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MONUMENTAL: In Search of America's National Treasure
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I have not yet seen the film and I am not trying to be controversial as I am just beginning to search out source documents and such, but I’m reminding myself, that hope lies not in a Christian America, but only in the saving knowledge of Christ.
Here is one different viewpoint for consideration – http://www.noiseofthunder.com/articles/2011/4/7/david-barton-historian-or-propogandist.html
I would enjoy frank discussion of these topics here where the discourse is always polite.
Blessings,
Christie
Christie,
Thanks for that article. DH and I went to see the movie last night with our 10YO. Knowing that the movie was only one side of the story, I came home and searched for the other side…and wow, I had no idea that David Barton’s version of history is so controversial.
Christie,
Thanks for sharing that link. Just wanted to bump your message up:) I’m going to research this some more. I’m wondering if anyone has good sources/links to investigate what the faith of our founding fathers looked like. Thanks. :)Gina
Gina,
As i mentioned, I’m just learning…
I just returned from visiting DC & the historic triangle. From my discoveries on that trip and hubby’s knowledge, I’m learning that many founders believed in God as creator, but not the trinity or miracles or prophecy. They were deists that held to reason and observation of the natural world. Some were great, visionary men with remarkable gifts, but they were not Christians as they did not accept the divinity of Jesus, but saw him as a moral teacher.
I find this interesting and important. I want to learn and share with my kids the truth about the founding of this country and not just an interpretation of events that the source documents and such do not uphold. While I believe it’s a worthy goal to preserve American freedoms and learn the basis for the founding of our great country, it is not the supreme goal. My goal is to prepare my family for our heavenly home, realizing that God raises up and brings down nations and rulers in His time. Just my 2 cents.
Christie
Thanks, Christie. That’s very interesting. I knew there were issues w/Jefferson, but had honestly never taken the time to learn about the others. It wasn’t a focus of our Early Amer. History studies last year. I certainly want to make sure I present these issues accurately when they come up.
Have you heard of this lady: http://www.christianheritagetours.org/director.htm? She worked in the Library of Congress for many years, I believe has a Doctorate of Ministry degree, and has curriculum and does tours in D.C. on the Christian heritage of our country. I guess when I hear Christian I assume Christian like us…believers and followers of Jesus, not just having a belief in God (which many recent presidents would agree with).
Have you found any of the founding fathers to be true believers in Christ? I guess the issue may be that the term Christian is used too loosely. Though I do think our founding fathers exercised their faith more in regards to laws and bringing God into the picture than we often see in our modern world. Interesting thoughts! Thanks for sharing:) Gina
OK, so I went looking for the original text of this letter that Mr. Pinto points to in his article between John Adams and Benjamin Rush. The only place I could find the whole text was on Wall Builders. Mr. Barton has both a front and back copy of the letter posted as well a text version. Here is the text of the letter that Mr. Pinto talks about in his article:
My dear Sir
I thank you for the pleasing account of your family in your favor of the 5th as I have a lively interest in their prosperity and felicity, your relation of it gave me great pleasure. We have letters from our colony navigating the Baltic, dated at Christiansand. They had been so far as prosperous and healthy and happy as such travelers could expect to be.
Pope said of my friend General Oglethorpe.
Some driven by strong benevolence of soul shall fly like Oglethorpe from pole to pole. But what was a trip to Georgia in comparison with the journeys and voyages that J.Q. Adams has performed? I do not believe that Admiral Nelson ever ran greater risks at Sea.Tell Richard that I hope Mrs. Rush will soon present him with a son that will do him as much honor in proportion as the first born of his genius has already done him in the opinion of the world. W.S.S. our guardian of the Athenaum has obtained it and proclaims it loudly everywhere the best pamphlet that will be read. Be sure you do not hint this to Mrs. Rush Junr. It would alarm her delivery.
I really do not know whether I do not envy your city of Philadelphia for its reputation for science, arts, and letters and especially its medical professor. I know not, neither whether I do not envy you your genius and inspiration. Why have I not some fancy? Some invention? Some ingenuity? Some discursive faculty? Why has all my life been consumed in searching for facts and principles and proofs and reasons to support them? Your dreams and fables have more genius in them than all my life. Your Fable of Dorcas would make a good chapter or a good appendix to the Tale of a Tub.
But my friend there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this Earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the Ministry. In the same manner as the Holy Ghost is transmitted from monarch to monarch by the holy oil in the vial at Rheims which was brought down from Heaven by a dove and by that other phial [vial] which I have seen in the Tower of London. There is no authority civil or religious: There can be no legitimate government but that which is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words damnation. Although this is all artifice and cunning in the sacred original in the heart, yet they all believe it so sincerely that they would lay down their lives under the ax or the fiery fagot [bundle of wood used for burning individuals at the stake] for it. Alas, the poor weak ignorant dupe human nature. There is so much king craft, priest craft, gentlemen’s craft, people’s craft, doctors craft, lawyers craft, merchants craft, tradesmen’s craft, laborers craft and Devil’s craft in the world that it seems a desperate [hopeless] and impractical project to undeceive it.
