Pacifism and Civilization

Athens or Jerusalem?

Western Civilization is not Greco-Roman civilization. Rome fell. 

• The Roman Empire was a conquering empire. Like secular America has become.
• It was an enslaving empire. 
• It was a debauched empire, opposed to your family values.
• Nine Corrupt Pillars of Classical Greece

Western Civilization is Christian Civilization.

• POLIS: The Empire of Man vs. the City of God
• Christianity and Liberty
• Giving Thanks for Western Civilization
• Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values by Paul Craig Roberts

Is America a Christian nation? Are the American ideals of "equality before the law" and "the rule of law" products of Christianity, or are they products of "the Enlightenment," which restored principles of the Empires of Rome and Greece, lost during the Christian "dark ages"?

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:43:35 -0700, Libertarian Party Congressional Candidate Joe Cobb wrote:

The idea of an "Enlightenment" is wrong on all counts. The Christian middle ages were not devoid of Greco-Roman influence. In fact, Athens pervaded the middle ages. Thomas Aquinas is well known for his efforts to synthesize Aristotle and Christ. Medieval Christians were converts to Christ from Rome, and brought Rome into the Church. It was Christian scholars who preserved the writings of the "classical" age.

But there were some parts of Rome that could not be synthesized into Medieval Christianity.

Greco-Roman philosophy was homosexual and fascist.

 • The word "Fascism" comes from a Roman symbol of authority

http://home.uchicago.edu/~janie/fasces.htm

 

 • Homosexuality and anti-Christian immorality were pervasive in the Greco-Roman world

Biblical Sources of Western Sexual Morality
http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/features/cm07_leithart.html

This philosophical conflict has long been described as the conflict between Jerusalem (Christianity) and Athens (the Enlightenment).

Gary North explains the foundational worldview assumptions of Roman culture:

(1) The legitimacy of homosexuality, especially the seduction of teenage boys by men over age 30;
(2) warfare as a man's supremely meaningful activity;
(3) polytheism;
(4) a personal demon as a philosopher's source of correct logic;
(5) slavery as the foundation of civilization;
(6) politics as mankind's only means of attaining the good life, meaning salvation;
(7) the exclusion of women from all aspects of public religion;
(8) the legitimacy of female infanticide.

The Old Testament Prophet Daniel predicted the destruction of the ancient imperial world, and the inauguration of a new world order under Christ.

Undergirding American capitalism and American prosperity are "family values" which are antithetical to Enlightenment thinking.  America's Founding Fathers drew from the Bible and Christianity far more than they drew from Rome. Clinton Rossiter notes that even when they mentioned Rome,

The Roman example worked both ways: From the decline of the republic Americans could learn the fate of free states that succumb to luxury.

Dinesh D’Souza adds,

The rest of his article shows that it was Christianity that transformed the ancient world into the modern world.

Everything that was good about classical philosophy had been set forth centuries earlier, in "the Law and the Prophets."

The Greek idea of nomos was preceded by several centuries in the Hebrew concept of Wisdom, which undergirded King Solomon's advice to his son in the book of Proverbs, notably chapter 8, in which Wisdom speaks throughout:

¹⁴ Counsel and sound judgment are mine;
I have understanding and power.
¹⁵ By me kings reign
and rulers make laws that are just;
¹⁶ by me princes govern,
and all nobles who rule on earth.

Similarly,

Proverbs 29:4
By justice a king gives a country stability, but one who is greedy for bribes tears it down.

Proverbs 29:14
If a king judges the poor with fairness, his throne will always be secure.

. . . and in other political verses too numerous to mention, verses which are "Hayekian" to the core.

The Christian concept of "logos" was found in the Septuagint, the 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Old Testament, and the baton was passed to John who wrote that this Wisdom existed before the foundation of the earth (John 1:1) -- certainly predating the Greeks.

