Stephen Mansfield

The Hidden Calling

July 8, 20114 Comments

I received an email this week. It asked that I offer again a piece I wrote nearly two decades ago. I’m happy to do so. May it be an encouragement to those who serve in unnoticed roles.

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Her name was Elizabeth Anne Everest. Few today will remember her. In fact, few would have known of her even during her lifetime, which ended in near obscurity in 1895. She was, after all, only a nannyone of thousands in Victorian Englandwho quietly spent their days caring for the children of other people. Strolling in a park with her baby’s carriage or braving the London streets with a little boy clinging tightly to her side, there would have been nothing to distinguish her to passersby; she was just another British nanny with another nobleman’s son in her charge.

Or so it would seem. But Elizabeth Anne Everest was not just another nanny. She was a Christian, of the most passionate and fearless kind, and for her being a nanny was not just a job, it was a ministry. She lived her faith boldly before the families that hired her and worked hard to build godliness and biblical truth into the young lives in her care. Thus it was, while serving her Lord in the hiddenness of her calling, that she came to have an impact on the course of modern history. For on a blustery English day in February of 1875, Elizabeth Everest came to be the nanny, and soon the primary spiritual influence, of one rosy-cheeked baby boy by the name of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, future Prime Minister of England and leader of the western world.

There was little hint in his early years, however, of the greatness that young Winston would one day command and Mrs. Everest soon understood the immensity of her task. In time, the boy’s mother would warn visitors, with typical British understatement, that the he was “a difficult child to manage.” She was right. He kicked, he screamed, he hid, and he bullied. The word “monster” was often used of him and the trouble was that he was bright, too. Knowing of Mrs. Everest’s Christian faith young Winston once tried to escape a mathematics lesson by threatening to “bow down and worship graven images.” It worked, too…for a while. But Elizabeth Everest was an exceptional woman. She knew how to enforce the boundaries she set and from the beginning Winston held a grudging respect for this woman who seemed to know the secretthat his irritating behavior only served to hide a desperate longing of his heart.

This was the truth she tenderly guarded, for she knew that her Lord had not entrusted young Winston to her solely for the discipline she would enforce but more for the vacuum she would fill in the life of this lonely little boy. Few knew how painful his loneliness really was. It would be nice indeed to report that the Churchill’s shared a warmly intimate home life and that Winston was smothered with parental affection, but nothing could be further from the truth. Quite to the neglect of their son, Randolph and Jennie Churchill gave themselves completely to their social ambitions. True, Victorian parents maintained an astonishing distance from their children, receiving them only at prearranged times and under the watchful eye of servants, but the Churchills were remote even by these standards. Of his mother, Winston later wrote, “I loved her, but at a distance.” His father thought Winston was retarded, rarely talked to him, and regularly vented his mounting rage on the child. More than one historian has concluded that Lord Randolph simply loathed his son.

Thus it was that Elizabeth Everest Winston came to call her “Woom”became not only his nanny but his dearest companion, sharing with understanding and tender loyalty the secrets of his widening world. She was, after all, the stereotypical British nanny; plump, simple, cheery, ever optimistic, always compassionate. The boy grew to love her completely. Of their special relationship, Violet Asquith later wrote that in Winston’s “solitary childhood and unhappy school days Mrs. Everest was his comforter, his strength and stay, his one source of unfailing human understanding. She was the fireside at the which he dried his tears and warmed his heart. She was the night light by his bed. She was security.”

She was also his shepherd, for it was here, in the safety of their shared devotion, that Winston first experienced genuine Christianity. On bended knee beside this gentle woman of God he first learned that surging of the heart called prayer. From her lips he first heard the Scriptures read with loving devotion and was so moved he eagerly memorized his favorite passages. On long walks together they sang the great hymns of the Church, spoke breathlessly of the heroes of the faith, and imagined aloud what Jesus might look like or how heaven would be. As they sat together on a park bench or on a blanket of cool, green grass, Winston was often transfixed while Woom explained the world to him in simple but distinctly Christian terms. And it is not hard to imagine that when their day was done many an evening found this devoted intercessor praying the prayers of destiny over her sleeping charge, asking her Heavenly Father to fulfill the calling she sensed so powerfully on his life.

It would seem her prayers were answered, for though in early adulthood Churchill immersed himself in the anti-Christian rationalism that swept his age, he eventually recovered his faith during an escape from a South African prison. So deeply had he received the imprint of Mrs. Everest’s dynamic faith that in this time of crisis the prayers he had learned at her knee returned almost involuntarily to his lips, as did the Scripture passages he had memorized to the familiar lilt of her voice. From that time forward, his faith defined him, as it did his sense of mission. He came to see himself in much the same terms as those he once used to dedicate his grandson. Holding the child aloft he tearfully proclaimed him “Christ’s new faithful soldier and servant.”

So when the tests of life had prepared him and his day of destiny arrived, Winston Churchill was ready to lead the world with a clear trumpet call of the solid faith he first learned from his godly nanny. In an age of mounting skepticism, Church proclaimed the cause of “Christian civilization.” It was threatened from without, he believed, by “barbarous paganism”—like Nazism—which spurned “Christian ethics” and derived its “strength and perverted pleasure from persecution.” Therefore, every Christian had a “duty to preserve the structure of humane, enlightened, Christian society.” This was critical, for “once the downward steps are taken, once one’s moral intellectual feet slipped upon the slope of plausible indulgence, there would be found no halting-place short of a general Paganism and Hedonism.”

While other leaders of his age vacillated and sought the compromises of cowards, Churchill defined the challenges of his civilization in the stark Christian terms that moved men to greatness. Yet behind the arsenal of his words, behind the artillery of his vision, was the simple teaching of a devoted nanny who served her God by investing in the destiny of a troubled boy.

So it was that when the man some called the “Greatest Man of the Age” lay dying in 1965 at the age of ninety, there was but one picture that stood at his bedside. It was the picture of his beloved nanny, gone to be with her Lord some seventy years before. She had understood him, she had prayed him to his best, and she had fueled the faith that fed the destiny of nations…in the hiddenness of her calling.

The Fourth of July: A Meditation

June 30, 2011Comment

For 235 years Americans have celebrated the Fourth of July as the birth date of our nation. It marks for us a beginning, a sort of national commencement—of the revolution, of our nation, and of our vision of freedom.   

Yet if we consider this important day through the eyes of our Founding Fathers, we find that the Fourth of July marked for them not so much a beginning as an end to a long and painful process, a troubled time some have called the First American Revolution—the one in the minds and hearts of men.   