Do you wonder that Voltaire and Paine have made proselytes [converts]? Yet there [is] near as much subtlety, craft and hypocrisy in Voltaire and Paine and more too than in Ignatious Loyola [a Spanish knight who was a founder of the Jesuits].
This letter is so much in the tone of my friend the Abbe Raynal [a French writer] and the grumblers of the last age, that I pray you to burn it. I cannot copy it.
Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him however I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.
The Auroras you lent me for which I thank you are full of momentous matter.
I am dear sir with every friendly sentiment yours,
J. Adams.
This letter was one that Adams wrote in response to Benjamin Rush’s letter relating a dream that he had about the renewal of the friendship between Adams and Jeffereson. Parts of the letter can be found (though no source material is pictured to show any degree of authentisity) here. While these are all on WallBuilders which is Mr. Barton’s website, the linked item does have source documents listed so that you can read for yourself what was written. The main source for the letter mentioned above can be found online for free, so you can easily follow the bunny trail.
I also found this piece of document found here: (Please note: I know nothing about this site, it just came up in a search “John Adams letter to Benjamin Rush”)
[Thomas Paine’s] political writings, I am singular enough to believe, have done more harm than his irreligious ones. He understood neither government nor religion. From a malignant heart he wrote virulent declamations, which the enthusiastic fury of the times intimidated all men, even Mr. Burke, from answering as he ought. His deism, as it appears to me, has promoted rather than retarded the cause of revolution in America, and indeed in Europe. His billingsgate, stolen from Blount’s Oracles of Reason, from Bolingbroke., Voltaire, Berenger, &c., will never discredit Christianity, which will hold its ground in some degree as long as human nature shall have any thing moral or intellectual left in it. The Christian religion, as I understand it, is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent, all powerful and all merciful creator, preserver, and father of the universe, the first good, first perfect, and first fair. It will last as long as the world. Neither savage nor civilized man, without a revelation, could ever have discovered or invented it. Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all.
I also found a book while searching, John Adams: A Biography in his own words. I know this doesn’t give you a one stop shop to figure out what all of the founders though about God, but this gives all of us a little peak into what the controversies are about.
If we read many letters, speeches, or manuscripts of each founders’ own words, or at least some who were extremely influential, we will have a much better idea than one letter hoisted as the pivotal piece that exemplifies the extent of the alleged misinformation. Without knowing this letter is in response to a previous one from Dr. Rush, we don’t get the full, whole picture of what Adams is saying – either as to his Trinitarian views or his deistic leanings.
I know we are all busy, and that is disheartening when thinking about learning what the founders believed when we need to pick up each man’s own words. Perhaps we could each borrow an original source book and read through some of the letters and post some of them. Make our own primary source document gathered by devoted homeschooling mamas trying to know our beginings by knowing the words of our founders.
I agree with Christie that God raises up and brings down nations, peoples, and men in His time all for the Glory of His Name. Perhaps we can (should?) simply pray that God will make His Truth known to all men. That all people would be open to His Truth; that we would be open to the truth, whatever that may be, and that I would have the strength to accept it – especially when it shines a light on our [my] own misunderstanding and sin.
I hope this doesn’t come across as snobby or preachy. I’ve just been wrestling with this and items like it, and trying to figure out where I need to draw the line; where do I go and whom do I trust. There is only so much time in the day and only so many resources I can devote to learning each day, week, and month; yet I want to know the truth about God, our history, and other areas. And now I’m rambling…
I hope this is helpful in some way to the discussion at hand. And now I think I’ll slink back to the wall on this and listen in on wiser people’s thoughts.
Pax,
~jacqleene
I apologize in advance for the length, but I couldn’t find a way to shorten it! Quickly, in regards to the monuments in Washington, they are built by people who, over the past 100 years, have tried to scrub away G-d from the public sphere-MLK Jr’s monument has no mention of G-d and he was a preacher! It was his faith that propelled his activism for equality (only a Biblical doctrine, not man).
I think the letter of Adam’s above is an example of his detest for governmental religious control, not against the holy Spirit itself.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ll just chime in anyway! The Christian Nation, the theocracy, that the Puritans wanted to establish is different than the American Nation established on the Judeo-Christian religion and the Bible, combined with the knowledge of what worked in the democratic Republics of the past. I think keeping that distinction clear is important. However, Puritan principles and experiments in government were a contributing factor in her development.