The idea that Western Civilization came from Greco-Roman ideas is a myth. See Gary North's essay, "Greek Mythology: The Myth Of Classical Politics."

http://garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/html/gnbd/appendix_e.htm

It's certainly true that some philosophers in the Greco-Roman tradition warned against the excesses of power, and America's Founding Fathers often quoted them, as did John Calvin and the Puritans, but on the whole it was a debauched slave-state, and the Founders more often referred to Rome as a warning of what would happen if America abandoned its Biblical quest to be "a City on a Hill":

Clinton Rossiter: The Religious Foundation of Government

Thomas Paine quoted the Bible (1 Samuel 8) in his revolutionary pamphlet against British Monarchy, Common Sense. Tyranny violated a higher law, he said. When Samuel warned Israel of the consequences of seeking a king "like all the nations," he spoke around the year 1000 B.C., and had not "absorbed" anything from Greece or Rome. (Plato wrote his blueprint for tyranny around 360 B.C.)

• 1 Samuel 8: Government vs. God
• The Prophetic Critique of Monarchy: 1 Samuel 8
• Tom Paine and 1 Samuel 8

For libertarians to reject the Hebrew-Christian logos in favor of Greek philosophers is truly suicidal. Plato's Republic is a blueprint for dictatorship, while the Bible is a sustained critique of messianic Statism and a blueprint for anarcho-capitalism.

• Polis: The Empire of Man vs. the City of God
• How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and the Success of the West
• Christianity and Liberty

John Lofton has compiled some telling quotations from scholars in a previous -- more Christian -- century. What follows is from his essay:

And make no mistake about it. Regardless of what you’ve heard regarding the alleged greatness of the ancient, Greco-Roman, pre-Christian world, there was no real, true freedom and/or liberty during this era. None. In his book The Ancient City: A Study On The Religion, Laws And Institutions Of Greece And Rome (1889), Fustel de Coulanges spells out in detail the darkness of this Christless world:

The citizen was subordinate in everything, and without any reserve, to the city; he belonged to it body and soul. The [pagan] religion which produced the State, and the State which supported [this] religion, sustained each other; these two powers formed a power almost superhuman, to which the body and soul were equally enslaved. There was nothing independent in man; his body belonged to the State and was devoted to its defense.

For example, Aristotle and Plato incorporated into their ideal codes the command that a deformed baby son was to be put to death. And in his “Laws,” Plato says (and this sounds very familiar today): “Parents ought not to be free to send or not to send their children to the masters to whom the city has chosen [for their education]; for the children belong less to their parents than to the city.” And in ancient Athens, a man could be put on trial and convicted for something called “incivism,” that is being insufficiently affectionate toward the State! Coulanges says (emphasis mine):

The ancients, therefore, knew neither liberty in private life, liberty in education, nor religious liberty. The human person counted for very little against that holy and almost divine authority called the country or the State…. It is a singular error, among all human errors, to believe that in the ancient cities men enjoyed liberty. They had not even the idea of it.

Commenting on our Lord’s God/Caesar distinction, Coulanges says:

It is the first time that God and the state are so clearly distinguished. For Caesar at that period was still the pontifex maximus, the chief and the principal organ of the Roman religion; he was the guardian and the interpreter of beliefs. He held the worship and the dogmas in his hands. Even his person was sacred and divine, for it was a peculiarity of the policy of the emperors that, wishing to recover the attributes of ancient royalty, they were careful not to forget the divine character which antiquity had attached to the king-pontiffs and to the priest-founders. But now Christ breaks the alliance which paganism and the empire wished to renew. He proclaims that religion is no longer the State, and that to obey Caesar is no longer the same thing as to obey God.

Christianity … separates what all antiquity had confounded…. It was the source whence individual liberty flowed…. The first duty no longer consisted in giving one’s time, one’s strength, one’s life to the State … all the virtues were no longer comprised in patriotism, for the soul no longer had a country. Man felt that he had other obligations besides that of living and dying for the city. Christianity … placed God, the family, the human individual above country, the neighbor above the city.

Because of this hideous tyranny, it is no surprise that self-murder (suicide) was so rampant in the ancient world. As Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn tells us in his The Conflict Of Christianity With Heathenism (1899):

Heathenism ended in barrenness and sheer despair, and at last the only comfort was that men are free to leave this miserable world by suicide. Patet exitus! The way out of this life stands open! That is the last consolation of expiring heathenism.

And he quotes Seneca, who said that “the aim of all philosophy is to despise life,” as saying, concerning the suicide option:

Seest thou yon steep height? Thence is the descent to freedom. Seest thou yon sea, yon river, yon well? Freedom sits there in the depths. Seest thou yon low, withered tree? There freedom hangs. Seest thou thy neck, thy throat, thy heart? They are ways of escape from bondage.

