U.S. History (rejection of the “rule by atheism” model)

[temporal1]

From “The Good things Trump” topic, P.71:

Preserving Religious Liberty “officially”
Not sure who all has heard recent rise I. Push for communism in America but we know communism forces worship of the True & Living God. Interesting comments:
https://www.youtube.com/live/Sn3oYUiMbo ... bk1VWLpyAN

^^THE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY COMMISSION REPORT
The White House / President Trump Receives Presentation of the Religious Liberty Commission Report / 21+min


^^After viewing Valerie’s link, i noticed there seems to be a White House SERIES on U.S. history ..

The White House / The Story of America: The Faith of Our Founders / 13+min


The White House / The Story of America

The White House Salute to America 250 Task Force has partnered with Hillsdale College to provide a history series that tells the remarkable story of American Independence. It will highlight the stories of the crucial characters and events that resulted in a small rag-tag army defeating the mightiest empire in the world and establishing the greatest republic ever to exist.

This is the story of America.
This is our shared heritage and our proud destiny that will continue to lead us to unimaginable achievements in the centuries to come.

i know nothing about this commission.
i’m not opposed to moving away from “the atheism model” that has fairly defined most decades of my life.
That is, the world i’ve experienced in public places, the government i’ve witnessed, etc.
Largely dominated by the atheism model.

Life can be the strangest experience.

There was always something amiss (in my view) from the presumption, “separation of church from state”
meant an auto-default to rule by atheism, humanism, etc.

i’m glad for a revisit.
a revisit was coming!! i had no idea when. will this be IT?! or another chapter along the way?

Certainly i foresee a bumpy ride. Mistakes to be made. Life on earth.

Continuing on the “charted” path wasn’t at all appealing.
Political promises of “worse” and “much worse” to come.

When all that’s offered are promises of bleakness ahead, interest in a better path will increase.

- - - - - - -

This HISTORY topic is meant to be about what is possible to be found in U.S. history, what does religious freedom mean, what was the spirit of the founders, not just their written words; where does atheism fit, if not at the top and dominating? (Where they most want to remain.)

[temporal1]

My starting place:
When my granddaughter moved to public school from Catholic school in 3rd grade, her teacher set her straight from the start,
“no Bibles here”.

Was that necessary.

[temporal1]

From 2024: so much room for improvement ..

Even if people do not want to obey God, I think it would be a net improvement if secular, God despising, society would make divorce harder than it currently is in the West.

i’d be happy to know there were fewer hurdles to people being introduced to God and scriptures.
i’m not convinced that people who have not been introduced to God “despise” Him, so much as they exist in utter ignorance, not knowing His Way. What a frightening place to be.

i’m not against all social engineering EXPERIMENTS, i’d prefer they be labeled as EXPERIMENTS, then, after results are in, give the results HONEST REVIEW; in cases of failure, let them EXPIRE, die a natural death.

Of course, dedicated Christians will not be surprised when God’s Way is proven best.

i’m gratified to see in my lifetime, some experiments are being questioned, and even reversed. RvW, DEI.
For a period, it seemed as though, ONLY WORSE, more depraved, would follow.

It takes time to dig bad holes, it takes time to climb out of them.

[JohnH]

My starting place:
When my granddaughter moved to public school from Catholic school in 3rd grade, her teacher set her straight from the start,
“no Bibles here”.

Was that necessary.

Well, the teacher certainly explained well the purpose of public schools to her.

[temporal1]

My starting place:
When my granddaughter moved to public school from Catholic school in 3rd grade, her teacher set her straight from the start,
“no Bibles here”.

Was that necessary.

Well, the teacher certainly explained well the purpose of public schools to her.

yes.
she did her best in public school, but longed to return to nearby Catholic school.

eventually, she got to return to Catholic HS for her junior+senior years, now plans to attend a small Catholic college, in spite of receving lots of great offers from other, more prominent schools. her mother is disppointed. i’m pleased and hoping for great things for her. a godly and fulfilling life. i’m esp looking forward to how she and her special boyfriend will see things a year from now. i have my predictions+hopes for them. a year will fly by.

so much worldly pushing.
i’ve told her from early, in all things, all choices, i care about your spirit and your soul.

this college choice may be the first most significant choice that’s hers, alone.
she’s always articulated her choices very well. over ruled! i’m surprised and impressed she’s going through with it.
i hope it’s a good experience. now we’ll get to see who she is. very interesting.

[barnhart]

T1, I truly appreciate the US and I hope it continues to be a place of blessing to others as I has been to me. I think the best contributions I can make are to promote honesty. Hillsdale has increasingly disappointed me with their willingness to leave honestly behind in favor of a semi- mythical hagiography of founding of the US. I imagine this approach makes the future more brittle and more easily fractured.

Honesty needs no body guard. Honesty needs no selective mythology that overstates things that are only partially true and ignores or downplays the inconvenient. Honesty in a humble spirit is a great gift.

All my grade school years I was taught by mennonites in a mennonite school with curriculum (including history) written by mennonites and the older I get, the more I appreciate their contribution. God bless Christian Light Publications and the writers who made it possible. As a school board member I have been working to eliminate the ACE (fundamentalist southern Baptist) curriculum from our church school. Several years ago my children brought home curriculum praising the Confederacy. This type of reverse engineering of history is not good for anyone in the long run. I managed to get through grade school with an appreciative, careful and slightly outsider view of American history that is in my mind quite healthy. I suspect the people who taught me would be suspicious of Hillsdale and their history, and for good reason.

[temporal1]

T1, I truly appreciate the US and I hope it continues to be a place of blessing to others as I has been to me. I think the best contributions I can make are to promote honesty. Hillsdale has increasingly disappointed me with their willingness to leave honestly behind in favor of a semi- mythical hagiography of founding of the US. I imagine this approach makes the future more brittle and more easily fractured.

