Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-23-14

We approach the Fourth of July again. I am going to suggest we save a little time apart from our backyard barbecues, or town parades if your town still holds them. In addition to ketchup and mustard, add some of these patriotic condiments to your picnic fare; in addition to cheering the flag or the Boy Scout troop in the parade, cheer some of these quotations.

In fact, in addition to prayers, or the Pledge, at your gatherings – even if your family does not already exercise those traditions — draw together and exchange the quotations by our distinguished “guest bloggers” here. (And they are verified quotations, not those manufactured by well-intentioned patriots or challenged by Snopes and Urban Legend watchdogs.)

Long ago, a Frenchman visited the United States, toured the great cities and smallest towns, and came away astonished. Alexis deToqueville reportedly said, “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Our president has denigrated the term of current popularity, “American Exceptionalism.” He has said that he is sure every nation thinks of itself as exceptional. We can worry that his complete misunderstanding of that term reflects his complete misunderstanding of America. Americans are not exceptional by virtue of birth certificates or driver licenses. American farmers or American firefighters are not different, or “more exceptional,” than human beings anywhere doing their jobs honorably. Heroes are heroes. And American villains can be as villainous than any others.

“American Exceptionalism” refers to the American system. What “is” the USA? The first of nations, not to declare independence, but to enshrine Liberty. To acknowledge God in the foundational documents of its Declaration and Constitution. To be a nation of laws, not men. To be a Republic, not a Democracy: elevating individualism, under law, over institutions and governmental whims. To respect religion, and religious freedom, as vital components of our American system. In revolutionary fashion – yes, the first; exceptional in world history – to protect minority rights but guard against majority tyranny.

Here, our guest bloggers may remind Americans of things we might have forgotten, God forbid.

“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” George Washington, first Inaugural Address.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.” George Washington, Farewell Speech, 1796.

“I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning.” Benjamin Franklin, 1787, Constitutional Convention.

“I’ve lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this…” Benjamin Franklin.

“Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” John Adams.

“I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.” Alexander Hamilton.

“Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” John Jay, Constitutional framer, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

“[The Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests.” Andrew Jackson.

“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.” Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation Declaring the National Day of Fasting.

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Abraham Lincoln.

“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” United State Supreme Court, 1892.

“Ever throughout the ages, at all times and among all peoples, prosperity has been fraught with danger, and it behooves us to beseech the Giver of all things that we may not fall into love of ease and luxury; that we may not lose our sense of moral responsibility; that we may not forget our duty to God, and to our neighbor.… We are not threatened by foes from without. The foes from whom we should pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies; and against these there is always need that we should war.” Theodore Roosevelt.

“Can we resolve to reach, learn and try to heed the greatest message ever written, God’s Word, and the Holy Bible? Inside its pages lie all the answers to all the problems that man has ever known.” Ronald Reagan

These are exceptional credos. It would be an exceptional disaster if a free people would forget such an inheritance. Happy Fourth. GO forth.

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Many songs, many hymns, many patriotic airs could be the background music for this essay. “Faith of Our Fathers,” “Battle Hymn of the REPUBLIC,” many would be appropriate. But since I have quoted aphorisms of the past, I offer you a recent song about America a different-yet-similar rallying cry. “America First” by the poet of the common man, Merle Haggard.

Click: America First

6-23-14

A lot of Christians think about Heaven in the same way that agnostics sort of hope about the afterlife, and even as assorted Hottentots of the world’s pagan cults think about appeasing the gods. That is, that good deeds might earn the way to eternal life.

Just act nice, nothing more? Jesus didn’t believe it, and told us so. I have gotten to think about numbers – the numbers of times the Bible tells us that our hearts matter more to God than our deeds. The number of times Jesus and the apostles affirmed it. The number of good deeds we’d have to do to persuade God that unbelief doesn’t matter.

Numbers.

A big number, 2000. Two thousand years since Paul wrote: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Charities, nice; but they do not equal Heaven. If so, Jesus could have saved Himself some major grief. Or 500. Five hundred years since Christians rediscovered Ephesians 2:8,9 – “For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

Two thousand years, five hundred years, are a lot years to neglect when thinking about the Bible’s truths. Here are other numbers for Christians to think about. Forget good deeds like charities. Think about sins. We all sin. Yours might be small ones, but let’s count some.

Do you sin once a day? Think an impure thought, or hold onto an unforgiveness? Maybe a white lie? Share a little gossip? Don’t pray when you know you should? Fail to whisper a Christian blessing when someone needs it? Anything you don’t confess?