To which Dr. Uhihorn adds:

Can the bankruptcy of Heathenism be more plainly declared than in these words…? With what power then must have come the preaching of this word: "Christ is risen! The wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

And in a little noticed and seldom quoted passage from Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville says:

The most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece ... tried to prove that slavery was in the order of nature and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything shows that those of the ancients who had been slaves before they became free, many of whom have left us excellent writings, themselves regarded servitude in no other light.

All the great writers of antiquity belonged to the aristocracy of masters, or at least they saw that aristocracy established and expanded before their eyes. Their mind, after it had expanded itself in several directions, was barred from further progress in this one; and the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth was required to teach that all members of the human race are by nature equal and alike.

The historian Arnold Toynbee saw, accurately, the great failing of the ancient Greeks, that they “saw in Man, ‘the Lord of Creation,’ and worshipped him as an idol instead of God.” And this rejection of the true God —- which similarly threatens modern Western civilization —- led to Hellenism’s breakdown and disintegration. Rejecting Gibbon, Toynbee says neither Christians nor barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire; they merely walked over a corpse.

And in his book Religious Origins of the American Revolution (Scholars Press, 1976), Page Smith points out:

The American Revolution might thus be said to have started, in a sense, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. It received a substantial part its theological and philosophical underpinnings from John Calvin’s Institutes Of The Christian Religion and much of its social history from the Puritan Revolution of 1640- 1660, and, perhaps, less obviously, from the Glorious Revolution of 1689.

Put another way, the American Revolution is inconceivable in the absence of that context of ideas which have constituted radical Christianity. The leaders of the Revolution in every colony were imbued with the precepts of the Reformed faith.

Indeed, he adds, in early America, the Reformation

left its mark on every aspect of the personal and social life of the faithful. In the family, in education, in business activity, in work, in community and, ultimately, in politics, the consequences of the Reformation were determinative for American history.

As remote or repugnant as Puritanism may be to some, Smith says “it is essential that we understand that the Reformation in its full power was one of the great emancipations of history.” He says the passage in the book of Micah about “every man…under his vine and under his fig tree” was “the most potent expression of the colonist’s determination to be independent whatever the cost,…having substantial control over his own affairs. No theme was more constantly reiterated by writers and speakers in the era of the Revolution.”

• Classical Christian Education Is Like Marxist Christian Education, But a Lot More Subtle.
• What Protestant Evangelical Home School Parents Want: A Roman Catholic/Greek Curriculum

Antonio Gramsci on Christianity and Western Civilization

The civilized world, Gramsci deduced, had been thoroughly saturated with Christianity for 2,000 years and Christianity remains the dominant philosophical and moral system in Europe and North America. Practically speaking, civilization and Christianity were inextricably bound together. Christianity had become so thoroughly integrated into the daily lives of nearly everyone, including non-Christians living in Christian lands, it was so pervasive, that it formed an almost impenetrable barrier to the new, revolutionary civilization Marxists wish to create. Attempting to [violently] batter down that barrier proved unproductive, since it only generated powerful counter-revolutionary forces, consolidating them and making them potentially deadly. Therefore, in place of the frontal attack, how much more advantageous and less hazardous it would be to attack the enemy's society subtly, with the aim of transforming the society's collective mind gradually, over a period of a few generations, from its former Christian worldview into one more harmonious to Marxism.
Gramsci's Grand Plan

Gary North
GREEK MYTHOLOGY: THE MYTH OF CLASSICAL POLITICS
Leviticus: An Economic Commentary on the Bible, Appendix E
Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics 1994.
http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/html/gnbd/appendix_e.htm

The Biblical Source of Western Sexual Morality

Civilization and the Protestant Reformation

Christianity and History

The Critics of Christ

U.S. Constitution Found to be Unconstitutional

The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism-Part I

A Philosophical Self-Portrait

Christian Civilization Medieval Perspectives for Today . . .

Christianity and Civilization

Decentralized Christian Civilization - NRA

Old Truths Have Not Passed Away

Reconciliation Press Online - News and Articles Christian Civilization

I.C.E. Cover Letter - May, 1995

May, 1995

Dear ICE Subscriber:

Earlier this year, I received a letter from the headmaster of a Christian high school. The school, he said, is committed to providing a classical education. He asked me if ICE could supply materials that would improve his curriculum. I wrote back to him that the most important thing he could do for his students is to scrap his curriculum.

