David Capes
So those are a couple of things that you’ll see along the way, the way that American society is being set up and influenced by the Bible. And as you said, these things are not self-evident. Sometimes we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Well, this was not self-evident to the Romans, they did not see everybody as equal. It’s only after the influence of the Bible at that point, 1700 years or so, that these things become the norm, become the ideal, and that’s what we live with all the time. But some want to, in a sense, jettison the Bible and jettison what got us here in favor of other
more modern ideas. As you move through the floor, you see other booths and exhibits as well that speak to the nature of what’s happening. Demonstrating, I think, as you said, that the Bible really is a good document, and it teaches good and it leads us to a good life.
Cole Feix
Yeah, a couple other things I like to point out on the floor is, as you progress in the colonial era, the big thing that happens after the founding of these colonies is the Great Awakening. And of course, this is part of the cyclical movement you see in American history and in Christian history across the world. God reviving his church. You have this really ardent, almost fanatical, founding generation of people, but by the time you get to their great grandkids, you get some apathy. You get what we call nominal Christianity. In the midst of that, in the 1730s and 40s, what God does is He refines his church, He
revives it, and you get this crazy spiritual renewal happening.
What you’ll see on the floor is this feature video of the ministry of George Whitfield. You’ll see some early copies of his sermons. Jonathan Edwards’ sermons, you’ll see the writings of Phillis Wheatley. I love to point out the writings of Phillis Wheatley. This is a woman who was born a slave, who becomes a Christian through the influence of George Whitfield’s preaching. And she’s the first African American woman to have her poetry published in the New World. She begins to write about what it’s like to become a Christian, and then as you are walking as a Christian, the impact you need to start making on the world around you. So, at once, she is grateful, and it’s really fascinating to read her poetry, because she’ll say she was grateful to have been in America in a situation where she could hear the gospel, and then now she turns her attention to how can people be believing the gospel and not do something about slavery and the brutality of that. And so, you see a figure like Phillis Wheatley, who is a believer. She has been impacted by the Bible, and then she’s going to use that platform that she now has to extend the influence of the Bible into the civil injustices of society.
The Great Awakening is the spiritual founding of America. You know that it’s this emergence of evangelicals. I think that’s a big part of it. But I also think that when you see revival in American history you see significant social change quickly following. And it’s not to say that the revival is the only reason you see civil change and social change afterwards, but it’s certainly a huge contributing factor. I mean, if you just look at the timeline of American history, you have revival before every major wave of social change: the Great Awakening and the Revolutionary War. The second Great Awakening and the Civil War. Some people call Billy Graham’s ministry the third Great Awakening, and then the Civil Rights movement.
I love to ask questions to college students, because we’ve had all this great revival activity going on on college campuses in the last couple of years. If there is a revival now, and usually they’re shaking their heads, yes we’re seeing something. There’s something going on. What will be the next thing bringing people to Christ? Usually when this happens, young people come to Christ, and begin to follow him, and then they begin to change the world. What will the change be that will be the proof of revival now in 50 years. What do people say? Things that we take for granted now that through the impact of Jesus Christ and His Spirit and His word are going to change in our society. I like to point that out as we lead up to the American Revolution.
But I think some of the greatest artifacts on the floor are items from the American Revolution and from the founding. You’re going to see early copies of things like Common Sense. You’re going to see early Jefferson and Adams, and they’ve got this great thing in the middle of the floor where they take these letters that are being written back and forth between people like Hamilton and Adams and Jefferson, Washington and Benjamin Rush. They’ve got these actors reading them like they’re a dialog, and it’s a dialog about religious freedom. What are we going to do as a nation to preserve religious freedom? This is where I tell people, I kind of want to rehabilitate Thomas Jefferson a little bit on that floor. Not because I believe that Thomas Jefferson is a great guy, or that the reasons that people are critical of him are wrong. I don’t mean that by any means, but he’s the same kind of enigma that America is. If you look at our history, he’s somebody that had the loftiest of ideals. He was a deeply religious person, even though we wouldn’t consider him a Christian. He saw himself as a Christian because he believed in the moral teachings of Jesus. He was the one that had the greatest hand in the language of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote the Virginia statute of religious freedom, and we could go on and on and on down his resume and saying all that still had the cognitive dissonance at work where he was owning slaves. He wrote many things that we would look back and say he didn’t even consider people of different races to be the same. I mean, how could you possibly think that? And yet all of this is contained in this one enigmatic figure.
