Back to the Book that Built America
On five consecutive Wednesday nights in late Summer 1941, former British atheist turned theist, C. S. Lewis, delivered five memorable radio talks broadcast from London. The first talk was broadcast August 6. The last talk was delivered September 3. The fourth talk, delivered August 27, was originally titled, “What Can We Do About It?” It now appears in Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity, under the title “We Have Cause to Be Uneasy.”
The times were dark. Hopelessness was increasing. Britain and France had declared war against Germany September 3, 1939. Large audiences tuned in weekly to hear Lewis’ talks (one talk had an audience of 1.5 million). As Lewis delivered the fourth talk, his listeners heard him say, “If you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on [to the right road].”
Recently, I read the following sentence that is descriptive of what is happening in our nation: “There is something broken in these United States.” When I read the sentence, I thought of what C. S. Lewis said—“We must go back.” And, we must go back to a deep realization that this broken nation is in this condition because, fundamentally, it has lost its grip on the fact it was built because of the Bible and what this means.
There is a sense in which the proposition—The Bible built America—is the thesis of Daniel Dreisbach’s chapter in The Utterance of God, published this summer by Warren Apologetics Center. Dreisbach, nationally recognized expert on the intersection of religion, law, and politics, references a 1982 Newsweek magazine cover story co-authored by two award-winning journalists. This Newsweek article, “How the Bible Made America,” states “historians are discovering that the Bible, even more than the Constitution, is our founding document” (emp. added). Historian Earl West wrote, “It is indeed questionable whether the founding of the American nation, or its early progress, can be understood at all separate from the impact of the Bible upon it” (1971 Harding Graduate School Lectures, 226-27).
The late Antonin Scalia called George Washington “the greatest American of them all, the indispensable man” (On Faith 170). Washington possessed great character and insight. He showed both when he made one of the greatest observations made by any early American leader. For that matter, it is one of the greatest statements made by any American leader at any time in history. Identifying ideas on which the nation had been built, Washington says the following in his farewell letter to the army in June 1783: “The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when . . . above all, the pure and benign light of revelation . . . had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society” (emp added).
Gregg says the context of the above observation of Washington is “clearly a reference to the Jewish and Christian scriptures” (Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization, 162). On the meaning of Washington’s statement, Dreisbach writes: “Washington . . . meant the Bible” (Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, 53). In his book, The Political Philosophy of George Washington, Jeffry Morrison affirms that Washington was claiming “the revelation of the Bible was the most important boon [benefit, blessing] to society in history” (171).
Borrowing from C. S. Lewis—“We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back.” America must go back to the book that built it. “Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it and find rest for your souls . . .” (Jeremiah 6:16, ESV).
“But they protested: we won’t!” (Jeremiah 6:16b, CSB)
Charles C. Pugh III
Executive Director