Peter wrote: "But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire" (II Peter 2:22). He was not writing about classical education, but he could have been.

Classical education undermines Christian orthodoxy. Christian orthodoxy has tried to make classical education Christian for over eighteen centuries, and it has always failed; the reverse always happens. Classical education is a Trojan horse: Greeks bearing gifts.

Classical education begins with a premise: the student must learn the classics. The classics are pagan: Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. They were based on the premise that man is the measure of all things, that man's reason is ultimate. The rational side of the Renaissance was based on the same premise. (Its irrational side was also a revival of Greek and Roman religion: occult, magical, and either chance-based or fatalistic.)

Medieval Scholasticism was as committed to the classics as the Renaissance was, though without classical occultism and pornography. The Scholastics were committed academically far more to Aristotle than to the Bible, especially in their political philosophy. They worshipped at Aristotle's shrine. Prior to the eleventh century, medieval theologians had worshipped at Plato's shrine: neoplatonic mysticism. The Scholastics substituted Aristotle for Plato. There was some gain — Aristotle at least was not a communist, as Plato was — but not in the realm of men's presuppositions. It was the equivalent of substituting Milton Friedman for Karl Marx: better economics, but the same old humanism. For humanism, man is the measure, and man's mind is the sole valid instrument of measurement. The Bible denies this view.

From the beginning, the medieval university was committed to classical education, and from the beginning, rationalism and irrationalism (mysticism) undermined the Christian roots of education. By the time of Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution of 1642-59, the Puritans suspected that the curriculum of Oxford and Cambridge was against them, yet they did not seek to change it. They hoped that inward salvation would somehow make Renaissance rationalism Christian. Cromwell changed nothing at Oxford, even though as Lord Protector, he was chancellor of Oxford. John Morgan writes in his survey of Puritan education, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1986):

Puritans did not venture far from the traditional academic routine. The structures of educational institutions, and the content as affected by Renaissance urgings, seemed to satisfy their need for an academic base. There can certainly be no doubt of the very limited effects of puritans to the legacy of the Renaissance, or in developing the human intellect in the Baconian sense of the `advancement of learning.' . . . A novel theory of learning or education lay outside the necessities of a puritan blueprint for the future (pp. 305–6).

To indulge in classical education is to indulge in Renaissance education. To force a child to learn Latin is to encourage him to accept the premises either of medieval Catholicism or the Renaissance. Yet today's would-be Puritans have accepted the error of those Puritans who built Harvard. Harvard went Unitarian in 1804. Christians know something is wrong with rationalism, yet they seem incapable of breaking with the past.

Van Til's apologetics should warn us: the history of Christian philosophy has been one long compromise with the philosophy of autonomous man. From Plato to Newton, from Newton to Kant, from Kant to some cast-off liberal fad, Christian philosophers have sought to baptize humanism. They hope to appropriate for Christ the anti-Christian philosophies of their day or an earlier day. They trust the natural mind of the natural man, refusing to acknowledge the enormous danger involved: the importation of alien philosophical categories into the Church. And so, without exception, Christians for over 1800 years have surrendered education, and therefore the future (inheritance), to the humanists.

What is the obvious sign of this surrender today? The futile attempt to revive Latin. Why force a child to master Latin rather than New Testament Greek? Greek will enable him to read the New Testament in the original — an obvious benefit. But what is the benefit of Latin? Except for the historian of the ancient or medieval eras — for whom there will be no paying employment — Latin is peripheral. Yet it is seen as the mark of true learning. Latin was the universal language of the Western Church, i.e., Roman Catholicism and early Protestantism. But that learning was deeply compromised with Renaissance humanism. At best, Latin will enable a tiny handful of highly skilled, highly motivated, and poorly paid Christian scholars to read fragments of the Latin Church fathers. Meanwhile, we live in an era in which the vast majority of Christians know nothing of Calvin, where Calvinist pastors have yet to read all of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, let alone Calvin's commentaries. Forget about Latin; teach the Institutes. Abandon the futile boast: "My child is receiving a classical education, just like the good old days." The good old days produced the bad new days, step by step. The assumption of intellectual neutrality is the Church's great enemy. Latin education was the primary agency used to spread this lie.