Let’s say you do any one of these things just once a day – which would make you a virtual saint among all the rest of us, but, anyway… that one sin a day makes for 365 a year. Over 10 years, that’s 3,650. If you have, say, 30 more years to live, that’s more than 10,000 sins.

On the other hand, if you commit these sins, even “little” sins, once an hour during your waking hours – still not an absurd standard – that’s a total of 160,00 sins. For 30 years. Let’s count starting at, say, age 12, and go until the statistical life expectancy of an American female, 82. That would add up to more than 400,000 sins. Careful: transgress a couple times an hour, and you’ll wind up a millionaire… in the sinner’s lottery.

Viewed in that statistical perspective, you’d need a lot of good deeds, a pile of charity receipts, to face eternity fearlessly, right? Well the good news – the Good News – is, we don’t have to pile up numbers of this OR that on scales of justice. Not about this. Confess with your mouth, believe in your heart.

But let’s not put the math books away yet. It is human nature to think we must do good deeds… and don’t get me, or the scriptures, wrong: We SHOULD. And we DO. When Jesus lives in our hearts, we want to do good, we cannot hold back from taking joy in good deeds. Charity becomes our response, not our “meal ticket”!

Final numbers-crunching, for those who want to: on the general basis of the mathematics above:

In your waking hours, each day, you have approximately 250 opportunities to do those good deeds – kind thoughts, helping hands, reassuring words. That’s if you show charity only every five minutes. That’s 1,750 times a week.

Expand those “good deeds” plus the time-frame: if you raise your children aright, if you pray with a hurting soul, if you seek God when He wants to talk to your spirit – added to the others, at the same pace, would approach 100,000 chances to do “good deeds” every year.

You see it coming, math wizards: Live a normal lifespan, have the love of Jesus in your heart, do good deeds because obedient and joyful Christians are good-deed-doers… and your are in the neighborhood of 7-million acts of love. The root meaning of “charity,” they’ll tell you in other classrooms, is “love.”

So, you do the arithmetic. Count the acts of charity, planning for the payoff. Or lose count of the acts of love, knowing you’re already “home,” knowing “all these things shall be added unto you.” We don’t love because we have to. That’s not love! When we act charitably from the overflow of our hearts, God’s showers of blessing will follow.

Numbers. Did you ever count the number of raindrops in a Spring shower? Not too easy, not too practical, not possible! Yet God’s response to our acts of love will be “showers of blessing” – oh, for the showers we plead!

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Speaking of numbers, and “showers of blessing,” here is a choir from churches in Chennai (formerly Madras), Tamil Nadu, India, singing an old favorite, and reassuring, hymn.

Click: Showers of Blessing

6-16-14

The Pledge of Allegiance added the phrase “under God” in 1954, on Flag Day – 60 years ago this week. So Happy Birthday… not to God, but to the phrase. Its inclusion has been a matter of some discussion since it was appended.

Theodore Roosevelt was criticized during his presidency for wanting to take “In God We Trust” off American currency. This seems counterintuitive about the man I have elsewhere called possibly the most observant if not the most intensely Christian of our presidents. One of his missions was to reform and beautify American coinage, and his friend Augustus St-Gaudens in fact designed the most impressive coins in our history, the $20 “Double Eagle” gold piece, and the $10 “Indian Head” gold eagle.

Why did TR want “In God We Trust” off our coinage? In fact, he considered it irreverent, making a cheap slogan of a sacred matter. He said he was witness, in his rancher days in the Bad Lands, to cowboys in saloons citing it coarsely; “In God we trust – all others pay cash,” and so forth. “My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege,” he wrote.

“It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in buildings such as those at West Point and Annapolis – in short, wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.”

His view did not prevail; an aroused public and Congress overcame his objection. A similar groundswell of popular support added “under God” to the Pledge 60 years ago. Anent both matters, debates have not merely continued but intensified of late.

I am generally of the Theodore Roosevelt school regarding the nation’s confirmation of belief on public buildings, monuments, courtrooms, and legislative halls. It is a matter as much of tradition as of faith. Commonly, societies tend to codify their basic tenets by such means – dispositive acts like public prayers, and displays of the Decalogue in public squares. I understand TR’s disinclination to have a sacred concept coarsened – but I would take that chance, trusting to peoples’ eventual conviction. And simply asserting universal, foundational, shared beliefs. After all, dumb jokes are occasionally made about “e pluribus unum.”