Honesty needs no body guard. Honesty needs no selective mythology that overstates things that are only partially true and ignores or downplays the inconvenient. Honesty in a humble spirit is a great gift.

All my grade school years I was taught by mennonites in a mennonite school with curriculum (including history) written by mennonites and the older I get, the more I appreciate their contribution. God bless Christian Light Publications and the writers who made it possible. As a school board member I have been working to eliminate the ACE (fundamentalist southern Baptist) curriculum from our church school. Several years ago my children brought home curriculum praising the Confederacy. This type of reverse engineering of history is not good for anyone in the long run. I managed to get through grade school with an appreciative, careful and slightly outsider view of American history that is in my mind quite healthy. I suspect the people who taught me would be suspicious of Hillsdale and their history, and for good reason.

Interesting. Thank you.

i’m not sure about Hillsdale, i know little, from reputation, i expect a “patriotic” pov.

My early experience in north/midwest public school was plenty “patrotic”, but no romancing the Confederacy (or Marx or others).
By HS, the shift toward romancing (Marx) had begun, altho i couldn’t have defined it. In those years, there was so much trust and respect of public schools, i don’t believe parents were aware of what was hitting students. i believe there’s still deep denial.

So, the impulse will be to over correct.

Hopefully, the majority will be as you describe, seeking BALANCED facts, there’s plenty to learn.

i’m encouraged by Valerie’s initial video, altho i’m not a fan of all present, they emphasized some important points, for instance, the importance of no one formal state religion, but freedom of worship.

My emphasis is, i believe atheists+humanists took advantage, as could be expected, it’s up to the people to “course correct”.

At the moment, some opportunists, formerly described as extremists and ignored, have stepped up to fill the void in the DNC.
i hope they do not prevail. They are intelligent+strategic, if godless, not to be underestimated.

It’s all very interesting.
i’m encouraged the path i’ve witnessed in my lifetime doesn’t appear to be the slam dunk it once did.

i prefer to avoid binary, or either-or thinking. God promises His way in all matters.
i don’t accept “the choice” is humanism or strict nationalism. i don’t believe patriotism is fascist and humanism isn’t.

i’m interested in what’s ahead, i’m hopeful, not afraid. i see great possbilities.
aim for a healthy range.

[Bootstrap]

T1, I truly appreciate the US and I hope it continues to be a place of blessing to others as I has been to me. I think the best contributions I can make are to promote honesty. Hillsdale has increasingly disappointed me with their willingness to leave honestly behind in favor of a semi- mythical hagiography of founding of the US. I imagine this approach makes the future more brittle and more easily fractured.

To me, Hillsdale's 1776 project is a lot like the 1619 project. Both are one-sided, both are tied to particular political movements. Each contains some good content, but the big picture is off.

• 1776: The American story is primarily about the power of the founding ideals.
• 1619: The American story is primarily about the legacy of slavery.

The founders often failed to live up to their principles, but the principles themselves were genuine and eventually provided the tools used to challenge slavery, segregation, disenfranchisement, and other forms of exclusion.

But at the time of the founding, many founders owned slaves, and some of them raped their slaves. Most states restricted voting by property, tax, race, or sex. Native Americans and blacks were not generally viewed as fully human. Under "manifest destiny", we claimed the right to take the land that belonged to Indians, inflicting a great deal of suffering.

Still these ideals serve as a reminder of who we should want to be as a country, calling us to do better. I think Jill Lapore's "These Truths" is an excellent, balanced history that takes this perspective.

• These Truths, Jill Lepore

What books have others read on American history and the Revolution? Has anyone read Gordon S. Wood or Alan Taylor? Their books look promising, but I have not yet read them.

[QuietlyListening]

I homeschooled my 3 children during high school. All 3 went thru AP US history and I got the book the public school was using at the time. This was in the 1990s. Surprisingly this public school history book written in the 50s was probably one of the most balanced books about American history I've read. It didn't glorify the founding Fathers or make them what they weren't and didn't overemphasize the evils of the Confederates but did not gloss over it either. I do not remember the name of the book and gave it away when we were done to other homeschoolers.
These days you either get books that push the America started as a Christian nation and our founding Fathers were all believers or you get the opposite and they were anything but. The books push their philosophy rather than being balanced.
We tried Christian Light but truthfully I was disappointed that they did include more of the Anabaptist leanings- we found it to be a Mennonited?? - not a word- version of the I think it was Alpha and Omega they used. We started with civics and may have looked at the US history but felt they didn't really make it their own- just changed a few things.

[joshuabgood]

I homeschooled my 3 children during high school. All 3 went thru AP US history and I got the book the public school was using at the time. This was in the 1990s. Surprisingly this public school history book written in the 50s was probably one of the most balanced books about American history I've read. It didn't glorify the founding Fathers or make them what they weren't and didn't overemphasize the evils of the Confederates but did not gloss over it either. I do not remember the name of the book and gave it away when we were done to other homeschoolers.
These days you either get books that push the America started as a Christian nation and our founding Fathers were all believers or you get the opposite and they were anything but. The books push their philosophy rather than being balanced.
We tried Christian Light but truthfully I was disappointed that they did include more of the Anabaptist leanings- we found it to be a Mennonited?? - not a word- version of the I think it was Alpha and Omega they used. We started with civics and may have looked at the US history but felt they didn't really make it their own- just changed a few things.

That was probably The American Pageant by Kennedy and Cohen. It was widely used and I used it as the anchor text when I taught AP US in district schools in the NYCDOE in the aughts. I also used it for a few years at my current Mennonite School. It is known for its literary flair and not being the typical dry textbook.