Thursday, August 14, 2008

Brief Historical Facts

"A few Christian fundamentalists attempt to convince us to return to the Christianity of early America, yet according to the historian, Robert T. Handy, 'No more than 10 percent-- probably less-- of Americans in 1800 were members of congregations.' The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy." - Jim Walker1

Today, history books are being rewritten from a secular viewpoint with secular twists. Ironically, most of these people claim to be unbiased in their writings and facts, but they are obviously not. However, because this secular view is being taught throughout the majority of our schools and colleges, this is becoming less and less obvious. Well, lets explore some of this "secular" history together.

One interesting piece of history that I can’t get out of my head is the Liberty Bell. Where did it get its name? Well, on July 8th, the Founding Fathers read the Declaration of Independence to the assembled crowd outside of Independence Hall. Then, they rang the Liberty Bell. Thus, many people today believe that the Liberty bell got its name from this occasion. However, the Liberty bell had its name long before this day. It was derived from an inscription engraved on it. Leviticus 25:10 – “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land, to all inhabitants thereof”2. For those who do not know what Leviticus is, it is a book in the Bible.

Also, in this day and age, the words atheists and deists are thrown around when our history teachers are describing to us our founding fathers (I took history at a public high school and this is what I recall pretty clearly). Basically, we are told they weren’t really THAT Christian if they were Christian at all. The problem is, our teachers are only pointing out a couple founders when nearly every one of the 55 Founding Fathers who framed the Constitution were members of the orthodox Christian Church. More than HALF of the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence had Seminary degrees3. Please note that at this point either I am wrong or Jim Walker (above) is wrong. We can't both be right since the law of non-contradiction applies here. Now is a good time to check sources.

A group of Political Science professors decided to investigate the sources cited by a broad spectrum of writings from the Founding Era (AKA the writings of our Founding Fathers). This project took about ten years and involved more than 3,000 direct quotes. Guess what? They discovered that the vast majority of quotes were directly from the Bible (a good 34%) while other writings were taken directly from writers such as Blackstone, Locke, Montesquieu, etc. However, the primary source for Blackstone and many of the other writers was the Bible as well! So, if we actually included their direct quotes from the Bible, the percentage would be much higher than 34%4. Is Jim Walker (and men like him) trying to tell me that these secular men quote the Bible in a vast majority of their writings?

Oh and do you know what the New England Primer is? It was first introduced in 1690, it was a schoolbook from which people learned how to read until 1930. Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Noah Webster printed this primer for students in their states. Once the primer introduces the reader to the alphabet, it has a special section where each letter has a corresponding Bible verse5 and 6.

While there is a LOT more historical information, try to keep these type of facts in your mind the next time your professor, teacher, friend, acquaintance, stranger, whatever tries to tell you that our great nation was not founded on Christianity. That, I truly believe, is a lie.

Just look at the facts and then logic follows...

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1. http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html
2. http://www.ushistory.org/LibertyBell/index.html
3. America's Godly Heritage by David Barton pages 8-9.
4. America's Godly Heritage by David Barton pages 22-24.
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_England_Primer
6. America's Godly Heritage by David Barton pages 17-20.

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