We must remember that the famous Lexington and Concord engagements, as well as the storied ride of Paul Revere popularized in the Longfellow poem, took place in April of 1775. However, it was not until July of 1776, some fifteen months later, that Congress formally endorsed the Declaration of Independence. What took our Founding Fathers so long? What was the struggle that raged within?

The men who would ultimately sign the Declaration of Independence were not men for whom the idea of revolution came easily. A conservative lot who held dear their Christian faith, their English heritage, and the unique colonial society they cultivated at great cost in the wilderness, these men were not the wild-eyed malcontents we think of as revolutionaries in our day. Instead, the Founding Fathers were men of strong principle who could not back down when their ideals and lifestyles were threatened by English aggression. When a war they did not want was forced upon them, when their values, their property, indeed, their very lives, were at stake, peace on British terms was never an option and here we find one of the most misunderstood truths of our national origins.

The American Revolution was fought, unlike most modern revolutions, to preserve a social order rather than to overthrow one. What we have called a revolution was in reality a colonial rebellion against a power seeking to destroy a largely Christian and traditional way of life. As Peter Drucker has said, the American Revolution was a “conservative counter-revolution,” fought not by power hungry radicals seeking to overthrow an established government but by loyal citizens against grasping tyrannical rule.   

The truth now so often forgotten is that it was England who first declared war on the American colonies. Attempting to consolidate her possessions following the French and Indian War, late in 1775 the British Parliament passed the Prohibitory Act, which broke off relations with the colonists and declared them a “foreign enemy.” John Adams wrote in response that the Act “makes us independent in spite of our supplications and entreaties.” England forced the colonies out from under Royal Protection and declared itself the colonists’ adversaries. This belligerence stunned the colonial leaders and they sought every means available to prevent separation. Even after Lexington and Concord, they hoped against hope that England would modify her harsh course. It was not to be.

Finally, with every possible remedy exhausted, the colonial leaders pleaded their case in a Declaration before the nations of the world, claiming America’s rights according to God’s law and the law of reason. America was, they said, and of a right ought to be, a free and independent nation.

The Founding Fathers were not radicals seeking power; they were family men, business men, ministers and, for the most part, Christians, who were now forced to fight a defensive battle, seeking a return to established legal principles and governmental boundaries—and it cost them dearly.   

Many of the signers of the Declaration were killed during the War. Some were heartlessly made to watch as loved ones were tortured or hanged by British troops. Many lost their estates and a large number suffered physical ailments for the rest of their lives from wounds incurred during the war. They were hunted, vilified and despised by the British and some colonists alike. Yet they knew—they always knew—that their course was the right one.   

The founding generation knew what it seems at times this generation has forgotten—that there are some things that warrant a pledge of “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” For our own age to rediscover these values would mean nothing less than cultural renewal.

Writing some years after the events of the Revolution but as an eyewitness to most of it, John Quincy Adams wrote, “Posterity, you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” Perhaps, even yet, we will. Perhaps.

Category: Posted Under: Forth Of July, Meditation

The Great Political Principle

June 13, 20111 Comment

There is a great principle of conduct in politics that is always ignored at the peril of those who transgress it. In fact, it is one of the great principles of life and it is simply this: hang a lantern on your weaknesses.

We human beings naturally want to hide our flaws and cover up our misdeeds. In this we follow in the nature of Adam, who did wrong, then blamed his wife, and then covered his nakedness with a fig leaf. We are all his descendants and we all have the same tendency: hide, explain away, deflect—anything but the open truth.

It just doesn’t work. Aside from the damage it does to the soul, it leaves us open to vicious attack from others once we are discovered. Far better it is to simply admit our weaknesses, be more transparent about them than anyone could force us to be, and thus take the weapon out of the hands of our opponents.

No one is attacking New Jersey Governor Chris Christie about his weight. Why? Because he got there first—admitting he is overweight, telling the best jokes on himself, making a virtue of being a big man. No one is attacking George W. Bush for being a C student. He admitted as much when he spoke at Yale’s commencement—the very scene of his academic crimes. And no one is bringing up David Letterman’s misdeeds today and only because he went before the world, told on himself, wrung a laugh in the process, and left nothing more to be made of the sordid affair. Each of these hung a lantern on their weakness before their opponents could paint a target on their weaknesses.

Not so Congressman Anthony Weiner. Not so Senator John Edwards. Not so President Bill Clinton. Not so Senator Larry Craig. Not so Cyclist Lance Armstrong. Not so Bishop Eddie Long.

This principle was true even before our high-tech age, when cameras and recorders expose even the dark corners of human life. It is all the more true for the prominent today. Yet beyond the threat of being found out, it is simply the right thing to do. Confession is not only good for the soul; it is the only way to cleanse offense even from the public mind.

It was Harry Truman who once said, “Always do right. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” This is, truly, the great principle of politics—and of life.

Category: Posted Under: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Politics

Time to “Man Up”

May 8, 20115 Comments

I remember a book I treasured when I was a child. It was about the Ten Commandments and on each page there was an illustration typical of children’s books in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The illustration I remember was intended to emphasize “Thou shalt not kill.” Two children were shown emerging from the woods and coming upon a bird’s nest where newly hatched chicks were chirping away. The children looked as though they had fallen from the canvas of a Norman Rockwell painting. The woods were sweet and welcoming like a scene from German folklore. And the chirping birdies were, well, Disney-esque.

The message was obvious. Do not kill. Do not hurt. Do not offend. This is the will of God and what good children do.

Of course, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” has nothing to do with killing birds, though randomly killing wildlife is discouraged in the Bible. The original language actually means, “Do not murder,” meaning do not end life unjustly. Killing of the righteous kind—punishment for criminals, ending a military enemy—is not only allowed but commanded at times in the biblical narrative. The children’s book, though well intentioned, got it wrong

This memory came back to me when we learned that our valiant military had killed Osama bin Laden. Immediately after hearing the news, I began also to hear that some Christians were critical of the raid that helped Mr. Laden leave this life. They cited the “Do not kill” commandment and a few biblical verses that seem to indicate we ought not rejoice in the death of evildoers.