I see home school mothers who cannot read Latin, who have no intention of reading Latin, who are utterly uninterested in anything written only in Latin, buying Latin grammars to inflict on their hapless children. Why? Because somebody they trusted told them that "Latin is basic to a well-rounded education." To which I reply: "Latin was basic to the initiation process of pagan and/or deeply compromised academics to gain control over the training of each generation of Christian leaders in England and America." Latin was a wedge used to separate Christian children from their parents. In the same way that the sex education fanatics today devise ways to keep parents from finding out what teachers are really teaching the children, so was Latin for six or seven centuries. To open the doors of ecclesiastical office and government patronage to your child, Christian parents had to surrender him to the Latin-based curriculum, a curriculum that rested squarely on the autonomy of man. The child was initiated into classical humanism by way of Latin.

What is nothing short of astounding is that there are dedicated Christians today who insist on doing this to their children. They insist on reviving the tool of their ancient enemies in the name of traditional education. But traditional education was Satan's own tool for capturing the souls of Christians as well as their inheritance. Satan's agents abandoned that tool only late in the nineteenth century, when it became clear that mass education was going to make the traditional Latin school obsolete as an initiation process for the elite. At that point, the humanists substituted the modern curriculum, in which Latin plays no role. Latin has become a lost tool of learning. Let's keep it that way!

Is there a role for Latin? Only historical. If there were a self-conscious effort on the part of dozens of Christian schools to create a cooperative program for translating the 220 volumes of J. P. Migne's Latin Church Fathers, I would approve. But the cost — $65,000 for four CD-ROM disks, shared by four schools — is prohibitive. Christian schools do not have the funds or the vision to begin a project like this. Until they do, it is foolish to indulge in the waste of time that a Latin curriculum involves. The vast majority of children so initiated will learn only the equivalent of pigeon Latin. If a child cannot sight read a foreign language without a dictionary by age 14, then whatever benefits he has received from the exercise of learning that language are indirect, e.g., learning the rules of grammar. If someone is going to be forced to do this, then he should learn a language useful to Christians: Greek, first; Hebrew, second, and Latin only a distant third. But what do we see? Mostly Latin, with no Greek and no Hebrew. This is Renaissance pride in action.

What does your child really need? First, he must learn how to read early, so he will enjoy reading throughout his life. He must learn to read critically. This means he must also learn to write, for in writing, the student learns how others have communicated with him through the printed page. Reading and writing are complementary skills.

Second, he should gain a knowledge of the Bible. I prefer the King James Version, for these reasons: (1) the language is magnificent; (2) its unique phrases stick in the mind, making Bible study easier; (3) the Strong's numbers are tied to the King James, making serious Bible study easier, especially with a modern computerized Bible search program.

Third, he must master mathematics. Until there is a self-consciously Christian version of Saxon's math program available, we should go with Saxon, which emphasizes review and mastery. Fourth, anything else that interests him. Let him master a subject for the joy and experience of mastering it.

Christian education should be highly focused on a handful of topics: reading-writing, Bible, and mathematics. To force a child to take six courses per semester is both traditional and foolish if the child has not first mastered reading, writing, arithmetic, and the Bible. If he has mastered these, he can pick up the other courses in short order, such as by preparing through Advanced Placement exam cram courses.

Students can sometimes gain admission to a local junior college and take courses that count for both high school and college. My son did this: he started college part-time at age 14. He graduated from high school at 15. He will be a junior in college the month he turns 18. Even if a child does not graduate, he or she can attend a junior college at age 18, when, by law, the JC must accept the child on a provisional basis, even without a diploma.

A child who has gone through the King James Bible twice and Saxon's calculus once will get 1,000+ on the SAT, and will gain provisional acceptance in most colleges without a high school diploma. I have my 15-year-old daughter taking Saxon math (algebra II) and Shakespeare. Every week she writes a paper on one of the plays. She is getting a feel for the most magnificent English ever written. Then I have her use a computerized typing course (Typing Tutor), so that she can type her weekly paper. Her grammar is generally correct; she can communicate on paper. She is learning how to think.