Further, myself, I would proceed on such matters to avow in every pertinent manner that the United States were settled as Christian communities; that Founders and Framers alike cited biblical principles and reliance on God; that the Supreme Court formally declared the United States of America a “Christian country.” This is no knock on Jews or Muslims or atheists, who are guaranteed every legal right the majority enjoys. But if I moved to Israel, I would never think of agitating, say, to have the Star of David removed the nation’s flag because I would be “offended” as a minority. If I moved to an Islamic society I would be embarrassed to attempt to eliminate Muslim symbols, traditions, and observances, simply because I as a newcomer had a pulse and “feelings.”

But… genii are out of the bottles in America. So debates rage, Christians are on the defensive, and traditions are upended. I believe this is due as much to the moral lassitude of Christians as to the aggressive pursuits of rampaging lawyers. Shame on us.

It has become easier to insist on the retention of slogans on currency, phrases in pledges, and crosses in cemeteries, than to be bloodied in the dusty arena of ideas. Ultimately, the real, burning question for Christians in 2014 is this: what exactly are we defending in these debates? What in hell – I choose my words carefully – are we really supporting in contemporary America?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have we allowed a runaway government to be our primary source of security in life? Why not God? Why not each other? Why not ourselves?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have we, as a culture, turned from biblical ways of finding comfort in God, and bowed to drugs, drink, decadent entertainment, and false gods of pleasure?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then how has America suddenly transformed itself from a traditionalist society of manners and morals to a country awash in abortions, addictions, physical abuse, divorce, illegitimate births, and myriad sexually transmitted diseases?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have traditional expressions of faith been banished in favor of secular concepts and moral relativism? Legislators and judges sit in halls with “In God We Trust” on their walls, and open their sessions with prayer – yet day by day, now, they mock that very pledge. In hypocrisy we trust.

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? As a people? Then why do our movies, TV shows, pop-music lyrics, literature, graphic novels, political discourse, judicial decisions, and bureaucratic rules dedicate themselves to be, not “neutral,” but hostile, toward God and His Revealed Word?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? America is America – the essence of the misunderstood term “Exceptionalism” – because a diverse group of peoples came here through the centuries, disparate in uncountable ways, but spiritually unified, somehow: United, before the fact, in trusting God, being suspicious of authority, loving liberty, embracing tradition, reliant on selves, and therefore – yes, part of American Exceptionalism too – loving their neighbors.

Is the next chapter of the American story to be entitled, “In God We Once Trusted”?

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Since we are discussing traditions, our musical video for this message is “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” an old hymn sung here in Sacred Harp fashion. This is a purely American musical expression that took root centuries ago in rural areas and the South, where instruments and musical literacy alike were once scarce. The hymns were sung a capella; out of books with “shape notes”; often sung with the musical terms Do, Re Me Fa, So, La, Ti, Do corresponding to the notes; then followed by lyrics of the hymns; singers arranged in a square, with a leader in the “hollow”; forceful vocals (a euphemism for joyously loud!); emphasis on four-part harmony; arm gestures that emphasized the rhythm; often, strong foot-tapping to carry the beat; a large number of standard hymns in the songbooks, often identified by their numbers instead of titles or first lines.

These exuberant, evangelical, exhortations almost died out until recently. Now they are being revived in churches and – God works in mysterious ways – in secular shape-note and Sacred Harp groups in the North, in urban centers, among (not yet) religious singers, singing conventions, and in more than a few European communities too. Here, an amateur video at Mount Pisgah Primitive Baptist Church in Stroud, Alabama, few years ago.

Click: Nearer, My God, To Thee

6-9-14

Anniversaries, as the root of the word implies, are annual observances, but some years are more significant than others. D-Day, just commemorated 70 years after the invasion, attracted a little more consideration than usual this year because of its “big, round” number, just as its 75th anniversary will elicit even more attention. This is never a bad thing: we humans occasionally need a kick in the awareness.

In spite of my intense research as a history buff, I can appreciate D-Day only vicariously. My father was part of the invasion force – ‘way above it. A member of the US Army Air Force’s weather team – technically, Detachment 113, 18th Weather Squadron, 8th Air Force, which routinely performed weather reconnaissance during daylight, and dropped “leaflet bombs” (propaganda literature) at night – his planes scouted weather conditions before the invasion and overflew Normandy, monitoring, during the assault.

He talked very little, actually, about D-Day, and firmly declined any plaudits. Although planes were lost in air fights or accidents, he said he was seldom in harm’s way. The hardest part of the war, to him, was counting his buddies who never returned, and noting the fewer number of planes that returned from every mission. Compared to the soldiers who landed on Normandy’s beaches and scaled those heights.