I was surprised by this and began to see such sentimentality and unbiblical thinking as part of the reason that the American church is working itself into irrelevance. First, this view neglected to consider Romans 13, in which civil government is said to wield the sword—a symbol of martial defense and criminal punishment—“not in vain.” Killing terrorist enemies is clearly included. Second, this view failed to consider the counsel of the church. As long ago as the fourth and fifth centuries in which Augustine lived, the church concluded that there are just wars but that they must be waged only by the right authorities, for just causes, if a reasonable chance for success exists and with an eye toward proportionality of response. The assault that led to Osama bin Laden’s death met all of these conditions.

What disturbed me most about those Christians who could not recognize the justice of bin Laden’s killing was that I suspected that they were living in the kind of sentimental religiosity depicted in my childhood book. Theirs was likely the gospel that has come to dominate American Christianity. Be nice. Be sweet. Do not hurt. Do not offend. For this is the will of God and what good Christians do.

Yet by proclaiming this gospel, Christians show the world they do not have the courage of their convictions, will not “man-up” to their own biblical principles, and do not know how to deal with evildoers in their midst or in the world. As a Navy SEAL friend said to me, “I’m willing to risk my life to take out the evil bastards in this world. But I don’t expect my church to criticize me while I do.”

This brings me to another related matter. You see, if we will not support those who do dangerous, righteous deeds, then we will rarely step up to the battle lines of our faith in any arena. The recent widespread airing of Rob Bell’s universalism is a prime example. Consider: Most of what we know about eternal punishment comes from the words of Jesus as we find them in the four gospels of the New Testament. This is not an innovation of Paul’s or an uninspired addition to Christian theology by a later age of the church. In 553 A.D, the Fifth Ecumenical Council labeled “ultimate reconciliation,”—the big boy term for universalism—a heresy. Moreover, today nearly every major conservative Roman Catholic, Anglican, evangelical, Reformed and Charismatic/Pentecostal scholar has classified Bell’s teaching as heresy. And yet local churches support Bell without the loss of a member. Pastors assure their congregations that Bell is in the pale of Christian teaching and few are well read enough to know it is a lie. There are few protests, few theological councils, few prayerful teams of pastors confronting erring shepherds in their city and urging them back to orthodoxy. No, barely a whimper is heard while the gospel is denuded.

The lesson is that the spirit of passivity, of cowardice, of “nice as the ultimate virtue” does not settle happily into one arena of our worldview. It tries to take us over, and it makes us as repulsed by the righteous killing of an international villain as it makes us unwilling to face down the enemies of our faith from within the Christian fold.

Be lovingly biblical. Be courageously principled. Be as tough and yet as merciful as the battles of this age require. And may a new day dawn in our troubled, hesitant American Christianity.

Category: Posted Under: Bible, Bin Laden, Killing, Ten Commandments

Books That Changed My Life Part III

April 20, 2011Comment

And now, the final portion of my list of the thirty books that changed my life.

History

Of Plimoth Plantation, William Bradford
To read the words of the pilgrims took the “Mayflower Story” out of the realm of myth and made it pulsate with grit and brine and fiery faith. It also made me insist upon reading original documents in my pursuit of truth.

History of the American People, Paul Johnson
Eminent British historian Paul Johnson taught me about my own nation’s history in a manner that few American historians have. A wonderful, inspiring, instructive offering.

History of American Education, 3 Vols, Lawrence Cremin
What Americans accomplished educationally during their colonial period is one of the great tales of history. What we have done to ourselves educationally since is one of the great tales of cultural suicide. Cremin captures both in an objective, stimulating study of the entire course of American educational history.

The Messianic Character of American Education, Rousas John Rushdoony
A Christian critique of American public education that has shaped my thinking each day since I first read it in college.

The Light and the Glory, Peter Marshall/David Manuel
Released during the American bicentennial, this book first helped me understand the American covenant.

Griftopia, Matt Taibbi
Taibbi is angry, gritty and crude, but he described the immoral mess that pervades much of Wall Street in a manner that may help us to rescue ourselves—if we are willing.

Grand Illusions, George Grant
This brilliant expose of Planned Parenthood taught me of the good Christian investigative writing can do.

Two Misfits

The Geography of Nowhere, James Kunstler
I study architecture and so I am thrilled at some of the new trends in human scale, mixed use development. To understand how important they are, we first have to understand what the architectural trends of the last century did to us. Kunstler is our guide.

Military Brats, Mary Edwards Wertsch
I grew up a military brat, largely in Europe, and am grateful for the experience. How I was shaped by it was explained to me in this book, which is hard-edged and not descriptive of everything I experienced, but which is still a helpful guide to building on the best of the brat tradition.

Category: Posted Under: Books, History, Part III

Books That Changed My Life, Part 2

April 13, 2011Comment

In my last blog, I began a list of the books that have proven most revolutionary in my life. Here is the second section of that list. Read. Enjoy. Go forth and conquer.

Novels

1. Peace Like a River, Leif Enger
This novel is a miracle. Supernatural, gritty and tender. It was touted by both Newsweek magazine and the Christian book press. It taught me what is possible.

2. The Great Santini, Pat Conroy
My father was not the Great Santini during his military career, but this novel explored the life of a military child better than I have a right to expect of fiction. It helped me heal.

3. The Flames of Rome, Paul Maier
A powerful novel about Nero and the burning of Rome. I learned from this novel how fiction can serve the cause of biblical literacy.

4. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
I came to this novel late in life and when I did I found the theological underpinnings of the famous story a touching exploration of the human condition. It made me sorry that Frankenstein is now regarded as the stuff of monster movies rather than an epic chronicle of the pursuit of God.

5. 1812, David Nevin
This novel taught me how an age can be captured through interwoven narrative. I learned history. I learned writing. I learned to love America even more.

Biography/Autobiography

1. Lincoln’s Melancholy, Joshua Wolf Schenk
The thesis of this masterpiece is that had Abraham Lincoln not struggled to overcome depression, he would not have offered us the leadership or the poetry that he did. It confirms the reality that we are made better in our purpose by mastering our flaws.

2. The Oral Autobiography of Harry Truman, Merle Miller
I read this in college and it turned me toward history as a major. I was instructed by Miller’s style but I was challenged by Truman’s mastery of history. A very important book in my life.

3. Winston Churchill, A. J. P. Taylor
I was already inspired by Churchill when I read Taylor’s work. A fine study in British wit and historical mastery. I decided to make Churchill a theme of my life upon reading this book.

4. George Whitefield’s Journals, George Whitefield
Whitefield is truly the forgotten founding father of our colonial era. He led the American colonies in spiritual revival and thus into the war for independence. He is my model Christian.