The lust for academic certification is what has placed the Christians under the domination of the humanists for nine centuries. How will we break the cycle? Christians make their children take high school biology. Why? So they can cut up frogs and learn Darwinism? They make them take high school chemistry. Why? So they can find out that hydrogen sulfide smells rotten? They make them take high school history. Why? So they can get the Enlightenment view of American history, which is what most of the high school textbooks teach?

All of this can be picked up in college by anyone who has mastered the King James Bible and calculus. It does no good to force a child to speak pigeon history, pigeon chemistry, and pigeon anything else at the expense of fluency in reading, writing, Bible, and mathematics. Yet Christian day schools and most home schools are tied to the state-approved curriculum. The "innovative" ones then add classical education. We compel our children to read the lies of Greece and Rome that led to the persecution of the early Church. Like kidnap victims, the early Church's apologists proclaimed the wisdom of their own kidnappers — what two decades ago was called Patty Hearst syndrome. That famous poster of Patty Hearst holding a machine gun during a bank robbery should be placed above the door of every Christian school headmaster whose school teaches classical education.

Sincerely,

U.S. Presidents on Christian Civilization

The Government of the Samoan Islands has sent an envoy, in the person of its secretary of state, to invite the Government of the United States to recognize and protect their independence, to establish commercial relations with their people, and to assist them in their steps toward regulated and responsible government. The inhabitants of these islands, having made considerable progress in Christian civilization and the development of trade, are doubtful of their ability to maintain peace and independence without the aid of some stronger power. The subject is deemed worthy of respectful attention, and the claims upon our assistance by this distant community will be carefully considered.
Rutherford B. Hayes: First Annual Message, December 3, 1877

The recommendations of this international conference of enlightened statesmen will doubtless have the considerate attention of Congress and its cooperation in the removal of unnecessary barriers to beneficial intercourse between the nations of America. But while the commercial results which it is hoped will follow this conference are worthy of pursuit and of the great interests they have excited, it is believed that the crowning benefit will be found in the better securities which may be devised for the maintenance of peace among all American nations and the settlement of all contentions by methods that a Christian civilization can approve.
Benjamin Harrison: First Annual Message, December 3, 1889

I have appealed against race discriminations as to civil rights and immunities, and have asked that law-abiding men of all creeds arid all colors should unite to discourage and to suppress lawlessness. Lynchings are a reproach to any community; they impeach the adequacy of our institutions for the punishment of crime; they brutalize the participants and shame our Christian civilization.
Benjamin Harrison: Letter to the Virginia State Baptist Convention on Lawlessness in the Southern States, May 21, 1892

The proposition of the Democratic platform is to turn over the islands as soon as a stable government is established. This has been established. The proposal then is in effect to turn them over at once. Such action will lead to ultimate chaos in the islands and the progress among the ignorant masses in education and better living will stop. We are engaged in the Philippines in a great missionary work that does our nation honor, and is certain to promote in a most effective way the influence of Christian civilization. It is cowardly to lay down the burden until our purpose is achieved.
William Howard Taft: Address Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination, July 28, 1908

The four hundredth anniversary of the printing of the first English Bible is an event of great significance. It challenges the reverent attention of English-speaking peoples the world over. To that day, October 4, 1535, when Myles Coverdale, an Augustinian Friar, later the Bishop of Exeter, produced this Book in the common vernacular, we trace not only a measurable increase in the cultural value and influence of this greatest of books, but a quickening in the widespread dissemination of those moral and spiritual precepts that have so greatly affected the progress of Christian civilization. The part that William Tyndale played in this English translation is generally acknowledged by the historian. It is also evident that there were others who made valuable contributions to the monumental undertaking. Independent of and apart from the devotion of these zealous translators, the work they did marks the beginning of one of the great epochs in the history of English-speaking peoples.

It would be difficult to appraise the far-reaching influence of this work and subsequent translations upon the speech, literature, moral and religious character of our people and their institutions. It has done much to refine and enrich our language. To it may be traced the richest and best we have in our literature. Poetry, prose, painting, music and oratory have had in it their guide and inspiration. In it Lincoln found the rounded euphonious phrases for his Gettysburg address. Speaking of its place in his life, he says: "In regard to the great Book, I have only to say, it is the best gift which God has ever given to man."