Dad never glorified war. He always said that most of the “heroes” who spent their lives boasting of their actions probably were no-names in the action; the heroes he knew who went through hell and back seldom bragged about those experiences. He characterized D-Day as the biggest suicide mission in history. The soldiers in that invasion force mostly all knew that it was a Mission of Attrition.

The only way to breach that booby-trapped shoreline, advance along the bullet-riddled beaches, and scale the nearly impregnable heights, was to climb over and crawl past the dead and wounded who preceded you, wave after wave. The soldiers didn’t land on Normandy’s beaches as much to kill, but to be killed. Men knew that. Men did that.

In dwindling numbers now, the veterans – the Boys of Pointe du Hoc, Ronald Reagan called them – return and reminisce; they embrace each other and former enemies of the horrific crucible; they celebrate survival and, at D-Day reunions in France or at home, keep their misted eyes focused on the middle-distance of life’s random challenges and blessings.

Remembering those boys, these men, reminds us also of the nearby anniversary of another holiday – Father’s Day – the “other D Day”… D for Dads.

There was a generation of men who sacrificed, or were willing to, more than their bodies. They sacrificed careers and relationships and many other things to fight in World War II. However, every generation demands some sort of sacrifice. I have always dissented from Tom Brokaw’s appellation “The Greatest Generation.” To me, the remarkable thing about the men (and women) who endured and triumphed through Depression and World War was not that they were especially “great,” but that they were ordinary. That is: America produced a generation of ordinary, average citizens whose ordinary, average habits were to suck it up, meet challenges, overcome obstacles, not complain, “make do,” sacrifice, and report for duty in the battles of life.

Can we have a discussion about whether THAT America still exists?

In the meantime, we should similarly recognize, especially on Father’s Day, the other D Day; that our dads should not be honored because random accidents of genes made us their children; or that they should be honored in accordance with their worldly success, or big salaries, or fame, or newsworthy accomplishments they might have accumulated.

Let us remember our dads for the little and “unremarkable” things. For in countless modest examples or quiet words do we find the building-blocks of the lives of children. Through unconscious revelations of character, dads influence the moral growth of their children. And when we children absorb, often subliminally, the creditable acts of fathers in good times and bad, we are nourished in our souls as surely as dads, “putting food on the table,” have nourished our physical maturation.

Heroics can take many forms, but godly dads, providing solid examples, sustaining sacrifices for their children, and positively nurturing the next generation, are heroes no less than the Boys of Pointe du Hoc.

In my youth I went through a brief period of wiseacre agnosticism. Before I left for college, I shared this with my father, wanting him to know that I arrived at these ideas on my own, and not to blame it on “college life” afterwards. “It’s a stage,” he replied. “You’ll grow out of it.”

I resented that response at the time, and subsequently. Wasn’t his faith strong enough to confront my arguments? Didn’t he care about my salvation? Years later, I asked him about this. He said, “You were raised well. You know the Bible. You never left church after Confirmation like your friends did. Everyone doubts just about every THING at that age. But I trusted you.”

“I trust you.” I realized that I HAD received that implied message, internally. Dads should be fathers to children, not to robots. And the wisdom of those few sentences to me was not of the moment, but made possible by a lifetime of quality rearing, good examples, godly wisdom, and appreciating a role model. My Dad.

Yesterday’s hero… a soldier… but I remember not in a uniform beyond bedroom slippers, and smoking a pipe, talking with his son, for uncountable evenings on innumerable subjects, bringing me, this week, to an emotional celebration of the “other” D Day.

Rick (left), his Dad (right) around 1968. The figures in the middle are unidentified…

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Not exactly cosmic convergence, but with D-Day and Fathers Day only a week apart, we are reminded of the role of dads, the heroes of our families’ battles. “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers…” Malachi 4:6.

Click: Seeing My Father in Me

6-2-14

Schools, public schools anyway, these days are de-emphasizing the standards of the past, the values of our culture, the traditionally cherished aspects of our American heritage. Progressives do it; conservatives decry it; and the vast center of society is populated by folks who largely are intimidated, confused, defensive… or guiltily change their views about once-cherished “foundational” beliefs.

People try to be open-minded, and are frequently made to feel at fault if they are not sufficiently “compassionate.” Or they are branded as racists or bigots when such feelings had never been part of their thoughts. Or they feel forced to confront, and accept, all forms of social deviancies or political abnormalities that, privately, are anathema to that Great Middle of every culture.