5. Right from the Beginning, Patrick Buchanan
I have never fully agreed with Pat politically, but his memoir of tough-minded Catholicism, clear-minded conservatism and tenderhearted patriotism challenged me.

6. What I Saw at the Revolution, Peggy Noonan
This book served as a course in creative writing in my development as an author. Peggy gave me courage to explore the emotional landscape of a subject and to not fear the poetry of my subject. What made her a groundbreaking speechwriter for Reagan also made her one of the most important mentors of my life.

Category: Posted Under: Autobiagraphy, Biography, Books, Novels

Books that Changed My Life, Part I

April 1, 2011Comment

It was Henry David Thoreau who wrote, “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” This has certainly been the case in my life. Time and again, a book has proved a turning point, a course correction, a reworking of how I would ever after see the world.

Following the response to my blog on reading of a few weeks ago, I decided to share here the thirty books that have changed my life. I have read many more books, of course, and hundreds of them have been significant. However, the books below were each a turning point—a literal revolution—in my thinking and therefore in my character and conduct. They were so influential, in fact, that I was able to compile this list from memory.

I cannot promise that what happened to me in these pages will happen to you. I can promise that these books will at the least enrich your life. Literary revolutions, though, are in the hands of God. I’ll list the devotional and theological books that changed me first. Then, in an upcoming blog, I’ll list novels, histories, biographies and a few nonconformists. Enjoy.

Devotional Turning Points

The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer
Given to me by my college chaplain, Dr. Bob Stamps, this book shaped my spiritual life for years after.

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a’ Kempis
This classic taught me that the Christian life is to know and be like Jesus.

Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald
I learned the difference between being called and being driven from this book and it has been a defining ideal for me ever since.

Wild at Heart, John Eldredge
This book explained my frustration with the lack of manhood in the Christian church and offered a path to masculine maturity.

The Celtic Way of Evangelism, George Hunter III
I learned from this jewel how our Celtic Christian ancestors changed nations through a type of evangelism that is vital for us today. It was a devotional turning point for me because it instilled in me disciplines for living in a pre-Christian culture.

Theological Turning Points

The Land, Walter Brueggemann
Learning the difference between “place” and “space” from this book was one of the defining moments of my theological and historical development.

Paradise Restored, David Chilton
It is no exaggeration that I learned how to “see” the Bible from this book.

Biblical Hermeneutics, Milton S. Terry
Hermeneutics is the study of how to interpret scripture. Good hermeneutics leads to good doctrine and thus to vibrant spirituality. This book taught me the path to both.

Before Jerusalem Fell, Kenneth Gentry
There is no exaggerating the importance of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to understanding the New Testament. This book drove this point home and transformed my worldview.

The Day Christ Died, Jim Bishop
Bishop was a journalist who wrote about the physiology of Jesus’ experience on the cross in a way that shaped both my faith and my writing.

Category: Posted Under: Books, Reading, Turning Points

A Reading Life

March 17, 20111 Comment

It would be easy for someone of our time to look at the current crises in Japan and the Middle East and even in our own nation’s capital and conclude that the last place they need to be is huddled up somewhere with a book. I would disagree. In fact, I believe that the reading life is more vital now than ever.

It is natural that I might say this, I suppose. I am a voracious reader. It is not hard for me to draw a line between the love of reading I acquired during my college years and the life I lead now. Reading awakens and then it refines. It instructs, yes, but it also conditions. It trains the mind, embedding both fact and wisdom, while it tempers the judgment. It also matures the emotions and deepens the soul. It does all this while providing a map for understanding the times. And this is as necessary today as ever.

I’ve learned the tricks of a reading life from my many literary mentors. I always carry a book with me. Who knows? Someone might be late for a lunch appointment and grace me with fifteen minutes of bliss. Estimates are the average American will spend three years of his life on the toilet. Books must be kept at hand for just such moments. And then there are the little lies of the addicted reader. “I’m going for a walk,” is actually cover for an hour spent under a tree with a book. “I’m going to take a bath” is code for “Must find solace. Must ingest words. Do not disturb.” Pitifully, I can already tell you what books I’ll be requesting for my birthday. It’s a disease, really.

In recent years my reading has dramatically increased and this has been largely due to technology. I can get almost misty-eyed at what my cell phone allows me to do. I read volumes on my iPhone. Yes, iPhone, not iPad. I reverse the video, enlarge the font and get about a half a paragraph in before I need to swipe my thumb across the screen. It is just right for the hyperactive. I use apps like Kindle and Kobo to purchase books and can’t believe the generosity of apps like History Classics and Free Books, the latter of which grants me nearly 25,000 free books of just the kind I tend to read. At any given moment, I have two dozen books on my phone that I can read without signal and thousands I can retrieve if I’m online.

Since much of the information I have to process comes to me in links to blogs, online periodicals and journals, I use Instapaper. How I love Instapaper, let me count the ways. This app/website let’s me open articles online but then store them so I can view them later using the app on my phone. All I do is click on “Read Later”—a tab in my browser Instapaper installs automatically—and those articles, without all the ugly graphics and page changes, are saved. I can read the articles later using the Instapaper app even when I don’t have signal, like when I’m on a plane. If a friend sends an important article to me by email, I can forward his email to an Instapaper email address and that article will be stored for later reading too. Instapaper has doubled the amount of information I can digest and made me much more effective at what I do. By the way, the articles I’ve read are stored in an Archive so when I’m writing months later and vaguely remember something I’ve read on a given topic, I can do a word search through all the articles I consumed, say, last year. I barely read any paper periodicals anymore. It just isn’t as efficient or as pleasant.

Beyond the techniques of reading, here are the principles that guide my reading:

I try to read 24 books a years. This is one every two weeks and is aside from what I have to read for my work.
I divide those books into fours. I read a book on theology, on a contemporary topic, on history and then a work of fiction. Occasionally I’ll work in some poetry but I don’t count that among the twenty-four. This means I should be able to read six books a year on each of the four topics I love to read and must read.
Reading and list making go hand in hand. I make lists of books I plan to read and edit them as friends give me literary reviews over pizza or I come across more formal input in print. In other words, I have a plan but I’m always willing to interrupt that plan when a book grabs me from its perch on the shelf or a friend threatens death if I don’t read his latest literary love immediately.

Here’s the bottom line. You have to read to know our chaotic world. You have to read to lead. You have to read to stay sane and peaceful in an emotionally violent time. You have to read to know God. And you have to read, as C. S. Lewis said, to know you are not alone.