One cannot study the story of the rise and development of the men and women who have been and continue to be the pathfinders and benefactors of our people and not recognize the outstanding place the Bible has occupied as the guide and inspiration of their thought and practice. Apart from their professed allegiance to any particular form of Christian doctrine or creedal expression of faith, they have found in it that which has shaped their course and determined their action. Look where we will, even in periods that have been marked by apostasy and doubt, still men have found here in these sacred pages that which has refreshed and encouraged them as they prosecuted their pilgrimage and sought for higher levels of thinking and living.

In the formative days of the Republic the directing influence the Bible exercised upon the fathers of the Nation is conspicuously evident. To Washington it contained the sure and certain moral precepts that constituted the basis of his action. That which proceeded from it transcended all other books, however elevating their thought. To his astute mind moral and religious principles were the "indispensable supports" of political prosperity, the "essential pillars of civil society." Learned as Jefferson was in the best of the ancient philosophers, he turned to the Bible as the source of his higher thinking and reasoning. Speaking of the lofty teachings of the Master, he said: "He pushed His scrutinies into the heart of man; erected His tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head." Beyond this he held that the Bible contained the noblest ethical system the world has known. His own compilation of the selected portions of this Book, in what is known as "Jefferson's Bible," bears evidence of the profound reverence in which he held it.

Entirely apart from these citations of the place the Bible has occupied in the thought and philosophy of the good and the great, it is the veneration in which it has been and is held by vast numbers of our people that gives it its supreme place in our literature. No matter what the accidents and chances of life may bring in their train, no matter what the changing habits and fashions of the world may effect, this Book continues to hold its unchallenged place as the most loved, the most quoted and the most universally read and pondered of all the volumes which our libraries contain. It has withstood assaults, it has resisted and survived the most searching microscopic examination, it has stood every test that could be applied to it and yet it continues to' hold its supreme place as the Book of books. There have been periods when it has suffered stern and searching criticism, but the hottest flame has not destroyed its prevailing and persistent power. We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a Nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Its teaching, as has been wisely suggested, is ploughed into the very heart of the race. Where we have been truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity; where it has been to us as the words of a book that is sealed, we have faltered in our way, lost our range finders and found our progress checked. It is well that we observe this anniversary of the first publishing of our English Bible. The time is propitious to place a fresh emphasis upon its place and worth in the economy of our life as a people. As literature, as a book that contains a system of ethics, of moral and religious principles, it stands unique and alone. I commend its thoughtful and reverent reading to all our people. Its refining and elevating influence is indispensable to our most cherished hopes and ideals.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Statement on the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Printing of the English Bible, October 6, 1935

At the Pan American Conference at Buenos Aires, and again at Lima, we discussed a dim and unpleasant possibility. We feared that other Continents might become so involved in wars brought on by the school of destruction that the Americans might have to become the guardian of Western culture, the protector of Christian civilization.

The great achievements of science and even of art can be used in one way or another to destroy as well as to create; they are only instruments by which men try to do the things they most want to do. If death is desired, science can do that. If a full, rich, and useful life is sought, science can do that also. Happily for us that question has been solved—for in the New World we live for each other and in the service of a Christian faith.

I am a pacifist. You, my fellow citizens of twenty-one American Republics, are pacifists too.

But I believe that by overwhelming majorities in all the Americas you and I, in the long run if it be necessary, will act together to protect and defend by every means at our command our science, our culture, our American freedom and our civilization.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Radio Address Before the Eighth Pan American Scientific Congress. Washington, D.C., May 10, 1940

We have come to realize the greatest attack that has ever been launched against freedom of the individual is nearer the Americas than ever before. To meet that attack we must prepare beforehand—for the simple reason that preparing later may and probably would be too late.

We must prepare in a thousand ways. Men are not enough. They must have arms. They must learn how to use those arms. They must have skilled leaders—who, in turn, must be trained. New bases must be established and I think will be established to enable our fleet to defend our shores. Men and women must be taught to create the supplies that we need. And we must counter the agents of the dictators within our Nation.

There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends that the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we have and all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address at Dedication of Great Smoky Mountains National Park,  September 2, 1940

On this day—this American holiday- we are celebrating the rights of free laboring men and women.

The preservation of these rights is vitally important now, not only to us who enjoy them—but to the whole future of Christian civilization.

American labor now bears a tremendous responsibility in the winning of this most brutal, most terrible of all wars.

