church in some time. The law required attendance at this (then) Anglican church at least once each month. It had come to the attention of the authorities the lady in question had been absent for many months. 

When the bailiff called the court to order and the judges took their seats, the questioning of the accused began. The head judge asked the accused, “Is it true you have not attended the Bruton Parish Church for at least one year?” “Yes,” the accused replied. The judge said, “You do realize this makes you in violation of the law. Do you have anything to say for yourself?” 

The accused said, “I have not attended because I am Roman Catholic (this lady was in fact Catholic), and my conscience will not permit me to attend Anglican services.” The judge said, “Madam, your conscience does not override the law.” At this point, the “accused” appealed to her right to freedom of religion. The judge, completely in stride, replied, “Madam, you do enjoy freedom of religion, and here in Williamsburg you are free to attend the Bruton Parish Church at least once each month.” 

The visitor playing the accused was clearly taken aback by this. She hadn’t really attempted to enter the eighteenth century of colonial times. Then, to make matters worse, when the lady appealed to her Roman Catholicism, my amusing friend John muttered, quietly but very audibly, “She’s a Papist!” 

This is exactly what someone might have said in that time and place, and it would have shocked no one. Not too far away was Newport, and it was a notorious abode of the Papists. Pressing the matter home, the costumed judge on the panel heard what John said, and took up a little chant, “She’s a Papist—a bloody Papist!” (I think I joined in this, but I was so amused and interested in what was transpiring that I am not sure. How often does one encounter a “bloody Papist”?) 

The accused was now utterly mortified, as revealed by the look on her face. The head judge gave her a chance to improve her situation. He said, “Since you are a newcomer here and perhaps did not know this law, if you will promise to begin attending the Bruton Parish Church at least once per month, I will accept your promise and release you.” However, the accused was now continuing to appeal to her “right” to practice the religion of her choice. The judge now lost all patience and said, “Since you persist in your disobedience, I have no choice but to impose sentence: twenty-five (coins of some kind) or twenty-five lashes.” 

The accused was feisty. She refused to pay the fine, so the judge ordered the bailiff to take her out to the whipping post and administer the twenty-five lashes. This young lady looked devastated. It was obvious she simply could not understand how her appeal to freedom of religion could be ignored in a court. At this point the court was adjourned, and all of us visitors began to leave the courthouse. The bailiff stepped out of character to thank her for participating and explain that they were just attempting to recreate an authentic colonial experience. 

Now, fast forward to a couple of later visits to Williamsburg my wife and I made in the 2010s. They were somewhat disappointing. Williamsburg seemed to have given up on the immersive history experience. Almost none of the costumed staff even attempted to speak to visitors in character. My wife and I stopped by another trial at the courthouse. Things had changed dramatically. Now there was little attempt to make the trial even somewhat like a trial in colonial times. The bailiff was a woman. The judges were no longer white, male, property owners—apparently, we now cannot tolerate that lack of inclusiveness, even to simulate an historical setting. That whole aspect was not really explained to the visitors. 

What seems to have happened is that modern sensibilities were imposed on what was called “colonial,” so it was no longer colonial at all. You might say Colonial Williamsburg had gotten a bit “woke,” even though this was just before that term came into its current use. 

You can’t both have your history and impose current ways of thinking on it too. There is something to be learned about approaching the Bible here. The Bible presents a picture of the nature of reality. Often the way those in our culture think about reality is not compatible with the picture the Bible presents. At that point, we must decide if we will accept the biblical view or our culture’s view. 

A good example is the matter of the role of women in church leadership. The view the Bible presents is decidedly opposed to the view our culture holds. And yet untold pages have been written trying to reimagine the biblical view in a way that makes it compatible with our culture’s view. When those reimaginings are examined, they must twist Scripture to reach the desired conclusions. Yet, there has been no end of commentators and professors, each of whom has “discovered” something that supposedly shows females could be church elders, females could have authority over men in the church, and females could teach men in a congregational setting. 

This is but one example of strained attempts to escape the biblical view of things for an “updated” view that accommodates our culture, but reality is stubbornly indifferent. You can have the total egalitarianism of our world, or you can have the Apostolic teaching, but you can’t have both. If our culture were just about fashions of dress but mostly left moral and worldview matters alone, we might be able to ignore our culture, at least sometimes. 

However, our culture is very religiously demanding. Its egalitarianism knows almost no end. It demands no one’s views be questioned. It demands, if there is a “heaven,” then everyone must go there. It demands any and every self-expression be accepted. It demands to reign as the final authority in what we do and think. Scripture warns us about this when it says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). 

We are always in the middle of an often unnoticed battle between “the world” (our culture, whichever one in which we might find ourselves) and the kingdom of God. That means every time we come to some conclusion about life, right, wrong, and their kin, we must ask ourselves a question: “Is that Scripture speaking, or is that an idea planted in me from my culture (the world)?” 

That is a question we must never stop asking. If we do, we are in danger of something like thinking we are experiencing colonial Williamsburg, all the while we are just experiencing a dressed-up view of modern culture. 

Kent B. True is the alter ego of Harold N. Orndorff, Jr., a retired campus minister who has taught college and seminary courses in the fields of apologetics, philosophy, ethics, and logic. Lately he enjoys studying his grandchildren, who are very interesting one and all.