Get reading. Use your technology to make it easier and more readily available. Carve out the space and build a rich inner life. Set goals, share the joys, reap the harvest of a cultivated intellect and a sophisticated soul.

Blessed are the readers, for they shall inherit the earth.

Category: Posted Under: Books, Future, Reading

Reflections on Bush’s “Decision Points”

March 9, 20111 Comment

I am among that odd breed who dutifully read presidential memoirs and this is what brought me to George W. Bush’s Decision Points. Having written The Faith of George W. Bush and having spent years explaining and discussing Bush’s faith-based leadership, I was eager to see what the man himself would have to say about his life and administration.

Allow me a critical observation first. Presidents tend to rely on their speechwriters when the time comes for a memoir and this is a mistake. It is natural that they should turn to those who have for years extended their voice but the art of a speechwriter is different from that of a biographer. A speech is a sprint or at the least a fast run. A biography is a marathon and a marathon that is only well done if it winds knowingly through richly historical landscape. Few speechwriters can both create a concise, engaging, inspiring speech for a live audience and then shift gears to write a thousand page biography that captures a man, his times, and the meaning of his leadership intended as much for generations yet unborn as it is for the present.

President Bush relied on one of his chief speechwriters in telling his story and this has led to his book’s primary flaw. Its scope and sequence is poorly crafted, its pacing uneven. The tale is not told in chronological order but rather in thematic groupings and so there are chapters that include recollections from Bush’s youth, Texas governorship and presidency as though these bits of memory naturally reside together. It makes the book a less understandable read and a less helpful tool of reference.

That said, I found Decision Points to be one of the most honest, courageous presidential memoirs I’ve read. Bush mentions his alcoholic early years on the first page. Before he concludes his introduction he has already admitted several mistakes of judgment while in office. He does not shrink from responsibility thereafter. He often agrees with his critics—the famous “Mission Accomplished” speech and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for example—and repeatedly mentions his own shortcomings without flinching. This endears Bush to us and makes us wish there had been more of this tone and less Texas swagger while he was in office.

There are surprises. One is the cussing. There is much strong language and not just in remembered speech. I believe Bush is the first president to actually cuss in his narrative, in the telling of his story to the reader. It isn’t that uncommon to see an “S.O.B” or an “ass” or two in a presidential memoir but usually only as part of a humorous account. Bush takes this further and cusses in his narrative voice. This may be because it makes him seem earthy and thus removed from the kind of St. George the Evangelical image his critics decry. Still, it is odd and makes even those of us comfortable with strong language wonder why editors did not save him from himself or why Bush wanted such tough expressions included in the first place.

Bush’s conservative religious followers will also find some surprises. He considered pro-abortion vice-presidential and cabinet choices. He believes homosexuality is genetic and not a moral choice. He believes that Muslims, Christians and Jews worship the same God, a controversial view among his fellow evangelicals. None of these ideas were much in public view during his administration.

The most satisfying chapter, perhaps, is the one in which Bush recounts his battle against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. This is the Bush loyalists hope will live in memory: Bush a moral man, Bush a wise statesman, Bush a crafty politician, Bush gracious in victory. It is the Bush of reality but his administration’s public relations apparatus did not serve this version of Bush well and so it is good to see him on full display here.

What is obvious from Decision Points is that President Bush wants to be remembered as a man who, when confronted with dire crises, led as a principled, dynamic decision maker. There is much “let’s do it,” “let’s get on with it,” “what is the hold up” kind of language and it supports the narrative theme of Bush as a “decider,” Bush as a righteous man choosing nobly.

At book’s end, I found myself grateful for the essentially good man George W. Bush is and yet understanding even more keenly how an inherent inability to communicate hampered his administration. Both are in evidence in the pages of Decision Points. I also found myself hoping that future presidential memoirs might rise to great literature, might be works of the kind that can be added with confidence to the essential American canon. I can’t think of any presidential remembrance that has achieved this—U.S. Grant’s Memoirs possibly excluded—though it seems that both the country and the office deserve it.

Decision Points is a worthy if often simplistic read that will further endear those who love George Bush and that will confirm some of the suspicions of those who distrust him. Beyond partisanship, though, it is a valuable, gutsy, and thorough treatment of a critical period in our history.

Category: Posted Under: Decision Points, George W. Bush, Memoirs

Egypt: A Contrarian View

February 14, 20112 Comments

Democracy has become the American religion. There is little doubt about it. We take the lesson from our founding that a popular colonial uprising overthrew an unjust king and the most powerful nation on earth arose as a result. This leads us to believe that popular uprisings in pursuit of freedom are always to be preferred in other nations and that it is the calling of America to encourage these democratic revolts. George W. Bush often made this case and did not shrink from making the meaning of America synonymous with the spread of democracy in the world.

Our founding fathers would have disagreed. They feared democracy as the tyranny of majority rule, the domination of 50% plus 1 over the minority. Instead, they hoped for a republic in which those gifted to lead are entrusted by the people to decide affairs of state in a manner that the people themselves never could. In short, our founders were deeply suspicious of democracy. John Adams wrote, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Thomas Jefferson would have agreed: “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.” And John Marshall captured the consensus of the founding generation when he wrote, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

It is an important point to make as we consider Egypt. We are all touched by a people yearning for greater freedom and willing to risk their lives and sacred honor to reshape their nation. It is particularly moving to see this occur in Egypt where the median age is 24 years old and young men hungering for economic opportunity and protection from tyranny and corruption lead the uprising. All of us surely hope that a new and nobler nation is being born.

Still, our government’s rush to support the Egyptian uprising despite warning from our allies in the region may, ironically, serve the cause of both freedom and American interests poorly in the days to come. Hosni Mubarak, for all of his flaws, was pro-American, willing to be governed by a peace treaty in his dealings with Israel and a restraining force against radical Islam. His government was also corrupt and inept and needed to go, but this might have been handled by Washington with less adolescent zeal for change of any kind and more statesmanlike prudence in managing the needed transition. What has resulted is confirmation of the principle that rapid social change is destabilizing social change. Already the Egyptian military, in which the Western nations have placed their trust for the future of the country, has suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament

Waiting in the wings, of course, is the Muslim Brotherhood. Though the U.S. director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told the House Intelligence Committee recently that the Muslim Brotherhood is both “secular” and “nonviolent,” the Brotherhood itself shouts the cause of a thoroughly Islamic Egypt. Its slogan is simple: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The Brotherhood’s second in command, Rashad al-Bayumu, recently told Japanese television that if the movement comes to power it will suspend Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. The Brotherhood’s first in command recently told the leading Egyptian newspaper that it would make an Islamic and not a Western style democracy its goal.

