The State of The American Populace Movement with Excerpts from, “A History of the American People” by Dr. Maria Perez
The State of The American Populace Movement
Excerpts from, A History of the American People by Paul Johnson
We are experiencing a populist revolution and a reformation of morals. One that the common man is galvanizing, not by what you would assume, such as churchgoers or people of faith. Why do so many people who never hearken into a church door see what is at stake in our nation and our standing up for righteousness? Could it be possible that God’s common grace is being seen today in the people of America?
America is great because the people are great. America is exceptional because the people are exceptional.
Are we entering a Golden Age of a reawakening to the Gospel Truths, similar to the founding of our nation?
I believe we’re living through a dispensation of the concept of God’s common grace. Common grace, as an expression of the goodness of God, is every favor, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God; this includes the delay of wrath, the mitigation of our sin-natures, natural events that lead to prosperity, and all gifts that human use and enjoy naturally. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/goodness-god-common-grace/
This essay is an overview of those foundational years and the people who shaped that history, written by, Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People. The Conservative Book Club described it as “a single, sweeping volume, so awesome in scope, so rich in fascinating detail, and so pulsing with shared dramatic intensity that it instantly takes its place in the finest one-volume history of our nation ever written.”
In the first section, A City on a Hill: Colonial America, 1580 to 1750, Johnson asserts, “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story holds such tremendous lessons, for the American people themselves and the rest of mankind.”
The first to settle were the Portuguese. The Portuguese, a predominantly seagoing people, were the first to begin the new enterprise early in the 15th century. They were adventurers who were excited about their discoveries of the Americas. These early settlers believed they were beginning civilization afresh: the first boy and girl born in Maderia were christened Adam and Eve.
The landing of the first settlers on the Mayflower in New Plymouth on December 11, 1620, proved to be the single most crucial formative event in early American history. This event would ultimately significantly shape the direction of the American Republic.
The Mayflower men and women were unique. They came to America not primarily for gain or livelihood but to create. God’s Kingdom on earth. They were zealots, the idealists, the utopians, the Saints. And the best of them were, perhaps one should say, the most extreme of them, fanatical, uncompromising, overweening in their self-righteousness. They were also immensely energetic, persistent, and courageous. They were going to America to pursue religious freedom as a Christian body. In a sense, they were not individuals but a community.
They drew up a social compact, creating a civil body politic to provide equal laws founded upon church teachings and to distinguish between the colony’s religious and secular governance. This contract was based upon the original biblical covenant between God and the Israelites.
They saw themselves as exceptions to the European betrayal of Christian principles and were conducting an exercise in exceptionalism.
This essay will look predominantly at three relevant contributions to America. These include the prominence of the Bible to the founding settlers, the significance of liberty, and the importance of education to these founding Pilgrims.
The Importance of the Bible
Another lesson and much nostalgia are found in the blessings resulting from faith in and obedience to God and Scripture.
These early colonial Americans believed that knowledge of God came directly to them through studying the Holy Scripture.
They read the Bibles for themselves daily. Virtually every humble cabin in the Massachusetts colony had its own Bible. Adults read it alone, silently. It was also read aloud among families and in church during Sunday morning service, which lasted from 8:00 to 12. (More Bibles were read in the afternoon.) Many families had a regular course of Bible reading, which meant they covered the entire text of the Old Testament each year. Every striking episode was familiar to them, and its meaning and significance were earnestly discussed; many they knew by heart. The language and literature of the Bible in its various translations, but particularly in the magnificent new King James Version, passed into the common tongue in script on Sunday. The minister took his congregation through key passages and carefully attended sermons, which rarely lasted less than an hour. But authority lay in the Bible, not the minister, and in the last resort, every man and woman decided in the light of which Almighty God gave them what the Bible meant.
The Value of Liberty
To them, liberty and religion were inseparable, and they came to America to pursue both. They associated liberty with godliness because it was unattainable without freedom of conscience.
John Winthrop gave what he termed a little speech on July 3, 1645, on the whole question of the authority of magistrates and the people’s liberty. A statement of view that many found powerful so that the words were copied and recopied.
He stated, “That liberty is that only which is good, just and honest, is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority. It is of the same kind of liberty whereof Christ hath made us free. If you stand for your natural, corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority, but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then you will quietly and cheerfully submit under that authority which is set over you for your good. The Colonist brought with them from England a strong sense of need to live under the rule of law, not of powerful individuals.”
Liberty fostered productivity and wealth.
Johnson states that “exactly 300 years after John Winthrop’s fleet anchored” (1630), America which is only 6% of the world’s population and land area, yet, it produces 70% of its oil, nearly 50% of its copper, 38% of its lead, 42% each of its zinc and coal, 46% of its iron, 54% of its cotton, and 62% of its corn—all with only minimal government regulation.”
An Educated Populace
A college for training Ministers of Religion was founded on the Charles River at Newtown in 1636, according to the will of Reverend John Harvard. He came to the colonies in 1635 and left 400 books for this purpose. It was an index of how the colony achieved its primary objective. As one of the Harvard founders puts it plainly, “After God had carried us save to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessities for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship and settled the civil government, one of the following things we longed for, and looked after, was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity.
The Puritans were successful settlers. They could read the often excellent printed pamphlets advising colonists because they were skilled. Most were artisans or tradesmen, some were experienced farmers, and there was a definite sprinkling of merchants with capital. They came as families under leaders, often as entire congregations under the administrators. The unit plantation was several square miles, with an English-style village in the middle, where all had houses with lands outside it. These were first class colonists, law abiding, churchgoing, hardworking, democratic, anxious to acquire education and to take advantage of self-government.
Are we living in another spiritual Great Awakening, much like the one that occurred in first half of the 18th century in America, which proved to be a vast significance both in religion and in politics? It was indeed one of the key events in American history. It was started by preachers moving among the rural vastness, close to the frontier, among humble people, some of whom rarely had a chance to enjoy a sermon, many of whom had little contact with structured religion at all. It was simple, but it was not simplistic. These preachers of the great revival, Great Awakening were anxious not just to deliver a message, but to get their hearers to learn it themselves by studying the Bible; and to do that, they needed to read. So, an important element of the early Great Awakening was the provision of some kind of basic education in the frontier districts and among rural communities, which as yet had no regular schools.
The Great Awakening was applicable for persons of all creeds and backgrounds and ethnic origins, native born Americans and the new arrivals from Europe, united by the desire to do good, lead useful and godly lives, and help others to do the same in the new and splendid country Divine Providence had given them.
Recently, the bible has become one of the best-selling books on the market. The Wall Street Journal has penned it “a golden age of Bible publishing.” We see that, just as during the 18th-century Great Awakening, a new population of Americans are undertaking this reformation and revival to recapture America’s heart and soul. You just might not find them in a church just yet.