Homeschool News & Views

Issue 96, November 30, 2008

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

By Dan L. White

This was Thanksgiving week. Our little town has a Dollar General. That is the shopping center in Hartville. The Dollar General here was open all day on Thanksgiving Day. All the employees except for the manager had to work a full day.

America was an amazing country.

England had the church of the king. The king’s church was begun with Henry VIII, when he wanted to get rid of his wife and the Roman Catholic Church wouldn’t let him. So Henry started his own church.

Henry the Eighth was a Protestant of a different type. Martin Luther protested against the indulgences of Rome and began Protestantism. Henry began the Anglican Church with his own indulgences.

The first successful English colony in America was Jamestown, begun in 1607 by the king’s men, with the king’s church.

Jamestown was not settled primarily for religious convictions. It was settled by profiteers, people who were looking for profit. They brought the blessing of King James, named the settlement after him, named the nearby river after him, and they brought his church. If you religiously disagreed with the king’s church in America, you were in big trouble, just as in England. Jamestown brought with them what the Puritans were trying to get away from.

The second lasting English colony was begun in 1620. Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts was begun by people who wanted to get away from the king’s church. First they fled to Holland to get away from King James and his coerced kingly church, but they wanted to be English, not Dutch. Therefore they traveled to America, where they could be English but away from the king. They did not really come to America for religious freedom overall. They came to America to practice their own religion. Anyone who disagreed with them was not free to do so in their colony, so Roger Williams began another colony, Rhode Island, which did allow more religious freedom. Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers. They might not be welcome in other areas, but in that colony, they prevailed. Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics.

In spite of Jamestown, the king’s settlement with the king’s church, being the first permanent English colony in America, America developed without a state church. America did not try to follow the king’s religion. To whatever degree, they tried to follow not King James or King George, but the King of Kings.

America very strongly believed in the Bible as the guide to good and evil. They did that not because they had to – because the king forced them to -- but because that’s what they really believed.

In Little Town on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder described going to an Independence Day celebration in De Smet, Dakota Territory, where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud.

““And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

No one cheered. It was more like a moment to say, “Amen.” But no one quite knew what to do.

Then Pa began to sing. All at once everyone was singing,

My country, ‘tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing….

Long may our land be bright

With Freedom’s holy light.

Protect us by thy might,

Great God, our King!

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind and she thought: God is America’s King.”

God was America’s King. They didn’t look to the British king. They didn’t look to the pope or any one religious leader. More than any one other being, America looked to God for its leadership.

We don’t want to overstate that, and make America out to be one big colonial cathedral. It was not. It was full of humans with carnal human nature. However, they had a new president every four or eight years, he was their leader for a while, and then he was gone. They had no king and no pope. Therefore, more than any one passing president or person, America looked to God as its leader.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Thus the Declaration of Independence itself was founded on God the Creator. It was the Creator who gave certain unalienable rights. 90% of the men who signed the Declaration were affirmed believers in Christ.

America was not like this because the king forced them to be. America was like this because that’s what she believed.

Those beliefs took on many variations and America’s varied versions of Christianity were far removed from the earliest New Testament beliefs and practices, but she did have that basic belief in the Bible. Even when she did not follow the Bible, she thought she should. American Christianity was not a belief in any one church. But people of all those churches, varied as their beliefs were, with their many doctrinal differences, believed that the Bible was the word of God and taught the wisdom of knowing good and evil.

Joh 17:17 WEB

(17) Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth.

They, of so many different beliefs, all believed those words of Christ. The Bible is truth. So you had better know the Bible.

America, God shed His grace on thee – because America looked to Him to do that.

The first colleges in America were founded to teach ministers, so they could then preach the Bible to Americans. The first common schools were begun to teach young people to read the Bible. Each day the schools were begun by pointing the students to God.

In Little Town on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the teacher beginning the school day by reading the 23^rd Psalm to the class. Laura mentioned that she knew all the Psalms by heart, of course – there are 150 Psalms! Even so, she loved hearing the 23^rd, from “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want,’ ” to “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

After that, the Bible was closed and the schoolbooks were opened.

That was a typical American school, starting the school day with the most important subject – the Bible, and often a prayer.

Laura said that she loved to hear the teacher read the 23^rd Psalm, even though she knew it by heart. But what did most of the students do when the school day was begun with the Bible? They fiddled with the inkwell and fidgeted with their pencils, looked out the window and up at the ceiling, rubbed their eyes and yawned in the early morning sleepiness. Right? They kind of paid attention, sort of.

Still, the nation was so much better off when the students had that little bit of the Bible than they are today, when the Bible is banned from schools as porn used to be.

The McGuffey Reader, the most widely used book in American schools after the Bible, taught kids to read by having them read about the Bible. Not only did they learn to read well, but they learned right and wrong.

America had great sins, and many great sinners. Human nature is human nature, at any point in history. In reality, most Americans were not very Christ-like at all in their personal conduct. As always, only a small number would be most dedicated, and even those would have great shortcomings. However, almost everyone had a basic belief in the Bible as God’s word, even if they weren’t following it closely. This enormously blessed the whole nation for centuries. The effect of God’s wisdom is so great that even if it is followed very imperfectly, that still takes a people far above those who have lost the Bible and have lost the knowledge of God and the wisdom of knowing right from wrong.

For nearly four centuries, America had a general knowledge of right and wrong. That’s an incredible record.

In the Old Testament, after Solomon’s sins Israel was split into two kingdoms. Solomon’s son, the grandson of Godly King David, indulged sodomites in the kingdom of Judah.

1Ki 14:21-24 WEB

(21) Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which Yahweh had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there: and his mother's name was Naamah the Ammonitess.

(22) Judah did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, above all that their fathers had done.

(23) For they also built them high places, and pillars, and Asherim, on every high hill, and under every green tree;

(24) and there were also sodomites in the land: they did according to all the abominations of the nations which Yahweh drove out before the children of Israel.

Astoundingly, sodomites infected the kingdom of Judah in only the second generation after David. Yet America did not suffer the open acceptance of sodomy for four centuries, until Bill and Hillary Clinton. For four centuries, America knew that sodomy was evil – because the Bible told them so.

America was an amazing country, with a history like that. What a privilege it was to live in a country which decided, really by popular opinion, to have an annual day of thanksgiving to God. Thanksgiving Day in America did not come about by a government proclamation. The government proclamation resulted from the popular practice of the people. Again, the national day of Thanksgiving in America came from Americans, first the Puritans, then generation after generation after that, who maintained the practice, even though no one tried to force them to.

Thanksgiving Day was a day of thanksgiving to God from the people of America.

That has changed now. Make no mistake. The nation has taken a different turn.

Sodomy is in the open, with whole states and a political party dedicated to its support. And Thanksgiving Day to God has been altered and overrun. Many people now don’t give thanks to the God of the Bible. They have a generic thanksgiving day. They’re just thankful for this and that, turning a day of praise to God into an insult, as if He doesn’t exist. The materialistic madness of Black Friday has now backed up into Thanksgiving Thursday. Stores all across the nation are now open on Thanksgiving Day, with everybody trying to get a better jump on bargains and profits. More and more people are not with their families that day, and few fulfill the original purpose of the day.

The earlier dedication to God of America’s people is gone.

And that was true even in little Hartville, where all the employees of Dollar General, except for the manager, had to work all day on Thanksgiving Day.