This would mean a government exactly the reverse of Mubarak’s pro-American, moderate on Israel, firm against radical Islam reign. It would also be horrible news for Egypt’s Christians. Already they have watched as Christians in supposedly democratic Iraq have been persecuted, murdered and driven abroad. Before the invasion, 1.4 million Christians lived in Iraq. Now, half have fled, the rest are endangered. Late last year, gunmen took 100 Christians hostage at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church in Baghdad and slaughtered more than 40 of them. One convent in the north has been attacked 20 times since the start of the war, and as recently as last spring; according to USA Today, it was down to four nuns last year out of an original 55. Last year was undoubtedly the deadliest year ever for Iraq’s Christians. And so it goes in the democracy U.S. warriors bled to build.

Then consider this: According to a Pew Forum survey last year, 84 percent of Egypt’s Muslims support executing apostates. This means Christians, among others. It is the democratic will in Egypt. Vox populi, vox dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.

It does not take a perpetual pessimist or a rightwing lover of dictatorships the world over to conclude that soon we may be facing an Egypt that is anti-American, anti-Christian, immersed in radical Islam and a dire threat to Israel. May it not be so, but we might well have expected better of our nation’s foreign policy architects: that they rise above the populist zeal of the moment and consider the long range good. This is what it means to be statesmen rather zealots, realists rather than misty-eyed populists. It is also what it means to live in the wisdom we have received from our founders’ generation.

Category: Posted Under: Christianity, Democracy, Egypt, Muslim

The Ways Of Men

February 5, 20112 Comments

I love the ways of men. It is odd, perhaps, for a man to say this. I simply love the power and the grace of what it means to be a man. I’ve seen my share of fakes—the weak-kneed actors playing a role. You can hardly miss them. The guy who hopes that his props, his chatter, or his short-term bravado will make him appear to be the man he knows he isn’t at heart. No admiration for that guy here. What I love, though, is the radiating, certain, ennobling force that righteous manhood can be.

I love the man who stands calmly with both feet on the ground and knows he has a role to play. He has been put here for a purpose and being a man is part of it. He is more than his body and he understands this but he isn’t afraid to be his body, to know that manhood is, in part, muscle and speed and elegance and, yes, even unspoken intimidation when a threat means he must. I like that true men know the borders of their physical range and offer all that they are as masculine beings to make women safe, children confident, communities whole and their nation something exceptional on the earth.

I like the way of men with other men. Nothing wins me like a band of brothers gently needling each other for a laugh or nipping at one of their number to correct with wit and sarcasm what everyone knows needs addressing and might have been handled another, much harsher way. This is the way of the pack, the natural self-correcting mechanism of men in their element with other men. It is the way young men are trained and old men are honored and all men made to know where they belong.

I like the industry of men. Men with their tools. Men making a plan. Men using their verbal shorthand to direct and set the pace. I like that men grow quiet when they work, lost in their thoughts and the task at hand. I like that sweat and cuts and soreness are nothing foreign to a real man. They are passport to the country in which he lives. And nothing compares to the quiet pride of men after the task is done, when the car runs or the girders hold or the camp is what they wanted it to be.

I love that genuine manhood takes responsibility for making sure the world around them is safe. I love the knowing glance that sometimes passes between men, as though to say, “Yes, I’m on it. If anything happens here, I’m ready.” There is a kind of force that competent men emit and it invisibly changes their wives and their children and everyone in their reach whether anyone speaks of it or not.

I suppose most of all I love the way a young man looks to his father. He is eager to be an authentic man himself and he knows that this begins in his father’s face, in what he learns as his father speaks or reacts to events or reflects truth in a thousand expressions, in a thousand nearly imperceptible movements—imperceptible except to an adoring son. In that aging face is where he finds the carved image of what he is meant to be.

Then, of course, I love the way of men with God. They are more about doing than feeling, more about vision than postures of prayer. Still, true men of God have a quiet, unchallengeable connection to heaven that makes them what they are at their best, checks their lesser natures, and gives them what they in turn offer as a blessing to the world. This connection to God is what makes a guy who is just a man into something more; a great and righteous father in the land.

I love the ways of men. Yet I’ve been told the manhood I admire lives only in the past, that ours is a generation of weaklings and wimps. I pray it is not so. Manhood at its best is one of the great needs of our times. Resolve then, my brothers, to be all that it means to be a righteous man.

Category: Posted Under: Fatherhood, Manhood, Men

The Contributor

January 3, 20116 Comments

I experienced one of the most fascinating meetings of my life this past week. It took place at Nashville’s downtown Presbyterian Church on a rainy afternoon a few days after Christmas. It was attended primarily by some 400 homeless men and women and I know what you might expect but give me a minute before you close your mind.

I should start by telling you that I have long been part of two movements that unfortunately have two distinct approaches to the homeless in our land. First, I am a political conservative who believes in limited government, the rule of law, private property, low taxes, strong defense and freedom for each man to rise to whatever heights his gifts allow. This places me among a tribe who tend to view homelessness as a liberal invention designed to squeeze funding from government budgets. The frequent response of my fellow conservatives to a homeless man on the street is to growl, “Get a job!”

I am also a Christian, though, and I have been privileged to lead activist churches that have engaged the homeless with compassion and generosity. We understand that our Christ so identifies with the homeless that to serve them is to worship him. So we have started halfway houses. We have driven buses into impoverished neighborhoods to offer food, clothing and medical care. We have taken the homeless into our own homes. More important, perhaps, we have embraced the biblical understanding that not all poverty and dysfunction is the fruit of sin and irresponsibility.

Obviously, my politically conservative and compassionately Christian worlds frequently collide.

So back to that meeting on that rainy afternoon in Nashville. The reason so many homeless had gathered that day was a publication called The Contributor, the “homeless newspaper” of Nashville. I had seen people selling the paper on the streets and I had even bought one or two, but I had no idea of the impact it was having on homelessness in Nashville. I also had no idea of how The Contributor was bridging my two worlds.

It turns out that The Contributor was begun a few years ago to serve the cause of the homeless. When I first heard this, I assumed the paper would be filled with articles advocating for the homeless. You know the stuff: complaints about the police, gripes about angry storeowners, tirades about the heartlessness of people today. I was pleasantly surprised. There were marvelous articles and many by people described as “formerly homeless.” There was poetry. There were funny essays. There were tender testimonials and even movie reviews. I was touched.