Sometimes, one’s mind can be so open that one’s brains fall out.

Ours is a society that is experiencing relatively sudden, and seismic, changes to manners, morals, and traditional, foundational beliefs. Throughout history such philosophical dislocations are usually signs of cultures in decline. Decadence comes to all civilizations; it is merely a matter of when… not how.

No matter how much a society thinks it has discovered new truths that applied to all previous societies but not them – in matters of morality, public virtue, family structure, respect for authority, encouragement of spiritual values – it is a certain template that one civilization’s moral “liberation” is coldly recognized, after its inevitable fall, by future generations, as common decadence.

I began by criticizing public schools, but that was to note that such institutions merely codify what the society believes. Our children would not have lost their moorings if we had not loosed the ropes to the mother ships. And, with the kids, if it were not schoolbooks – let’s say we turn to home-schooling – they see the rotten movies from Hollywood. If not there, it’s television; if not there, the musical culture that is everywhere; if not there, the advertising in magazines; if not there, the displays in shops at the mall; if not there, the conversations they overhear on the street, and the drugs they will be offered; if not there, the unavoidable trash on the internet; if not there, the corruption of politicians and execrable news stories; if not there, the dictates of bureaucrats and decisions of judges.

And so forth. With such a blueprint of shame, we can scarcely blame children who go astray. Rather we should pity them, and rescue them.

And, by the way, note that all the attacks I have just listed are self-inflicted. Our Christian culture has foreign enemies, but we can only be defeated from within. And… it is happening.

The first rescue attempt, if we wake up some Monday morning with cleansed hearts, stiffened spines, and firm resolution, would be to reform the rotten culture that we as adults serve up to our children. It is our creation, and our parents’ – the “finest generation”? – because the earlier challenges of society were routine problems of human nature… until our contemporary downward spiral began. Seldom, once again looking at the sweep of human history, seldom has a culture disintegrated so quickly as ours.

It is as if society is playing on a virtual football field… but in this 21st-century game of life, there are no boundaries on either side of the field; no yardline-markers; no goal posts – because we no longer have goals, and we deride competitiveness – and no rule books, referees, or time-limits.

The virtual “game of life” in Western culture sees us scurrying around, making and breaking rules, committing infractions and ignoring penalties, dismissing the concept of teammates, craving the approval of the crowd, hogging the ball or throwing it away carelessly, and believing that we have invented the greatest game in the world.

If this analogy is apt, then we must go at least one step further, and consider that the Western Church, the Church in America, has failed even more so. It had been the foundation of our civilization; the builders’ plan of our democratic republic, the American Experiment. And, in stark truth, it is not the Church itself (in biblical parlance) that has failed: for the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.

The American Church has not failed. But its leaders have.

Like the chaotic football game I described, significant segments of the church today are aimless, self-centered, denying rules and traditions, inventing playbooks as they go along, discouraging the belief in goals or individual progress, focusing on ticket sales and the roars of the crowd, and declaring that there are no such things as rules, infractions, or penalties.

It is an ugly game – not, of course, a game at all. The Church in America, the American establishment, and too many families, are proving the adage that when you believe in everything (that is, what is pleasing and convenient for the individual, at any moment)… YOU BELIEVE IN NOTHING.

Will we wake up that theoretical Monday morning with clear heads and restored hearts? My guess is no, but there are always surprises. On a societal level, masses in Europe seem to be awakening to the attacks on Western heritage, and asserting borders, language, and culture in their voting booths. On the spiritual front, I am heartened by the explosive growth in Christian belief, both evangelical and Pentecostal, south of the Equator. And, more, that Africa and South America are sending many missionaries to Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and the US — lands these new believers see as “mission fields” needing to hear the gospel.

Our playing-fields might again paint yardline markers, and erect goal posts, yet. Let us dream. Let us work. Let us pray.

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The way things are now, do you ever feel that you don’t belong? “The Sojourner’s Song” opens with, “It’s not home, Where men sell their souls And the taste of power is sweet. Where wrong is right, And neighbors fight, While the hungry are dying in the street. Where kids are abused, And women are used, And the weak are crushed by the strong. Nations gone mad; Jesus is sad; And I don’t belong…” This short music vid from a church service contains a few more sobering words… and then glorious hopeful ones. Watch:

Click: I Don’t Belong (Sojourner’s Song)

2-17-14

When searching for a music video for this blog essay, I surfed through YouTube as per usual. More and more there are commercials, at least for first-time clickers of a link, lasting anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. Some must be endured, some can be clicked off. A fact of internet life. This week, intending to write about Presidents’ Day and the Christian beliefs of our presidents, as I am wont, I was struck by the common theme of the advertising pop ups.

