During our years here in Washington, I've developed an interest in our nation's religious heritage. It's not just an academic interest in history but because it pertains to what I care about: our faith, the work of the church and its standing in our culture. When I worked for Congress, I was often in the Capitol building and began to notice the many statues and paintings in the building which reflected our nation's heritage of faith. That prompted me to do some reading and investigating about those who were enshrined there either in painting or statuary. I've mentioned several times that I have taken numerous groups through the Capitol building to show them these things. Recent changes in the admittance policy of the Capitol have severely hampered our ability to take folks through, but I still manage to do so every now and then.

The evidence that our nation was founded by generations deeply in the grip of the Christian faith is both broad and deep. The original writings of our founders speak eloquently and forcefully of the faith which motivated them. If people doubt that we were founded by people of faith, they don't have to take my word--or any other contemporary person's word-- for it, and they shouldn't. If reading the primary sources doesn't convince them, then nothing I say will do the trick. If the heavy testimony of people like Rev. Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, or Quaker William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, won't convince skeptics then I'm not sure any evidence would suffice. I always tell people on this subject to read the original documents and judge for yourself, don't depend on the expurgated version we're getting from modern education and contemporary media. To listen to many contemporaries, it was people trying to get away from religion who founded America, rather than Pilgrims and Puritans trying to get free to engage in religious freedom.

There are two reasons for a well-documented, growing ignorance of our deeply religious past. First, there is just passive neglect in an overloaded school curriculum which is too full of trendy, politically correct subjects to take a sober look at the American past. In addition there is a modern secular embarrassment over religious realities. In the preface to his best-selling novel, The Killer Angels (about the Battle of Gettysburg), author Michael Saara noted that he'd had to tone down the highly religious nature of the speech and conversation during that period because it would sound a bit odd to modern ears. Maybe so, but those taking their view of his subject came away with a perception that religion was less important to that generation than it really was. That is true of many modern works; the faith dimension is omitted since it is not important to those telling the story and, they think, therefore not important to the reader.

The second reason is an active attempt to revise our more religious past by those who have a heavily secular agenda for the present and the future. It is congenial to the vision certain secular zealots have for our nation to recast it as a secular place which was founded by those hostile to religion and that we people of faith are Johnny-come-lately intruders upon the secular utopia. Reformers often try to revise the past to serve current political agendas. This phenomenon is not original with us. In Judges 2:10-11, we are told "there arose a generation [in Israel] which did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel...and served the Baals." Spiritual ignorance and theo-historical ignorance combined to produce a corrupt generation, out of sync with Israel's God and His animating vision for the nation. It seems to me this same type of thing is happening to us and for that reason I've tried to do what I can to keep alive the memory of our nation's vast heritage of faith. I've even co-authored a book for young people, In God We Trust: Stories of Faith in American History (ChariotVictor). Besides, I enjoy reading missionary stories, and much of America's history was made by Christian missionaries, many enshrined in the US Capitol. Look for them next time you're there. - Tim