I would suggest reading their letters yourselves and coming to your own conclusions. They are fascinating! It’s important not to just read a letter here or there, but over the course of their lives. These men questioned things far more than many modern Christians are comfortable doing about many areas of authority- the churches and the states- and had knowledge about various past church doctrine and heresies or assumed heresies that aren’t really discussed in the modern church either. In addition, terms that we use weren’t exactly the same as they are now. For example, what Unitarianism was at the end of the 18th cen. and the beginning of the 19th is different than what it became in the mid-19th to now.
Recall that they were also much closer in the historical time-line to the atrocities of the state Catholic and Protestant church (like Q. Elizabeth’s enforcement of her Protestantism) and the effects of the Protestant Reformation with the many varied doctrines that resulted. For example, some Calvinistic Anti-nomianism, at that time, had become a problem in the doctrine of eternal salvation as it allowed for immoral living w/eternal security. So there was a lot of railing against Calvinistic teachings in Jefferson’s and Adams’ writings for that reason and others against church abuses throughout history. Adams also railed against ridiculous French ideas that lead to the French Rev.-but I digress.
They didn’t use evangelical language as is common today. The Founders had no problem questioning that there were certain Christian doctrines that the church had stated as undeniable truth that may not be; and they disputed them. Those that dispute those “truths” could be considered as not excepting Biblical Revelation, when it’s not Biblical Revelation at all, but a human invention happened to be sanctioned by the Church. A personal example of that type of non-orthodoxy, would be in my rejection of the common view of the pre-trib and mid-trib Rapture doctrine, eternal salvation doctrine, an aspect of the Trinity doctrine (which I won’t detail so as not to freak anybody out) and what happens to us after death prior to the Second coming (again, not going into detail here).
The Founders were so prolific in their writings that it is easy to verify what they were thinking. You can look up the laws and Proclamations they supported and made to discern what they believed and how they viewed religion to be lived out in the public square and not be hindered by gov’t. Not a “Christian Nation” from the Federal stand point of having an established state religion, like in Europe; however, it was stated that she was established on Christian principles. It was most certainly not a secular nation they envisioned, as we have now. They would be appalled at the muzzling of the churches via the tax code and mandates; the decay of virtue; they would decry the lack of action among self-proclaiming Christians in their communities and country, they would be amazed at the Biblical illiteracy among most everyone and inability to think critically (prior to the 20th C., the Bible was considered the foundation of a learned person) and definitely be amazed that those crying for social justice in the liberal churches would use government (i.e, making it tyrannical) to enforce their religious moral code and calls for “pure democracy” where rights do not come from Nature’s G-d, that they’re not unalienable, but come from man.
I don’t think people are trying to put their hope in an America t moves away from secularism and back to our Judeo-Christian foundations instead of hope in Messiah’s and the hope of the World to Come. Being salt and light through your moral living and the churches affecting the culture and community used to be the norm, whereas now they have either abdicated their role in society and/or it’s been eroded by the power of big gov’t. The bigger the gov’t. the less influence the churches have- look at Europe. Should Believers act less like Messiah so that the End Times come?
I think both renewing the good aspects in America’s spiritual past and the hope in the saving knowledge of Messiah can co-exist together. Ultimately I know that all Nations will turn against Israel and from G-d and Messiah will return. However, no one knows the time. Perhaps if those who claim to believe in the G-d of the Bible and His plan of Salvation would live accordingly as reflected in their lifestyle choices which in turn becomes the culture, then our country would not be on its secular descent.
Was Jefferson a Christian as we would define it? No. Did he believe in the Creator G-d of the Bible? Yes. I don’t think he was a full-fledged Deist; Franklin neither. Were there Christians, as we would define it, during the First and Second Congresses and then the Constitutional Congress? Absolutely. Can you reject the Trinity doctrine and still believe that Jesus is the Savior? Yes
Our Founder’s, whether Deist, non-orthodox Christians or Orthodox Christians, they formed our Nation upon the Laws of the Bible, Biblical teachings of individual freedom, the intellectual benefits of the Age of Reason and the Renaissance, the teachings of Messiah, Grecian virtue, and the best of past Republics and Democratic principles. Check out the wording of the original Constitutions (some may still be relatively unchanged) of the various states. Very revealing.
One last thing: the Treaty of Tripoli is cited many times as being the example how John Adams did not endorse Christianity and America.
It states: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
We were fighting Muslim pirates who had clumped us together w/Europe, whose Monarchs ruled as absolutes, with the authority of Heaven, requiring their subjects to follow their religion; not to mention the violent history between Christianity and Islam. So we had to clearly establish the differences between ourselves and the “Christian Nations” of Europe to make peace w/these Barbaries. Context is so important.