Presidents’ Day – that is, Presidents’ Day mattress sales. The $5-bill face of Abraham Lincoln with moving lips, reminding us of Two-For-One sales. An animated George Washington saying, “I cannot tell a lie. I am CHOPPING prices this Monday!”

It is odious enough that the American culture effectively stopped honoring great men like Lincoln (whose birthday was February 12) and Washington (February 22). It is offensive enough that nonentities and shady characters who held the presidential office for a season are elevated to equal status with Lincoln and Washington by the invention of a vacuum-cleaner holiday like Presidents’ Day. It is depressing that America, at a point when we should be mature as a civic society, has descended to such base materialism.

Patriotic displays largely have withered and died in the public square. Prayers have disappeared from schools and civic events. Politicians seem more grasping than ever. There are exceptions, but these things mostly are true. People wear flags as apparel decorations, and stick them to bumpers, but how many people, even of such patriotic extroversion, can name the presidents of the United States, in order, or the Bill of Rights so frequently invoked?

I have been reading a book, “The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor,” by Rear Adm. Robert A Theobald. It details the impossible diplomatic position the United States put Japan in during the months leading to Pearl Harbor, with the intent of inviting an attack by the Japanese; the purposeful failure to alert US commanders of the imminent attack; the scapegoating of Naval and Army personnel after 3300 lives were lost; the reason for the machinations – an obsession to enter a war against Germany, Japan’s ally, and to save Great Britain. This was at a time when American public opinion was overwhelmingly against participation in any foreign war. Franklin Roosevelt unilaterally skirted Congress and committed arms, bases, ships, and diplomacy to one side of a foreign conflict. Germany didn’t take the bait; Japan did.

It matters little whether FDR was betting on the right side of history. He could have proceeded honestly and openly to persuade the American people. That he did not might cast him as a war criminal. Other presidents have lied, betrayed the trust of their people, and occasionally spent lives and fortunes unwisely.

I state these facts to say that I don’t think US presidents all deserve halos. Even the greatest have clay feet. Not all were well-intentioned.

But many had sterling intentions. In this polyglot nation of immigrants we have produced a class whose ranks are generally above any average group we can assemble. The Framers were a remarkable assembly whose faith, maturity, and foresights was extraordinary. We have been blessed. As Theodore Roosevelt said, in Abraham Lincoln we had a man whose greatness was due to his goodness. Theodore Roosevelt himself was the most accomplished, intelligent, well-prepared, visionary, and… religiously observant of our presidents.

On this last aspect we discover the major difference – perhaps the diving-line – between exceptional and ordinary presidents; between the old America and the new. We are told that Washington’s circle was comprised of Deists; yet his famous prayer, the injunctions to pray by Franklin, the language of the Declaration and Constitution, prove to us that these men knew, and feared, God.

We are told that Lincoln seldom attended church. Yet we can read in the notes of his associates, in his letters, in his speeches, an evolving awareness of God – and a reliance, a summons, a sharing of biblical principles – in the last two years of his life. His last speeches, his Second Inaugural, read like sermons.

And Theodore Roosevelt became an editor of a weekly Christian magazine when he left the White House. He titled two of his books after Bible verses. He made impromptu speeches for five nights at a prominent seminary. He wrote an article for Ladies Home Journal about why men should go to church. This irrepressible personality quietly, but largely, lived his faith.

Are these days past? Do giants still walk amongst us, in American civic life?

Most of the faces on our currency consists of presidents of the past. Since Presidents’ Day has been distorted and perverted to be a glorification of sales and commerce, it might be appropriate that the currency that is King for a Day on the third Monday of February is nicknamed “Dead Presidents.”

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I have chosen a song that goes ‘way back in the American heritage for the music video with this essay. No message, but, as we have recalled Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt of an earlier, and greater, time in America, a moment of nostalgia for the time when American held promise. “Oh, Shenandoah” is an old folk tune about the pioneer’s relentless move westward, remembering the Shenandoah Valley, and determining to “cross the wide Missouri” River. This is a remarkable “virtual” duet with the legendary Tennessee Ernie Ford and Sissel Kyrkjebo, the stunning Norwegian soprano. With members of the Chieftans. Click the YouTube button if prompted.

Click: Oh, Shenandoah