Then I learned about the economic impact of the paper. You see, the homeless can buy The Contributor from the publisher for twenty-five cents. They have to attend training sessions, observe certain standards and participate in follow-up meetings, but once they qualify they can sell The Contributor for a dollar. Many receive tips as well. The meeting I attended on that afternoon after Christmas was a training session before new editions of the paper were sold to “vendors,” the people we call homeless. But they aren’t just homeless anymore when they have The Contributor in their hands. They are vendors, entrepreneurs—yes, contributors.

Let me tell you what this means. A year ago, ten thousand copies of The Contributor were sold in Nashville. This last month, 120,000 copies were sold. This means that through sales and tips, over a million dollars have been put into the hands of the homeless in the last year. And it is changing lives. One of the most moving moments I’ve had is when the executive director of The Contributor, Tasha French, showed me photos that one formerly homeless man had sent her. You see, he had begun selling The Contributor and had made enough money to live. Then he got a home. Then he got a wife. The photos he sent Tasha were of his dinner table on Thanksgiving Day. It was lovely and filled with food and he was planning to invite some of his homeless friends in for a feast.

Conservatives want the homeless to get a job. In Nashville, they have. Christians want to help the homeless out of poverty and into lives of character and prosperity. In Nashville, The Contributor is making this possible. It is what we have hoped for. Something that works. Something that involves free market principles. Something that demands character. Something that is changing lives.

I want you to help. I plan to write for this paper if they’ll have me and my firms are going to purchase advertising and provide literary services, which is part of what we do. I want you to first log onto www.thecontributor.org and read up. Then, I want you do to what you do best. For some, this means giving money. You’ll see how on the site. If you run into problems, contact me through this site and we’ll help. For you business owners, I want you to purchase advertising. Surely you can benefit from 120,000 Nashvillians seeing your ad. Some of you will want to volunteer. Some of you more famous folks might want to agree to interviews that will appear in the paper or perhaps even offer articles of your own that will raise The Contributor’s profile. Feel free to contact me about this. By the way, The Contributor is already the most successful homeless paper in America. What would happen if we helped it become a model for thousands like it around the country?

Do what you can. This is important. Thanks for taking the time.

Category: Posted Under: Homeless, Nashville, Newspaper, The Contributor

Top Twelve For 2010

December 20, 20101 Comment

Every year has its highlights. This past year, the events and items I’ve listed below were the most significant to me. They are in no particular order.

1. Most Important Practical Change: Technology – I’m not much of a techie but I have found my life so enhanced by technology this year that I have to mention it. I switched from PC to Mac at mid-year. I also switched from the Blackberry to the iPhone. I knew it would be something of an upgrade but I had no idea how much. I am probably 40% more effective now. Functions like Dashboard and Top Sites are a writer’s dream. And an app called Tripit has transformed how I organize the information I need for travel while reducing by 90% the time I have to put into the process. I should also mention that my self-education efforts have been dramatically enhanced. When I get on a plane now, I have podcasts, articles, books, movies, and entire college courses—all on my cell phone. I know I sound like a commercial, but if it works, I’m willing to be an advocate for it.

2. Most Important Quote: “Some people, you have to love from a distance.” – Joel Osteen

3. Most Fruitful Discipline: Striving to be absolutely in the moment, invested fully in what I am doing at the time.

4. Most Important Book: It will sound disingenuous, but reading the material for my upcoming book on Oprah Winfrey has profoundly changed me. Second to this, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr is the most significant.

5. Most Important Publication: Vanity Fair, no question. Best reporting on finance and Wall Street available. Liberal, but learned.

6. Most Central Theme to My Spiritual Life: Meditating on the cross of Jesus and praying cross-oriented themes. Also, reading over and again the story and meaning of the cross in Scripture.

7. Biggest Disappointment: The conviction of my friend Tom DeLay for money laundering. Absolutely a product of the politics of personal destruction, a trend that is ruining our country. If Tom is guilty, hundreds in Washington are as well. Truly troubling.

8. Favorite Trip: Bev and I went to Italy for two weeks this year. Rome and Umbria. Magical.

9. Favorite Meal: Alone: Crab Cakes at Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington. With Bev, the dinner she cooked with a friend at our villa in Umbria.

10. Most Touching Moment: The season of recovery from the Nashville Flood. So much generosity. So much heroism. So very proud of my city.

11. Biggest Surprise: Winning a literary award this year.

12. Most Defining Theme: The end of old business. Clearing the decks for the new. Being in position to catch the tide for the next phase of my life.

Category: Posted Under: Top Twelve for 2010

The 25 Principles of Churchillian Leadership

November 30, 20101 Comment

Today is Winston Churchill’s birthday. He was born on November 30, 1874. I can think of no better way to honor him than to encourage a new generation of leaders to build upon his vision. Accordingly, I offer below the 25 principles of Churchillian leadership that I first presented in my book, Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill.

Honor Winston. Make them your own.

Leadership is the power to shape the future.
Bitterness erodes strong leadership: it anchors a leader to the past, distracting him from the promise of the future.
Biology need not be destiny.
A leader is often his own best teacher.
Overwhelming moral and physical courage is at the foundation of all great leadership.
Exceptional courage is born of a profound sense of destiny.
To offer a people hope is to acquire a position of leadership in their lives
Religious faith elevates leaders by freeing them from the cult of the contemporary.
The quality of a leader is often reflected in the quality of his marriage.
Leadership is not a popularity contest; criticism is part of the job.
Leaders are forged as much by time in the wilderness as by times of popularity.
True leadership requires hard work—there is no substitute.
The courage to look hard realities in the face is essential to effective leadership.
A leader must see himself as the guardian of a heritage for future generations
A man cannot lead his generation if he cannot lead his children.
Great leadership is held aloft by the winds of compassion.
When a leader needs a break, a change is often as good as a rest.
Men who believe in eternal life seldom fear death in this life.
A sense of humor reflects a healthy grasp of the difference between what is and what ought to be
A leader will only command the level of loyalty he is willing to give to others.
Great leaders apply the past to the present so as to shape the future.
Words are the arsenal of leadership.
Leaders can never afford to lose the beauty of life in the corrosive tedium of work.
A firm grasp on eternal realities enables a leader to stand apart from his age and show it the way.
The leader’s task is to recognize the currents of change and harness their power for good.