Well, that is the American story, in a lot of ways. Amazing, lofty ideals that have been enshrined in our founding documents, in our great leaders, in our great moments, and then bewildering moments in our history where we’ve fallen short of those ideals. We live in an age where it’s very easy to be self-critical. It’s very easy to be cynical. Should we tell our history warts and all? My worry is, sometimes we tell our history now with only warts. We don’t even focus on any of the good things. I just like to point out that as you go through and you look at all these documents of people writing about religious freedom, the founding ideals of the country, you get into early social reform movements. There are two cases on the floor that talk about social reform, whether it be slavery or education, or women’s suffrage. You can chronicle the arguments, and in these people are using biblical arguments. Most famously before the Civil War, you’re seeing biblical arguments from the north and the south. Both sides of the slavery issue, but if you take a circumspect view of this, slavery is a blight in the history of America, just as it is on almost every civilization. But the wonder of the Bible’s impact in America and in Britain, shortly before this is that you had a society for the first time that was able to recognize that they couldn’t reconcile their ideals, shaped by the Bible, by the classics, with the way they were living.
And I love the way they’ve done this at the Museum of the Bible. The culmination of this first half of the impact floor is where you have this 250 foot tapestry that’s telling the story of American history. And it splits at the Civil War. It’s torn in two and that’s because the Civil War is not just the greatest civic or national difficulty in American history. It’s the greatest theological difficulty in American history. You know, the Civil War was fought on the ideas landscape with ideas from the Bible, the impact of the Bible. They don’t have the original document, but they have a great facsimile there of Lincoln’s second inaugural address. You’ve come through, you’ve seen all these great arguments from pastors and
politicians and social reformers, and everybody you could think of. And then in the center of the floor you have what I consider to be the greatest work of public theology in our nation’s history, which is Lincoln’s second inaugural address.
And I always tell people, when you go to the Lincoln Memorial in DC, you’re just struck by the statue of Lincoln. I mean, this huge monument to Lincoln, and everybody turns left to go to the Gettysburg Address, which is really important. It’s so much more well known, I think because we teach it. In middle school and high school, you read it, talk about it, and it is a landmark document. But if you turn right in the Lincoln Memorial, you’ll see etched on the wall Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The whole thing is on there. It’s pretty short. Lincoln was a master of communicating just incredible depth in very few words. And in that speech, what you see is the fusion of what we’ve been talking about for the whole floor, the impact of the Bible when it meets real kinds of sinful life. And in that speech, what Lincoln does is he’s able to channel a theological vision into the circumstance of the Civil War.
So, when this is given in 1864 the Civil War is not over, but it’s relatively certain that the North is going to win. And Lincoln has turned his mind to think, how do you ever recover from this? If it’s the impact of the Bible that we would say leads people to realize that you can’t tolerate slavery anymore, Lincoln also realizes it’s the impact of the Bible that’s going to bring them back again as a society, to live after the Civil War, to rebuild, to reconcile. Lincoln uses this amazing language, and Lincoln is probably more talked about today because of his knowledge of the classics, the Greco Roman authors, whereas he was not that devout overtly as a Christian. But once you begin to read things from the second inaugural, you realize that he was a very devout, very profound theological mind.
So where does Lincoln turn? What are we going to do? You know, he says we’re going to bind up the nation’s wounds, and the way we’re going to do that is we’re going to care for those who have fought, and for their widows and for their orphans. The whole thing is just laced with biblical language. But I like to point to that part, because you’re not going to be able to find that theme of forgiveness in other places that make up the founding ideals. You’re not going to find that in the ancient Greco Roman literature. You’re not going to find that in the common sense pragmatism that the founders were drawing off of. You’re not even going to find that in contemporary writings about social movements outside of the influence of the Bible. How are we going to put this country back together again? Lincoln says that we are going to do it basically through forgiving one another. He says, “with malice towards none, charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in. To bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan. To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”.
You don’t have the resources for that without the impact of the Bible, the conception of we’re going to heal these wounds by what James says is true religion. We’re going to take care of widows and orphans. We’re going to forgive; we’re going to move on. Saying that God’s ways are just and righteous altogether. This vision is unbelievable as a monument to the testimony of the Bible in American history.
David Capes
Cole Feix, you have just wet our appetite so beautifully for seeing the Museum of the Bible, seeing all that for yourself. And I really appreciate you being with us today, Cole, to talk about that. We wish you well in all of your endeavors, in your ministry, and we look forward to having you back sometime.
Cole Feix
Thanks. David.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
