“To destroy a people
you must first sever their roots.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Will America survive?
The answer to that question depends on whether a nucleus of her citizens will
recover and reconnect with the nation’s history. A nation derives its sense of
identity from its history. If you want to fundamentally change a nation, tamper
with its history, for as George Orwell said in his classic, 1984, “Whoever controls the past,
controls the future.” Or as Karl Marx is said to have put it, “People without a
heritage are easily persuaded.”
This gives understanding to the statement by
Barack Obama shortly after taking office, “America is not a Christian nation.”
This was not a statement based on the facts of history, but was, instead, a
statement based on an ideology and tied to his stated goal to “fundamentally
change” America. He was tampering with our history.
American history, of course, had already been
tampered with before Barak Obama. Historians tamper with history, not always by
changing it, but by excluding what they find objectionable. There is, for
example, a noticeable void and absence when one reads modern textbook accounts
of America’s origins and compares that with the letters, journals and
autobiographies of those same people and events. The common references to faith
in God, the Bible and Jesus Christ in the original accounts are glaringly
missing in the modern renditions.
Modern historians seem to be embarrassed by
America’s overt Christian origins. They,
therefore, tamper with her history by deleting or downplaying that aspect of
her story. So what is being taught in public schools and universities today
is a secularist revision of America’s history.
The purpose of this book is not to give a
detailed account of America’s beginnings,
but to highlight that aspect of her history that has been ignored or
diminished. This is necessary, for as the
Catholic scholar, Michael Novak, says, “In
one key respect, the way the story of the United States has been told for the
past one hundred years is wrong.”
What is “wrong,” according to Novak, is the
elimination of faith from the story of America’s history. He points out that to
read most historians today, one would think that America’s Founders were the
embodiment of “secular philosophy,” when the truth is that “their faith is an ‘indispensable’ part of their story.”
A unique contribution of
this book is documenting how the Christianity that gave birth to America was
the Christianity of the “Radical Reformers.” “Radical Reformers” is a term coined by
George H. Williams, the late Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale
University, in referring to the Anabaptists, but would also include groups such
as the Separatist Puritans, the English Baptists and the Quakers. In some regards, it can also be a designation for Puritans in general and the
early Presbyterians.
It was these “Radical
Reformers” who articulated doctrines of freedom of conscience, religious liberty
and the freedom of the church from the state. They brought these “radical”
ideals to America where they were further tried and forged in the furnace of
practical experience in building a new life in the New World.
This is their
story. This is America’s story. This is the story of freedom-loving people
everywhere.
This is the Preface to Dr. Eddie Hyatt's latest book, Pilgrims and Patriots, available from Amazon and from his website bookstore at www.eddiehyatt.com. Pat Robertson calls this book "a must-read."
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