Category: Posted Under: Leadership, Winston Churchill

The Pilgrims in Their Own Words

November 22, 2010Comment

In 1608, the Pilgrims left England for Holland because of the persecution taking place in the Anglican Church. William Bradford, their chronicler and long-time governor, wrote that they had “as the Lord’s free people, joined themselves by a covenant of the Lord into a church estate, in the fellowship of the Gospel, to walk in all His ways made known…unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them.”

While in Holland, Pastor John Robinson powerfully preached a Christian vision for the New World: “Now as the people of god in old time were called out of Babylon civil, the place of their bodily bondage, and were to come to Jerusalem, and there to build the Lord’s temple, or tabernacle…so are the people of God now to go out of Babylon spiritual to Jerusalem…and to build themselves as lively stones into a spiritual house, or temple, for the Lord to dwell in.”

After 12 years of living in Holland, the Pilgrims began to nurture a desire to take the Gospel to the nations. Bradford writes of their passion for coming to the new world: “…a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.”

They were carefully counting the cost: “…all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprise and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted that the dangers were great, but not desperate, and the difficulties were many, but not invincible…and all of them, through the help of God, fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome…[But] their condition was not ordinary. Their ends were good and honorable, their calling lawful and urgent, and therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding; yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet they might have comfort in the same, and their endeavors would be honorable.”

They were willing to face hardship: “Yea, and as the enterprise is weighty and difficult, so the honor is more worthy, to plant a rude wilderness, to enlarge the honor and fame of our dread sovereign, but chiefly to display the efficacy and power of the Gospel, both in zealous preaching, professing, and wise walking under it, before the faces of these poor blind infidels.”

One important part of their vision was for the conversion of Indians: “And first, seeing we daily pray for the conversion of the heathens…it seemeth unto me that we ought also to endeavor and use the means to convert them; and the means cannot be used unless we go to them, or they come to us. To us they cannot come, our land is full; to them we may go…that they may be persuaded at length to embrace the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, and rest in peace with him forever.”

After making arrangements for the voyage, their pastor, John Robinson, called a “day of sollemme humiliation.” Robinson preached from Ezra 8:21: “And there at the river, by Ahavba, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before our God and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children and for all our substance.” Robinson later wrote, “The rest of the time was spent in powering out prayers to the Lord with great fervencies, mixed with abundance of tears.”

The majority left Holland to board their ships in England. Their godly Pastor, John Robinson, stayed behind to care for the elderly and infirm. He sent a letter with one of the leaders which was to be read as they boarded their ships. The words would repeatedly provide comfort and encouragement to them as their adventure unfolded.

. . .We are daily to renew our repentance with our God, especially for our sins known, and generally for our unknown trespasses. . .[For] sin being taken away by earnest repentance ad the pardon thereof from the Lord. . .great shall be [a man's] security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comforts in all distresses. . .

As they prepared to leave in 1620 “they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.”

The voyage on the Mayflower lasted 66 days. The Mayflower was no longer than a volleyball court and the storms they sailed through sometimes laid the ship on its side, sometimes threw it high in the air only to slam it upon the water again. During that time of year the North Atlantic waters are so cold that the U.S. Navy estimates a man will live only three minutes if he falls overboard.

For weeks at a time, the Pilgrims were forced to remain in the “tween decks.” One sailor repeatedly called them “psalmsinging pukestockings.” They suffered all the effects of being tossed on the ocean for over two months — men, children, pregnant women, the elderly — but they always harbored in their hearts an earnest desire to be a “stepping stone of the light of Christ in a new land.”

When they arrived, landing in a howling wilderness, Bradford wrote these moving words: “Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repair too, to seeke for succoure. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that cuntrie know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search and unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. What could now sustain them but the spirite of God and his grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers, rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness.’”

Because they had been blown off course by the storms and had not landed upon the land of their charter, the Pilgrims wrote a new charter, called the Mayflower Compact. It is the first binding covenant or constitution in American history. It states clearly why they sailed to the new world.

“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, defender of the faith, &c, having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.”

But this unity was quickly challenged. Bradford wrote:

In these hard and difficult beginnings they found some discontents and murmurings arise among some, and mutinous speeches and carriages in other, but they were soon quelled and overcome by the wisdom, patience, and just and equally carriage of things by the Governor and better part, which clave faithfully together in the main. But that which was most sad and lamentable was, that in 2 or 3 months time halfe of their company dyed, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts, being infected with the scurvie and other diseases, and which this long voyage and their inaccomadate condition had brought upon them; so as there dyed some time 2 or 3 a day in the foresaid time; that of 100 persons, scarce 50 reminded.

And of these in the time of most distress, there were but 6 or 7 sound persons who, to their great commendations be it spoken, spared no pains, night or day, but with abundance of toyle and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed them meat made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, loathed and unclothed them, in a word did all the homely and necessary offices for them which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named; and all this willingly and cheerfully without any grudging in the least, showing herein their true love unto their friends and brethren.

Still, God’s grace was sufficient. God caused an English-speaking Indian by the name of Squanto to help the Pilgrims learn how to farm the land and harvest the bay. Squanto lived with the Pilgrims until 1622 when he died. His last request was that Gov. William Bradford would pray that he might go to the Englishman’s god in heaven. Bradford wrote: “Squanto continued with them and was their interpreter, and was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation. He directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places for their profit, and never left them till he dyed.”

Their next harvest proved the wisdom of Squanto. They had abundance of food for the first time. Governor Bradford called for a Day of Thanksgiving.

Our harvest being gotten, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king, Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted; and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation, and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God we are so far from want that we are partakers of plenty.

_____________________________________

QUOTES FROM SPEECHES ABOUT THE PILGRIMS AND THANKSGIVING THROUGHOUT HISTORY:

“Let us, in the midst of these reflections, have our hearts enlarged in thanksgiving to God, for his merciful favor to our fathers, and to us by their instrumentality. Let us piously acknowledge the hand of God, in all that has been done for them and us, and to the whole, cry, grace, grace. With what strange gloom are our hearts filled, when we make the supposition, that all our fathers had been left to perish in their attempt! Proportionable to the dreadfulness of such a supposition, let our gratitude be, to our father’s God and our’s. And, out of gratitude to God, let us improve the blessings of life with sobriety, and maintain our liberties with an honorable Christian firmness.”

Charles Turner, 1773

“…let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.”

Daniel Webster, 1851

“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.”

William Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation

Category: Posted Under: Pilgrims, Thanksgiving