In our factories and shops and arsenals we are building weapons on a scale great in its magnitude. To all the battle fronts of this world these weapons are being dispatched, by day and by night, over the seas and through the air. And this Nation is now devising and developing new weapons of unprecedented power toward the maintenance of democracy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Labor Day Radio Address, September 1, 1941

I HAVE ASKED Mr. Myron C. Taylor to return to Italy as my personal representative to His Holiness the Pope, with the rank of Ambassador.

After the cessation of hostilities Mr. Taylor came home for consultation and report. I have studied his report of his several audiences with the Pope with interest and with profit. I feel that he can continue to render helpful service to the cause of Christian civilization if, at my instance from time to time, he resumes his duties in Italy. As on his previous trips Mr. Taylor will confer not only with the Pope but with other leaders in the spiritual world and in the world of politics and secular affairs as he travels through Europe in the fulfillment of his mission.

The cessation of active fighting has left the world in a state of unrest. In many quarters we witness lamentable conflicts of principle and policy. Out of all of this unrest and conflict, however, one conviction emerges as dear as the noonday. It is that we shall establish an enduring peace only if we build it upon Christian principles.
Harry S. Truman: Statement by the President Upon Reappointing Myron Taylor as His Personal Representative at the Vatican, May 3, 1946

I don't think that we should get too excited about these surpluses, until we approach that place of unusability, deterioration, and spoilage. Then it gets serious, because I believe now that we have a moral value involved. I just don't think it is right for the sweat and toil and resources of the United States to be thrown out in the middle of the ocean when someone else is starving.

Now, you say "all right, if it is not socialistic, it is based on a purely humanitarian thing"--and I believe George Kennan argues that humanitarian and moralistic values have no place in foreign relations. But after all, we do believe that we are a product and a representative of the Judaic-Christian civilization, and it does teach some concern for your brother. And I believe in that.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The President's News Conference, June 17, 1953

My friends:

We have come together in memory of an inspiring moment in history-that moment, 300 years ago, when a small band of Jewish people arrived on the ship "Saint Charles" in what was then the Dutch colony or state of New Amsterdam. It was an event meaningful not only to the Jews of America, but to all Americans--of all faiths, of all national origins....

In this respect--as in so many others--they were no different from scores of other groups that landed on our shores. Only 34 years earlier, another party had landed at Plymouth Rock. That group, too, came here in the hope of escaping persecution, of gaining religious freedom, of settling quietly in the wilderness to build their homes and rear their families.

And there was another noble concept of our common Judeo-Christian civilization shared by these two groups: the ideal of peace.

I recall that wonderful prophecy of Isaiah: "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

The pursuit of peace is at once our religious obligation and our national policy. Peace in freedom, where all men dwell in security, is the ideal toward which our foreign policy is directed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Address at the American Jewish Tercentenary Dinner, New York City, October 20, 1954

This is our power, and this our freedom. This is our future. And through this power—not drugs, not materialism nor any other "ism"—can we find brotherhood. And you can create the new Europe—a Europe democratic, a Europe united east and west, a Europe at long last completely free.

Now, we hear it said by some that Europe may be glum about her future, that Europe dares no more. Well, forgive me, but I think this kind of talk is nonsense. And I hope you think it's nonsense, too. It is you, Germany, and you, Europe, that gave the values and vitality of Judeo-Christian civilization to America and to the world. It is Europe that has known more tragedy and triumph than any place in history. Each time you suffered, you sprang back like giants—the giants, Adenauer and Schuman, Churchill and Monnet.
Ronald Reagan: Remarks to Citizens in Hambach, Federal Republic of Germany, May 6, 1985

Prime Minister Berlusconi. As President Bush has just mentioned, in Brussels, during the NATO meeting, I spoke, and then I spoke at Göteborg during the dinner that we shared. And I said that I was in agreement with what President Bush had said very clearly. The world scene has changed. There is no antagonism between Europe and the United States, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other hand. The Soviet Union is something different.

And we're very interested as Europeans with the support of the United States; we look to a progressive journey of the Russian Federation. Maybe tomorrow, the day after, the Russian Federation might even become part of the European federation, where we have countries that share a common Christian civilization. And I believe that in the future we will also be able to speak of a Russian Federation that becomes part of the Atlantic Alliance.
George W. Bush: The President's News Conference With Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy in Rome, Italy, July 23, 2001