I’ll post a separate post about some book resources I think are helpful.
I hope this was helpful perspective-it’s a wonderful topic.
I’m on my phone rocking my sleeping 2 year old who fell and gashed his head this morning, so forgive the brevity.
Good points and perspectives. I do agree re. America being founded on Judeo-Christian principles regardless of the founders’ exact stance on varying doctrines. I agree, too, the founders had insight and wisdom to search out and question.
I simply want to read and learn these things for myself as I have time from source documents. I dislike the revisionist history being taught in schools today along with the removal of God from public life, but I don’t want to follow blindly accepting what might simply sound good from our “side”, for lack of a better term, without seeing the different sides to the story. I always prefer seeing all sides and being left to think on it and make up my own mind as opposed to being told what to think, from either side. I guess us homeschoolers are like that.
🙂
Oh no, poor thing!! I assume all is well with your 2 yr. old now?
” I simply want to read and learn these things for myself as I have time from source documents. I dislike the revisionist history being taught in schools today along with the removal of God from public life, but I don’t want to follow blindly accepting what might simply sound good from our “side”, for lack of a better term, without seeing the different sides to the story. I always prefer seeing all sides and being left to think on it and make up my own mind as opposed to being told what to think, from either side.”
I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!
I also don’t think that reason is in conflict with the Scripture; though obviously the paradoxes of G-d in His Revelation cannot always be dealt with from a logical position- He is supernatural, after all.
Here are a few resources off the top of my head:
The Liberty Fund catalog is full of available books using primary resources:
http://catalog.libertyfund.org/home.html?page=shop.browse&category_id=2
and
http://catalog.libertyfund.org/home.html?page=shop.browse&category_id=3
The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
The Adams-Jefferson Letters:The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas and Abigail and John Adams
The Revolutionary Writings of JOhn Adams (excellent! shows it was his ideas of the bi-cameral legislature, among other things and his contributions to the Massachussetts Constitution as a model for our Federal Constitution)
The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (I found this one fascinating)-Library of American BIography (of the pthrs are good like this one, I will try to read more)
Abigail Adams: A Biography by Phyllis Levin
Sacred Fire
These use their writings:
The Real George Washington
The Real Thomas Jefferson
The Real Benjamin Franklin
Samuel Adams: A Life
Our Sacred Honor: Words of Advice from the Founders in Stories, Letters, Poems, and Speeches by William Bennet (I have the young people’s version of this and it is enjoyed)
Library of America has multiple titles that are just their writings, autobios:
James MAdison:Writings: Writings 1772-1836 (
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
George Washington
2 for Benjamin Franklin
2 for JOhn Adams:1755-1775 and 1775-1783
The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison (Modern Library Classics) -J. Madison and Edward Larson (and some other good one about Madison, I haven’t heard one recommended by a trusted source, yet)
Yes, even if our founding fathers didn’t hold to the tenets of an Evangelical faith I do think they were God-fearing men to be respected for their character and courage and who would be appalled at anti-Christian sentiment in our country such as removing God from public places. We’d planned on reading many source documents when we hit Amer. History again in h.s., but you all have got me curious now:)
I sincerely hope that when people put together movies like Monumental that will get a lot of public exposure they are relaying facts. I haven’t seen it or studied the David Barton controversies enough to know whether or not it’s done w/historical accuracy. I do really hope it’s done w/credibility or the gospel could lose credibility. It would be easy for a non-believer to wonder how Christians could be correct about history 2,000 years ago if they can’t get it straight from 200 yrs. ago! Thanks all for the discussion:) Gina
Also wanted to share that I didn’t know there was controversy with David Barton being a revisionist until I read articles from Brannon Howse. Also controversy with Glenn Beck (new age mormon). I don’t want to start an argument but will post the link if anyone is interested in reading this information from Worldview Weekend with Brannon Howse…They are saying in other articles that Kirk didn’t do his homework before producing this documentary…
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=8127
“I think both renewing the good aspects in America’s spiritual past and the hope in the saving knowledge of Messiah can co-exist together. Ultimately I know that all Nations will turn against Israel and from G-d and Messiah will return. However, no one knows the time. Perhaps if those who claim to believe in the G-d of the Bible and His plan of Salvation would live accordingly as reflected in their lifestyle choices which in turn becomes the culture, then our country would not be on its secular descent.”
Rachel – great post. I was hoping you would chime in on this one. Thank you also, Christie, for bringing up another side of the issue. This is one that’s been niggling at me for some time.
Thepinkballerina, my mom brought this article to my attention as well. I believe with everything that is out there we need to pray for discernment.
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