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HISTORY: unwrapped – April 2008

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April 30, 2008 – Get Out the Vote

During the 1600s in colonial America, Massachusetts required property ownership in order to vote. A potential voter also had to prove that he was “sober and peaceable” and “orthodox in the fundamentals of religion.” Connecticut required church membership. Rhode Island permitted only professing Christians. Landholders could vote in New York, but Pennsylvania required voters to believe in Jesus Christ and own property. Free white men who owned their homes could vote in Virginia. Quakers could not vote in Massachusetts, and Baptists were barred in several colonies. Roman Catholics and Jews were disfranchised in many others. Blacks and women could not vote at all. Nearly every American citizen has the right to vote today and should take the opportunity to exercise this freedom given to us by the framers of our Constitution.

April 29, 2008 – Jesus Out West

When we read about religion in America, most of the attention is placed on the earliest period of settlement—beginning with Jamestown in 1607—and limited to the original 13 colonies. While credit for the settlement of the West “has been given to trappers, explorers, miners, the military, homesteaders and even gunslingers,” history textbooks are nearly silent on the role religion played. Christian History magazine states, “Though history has all but forgotten them, it was Christian preachers and teachers who really tamed the West.” The language used to describe western expansion carried with it religious descriptions such as the “promised land” or “Eden before the fall.” Discovery of gold in California was viewed as a “sign of divine favor.” All of this helps to put journalist Louis O’Sullivan’s words in perspective: “The American claim is by right of our manifest destiny to overspread and possess the whole of the continent, which Providence has given us.” Christianity was not the only religion to make its way west. Of course, there was an indigenous native religion. Led by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had settlements in the western frontier before Protestants settled in New England. Historian Ferenc Morton Szasz of the University of New Mexico writes: “The west had no institutions per se—the churches provided the institutions: the hospitals, schools, orphanages, old-age homes and colleges. The state would eventually take them over but at the start, it was the churches. The railroads donated land to the churches because churches meant stability.” Sam Houston’s wife Margaret led him to Christ in 1854. When a friend asked if the baptism he received at Rocky Creek had washed his sins away, Houston said, “I hope so. But if they were all washed away, the Lord help the fish down below.”

April 28, 2008 – The Origin of Computer 'Bugs'

The first computer filled an 1800-square-foot room and weighed thirty tons. The ENIAC was built in 1947 for $500,000. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. When turned on, its power consumption caused the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts. The on/off switching was accomplished with manual relays with flat metal surfaces to insure contact. In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator, a primitive computer by today’s standards, when the machine experienced a problem. An investigation showed that a moth had been trapped between the points of a relay. The moth acted as an insulator stopping the flow of electricity. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log book. The entry read: “First actual case of bug being found.” The word went out that the computer had been “debugged.” The term “debugging a computer program” was born. Today, debugging refers to lines of electronic code that acts as the brain of the computer.

April 25, 2008 – America's First Celebrity

“I was honored with having a few stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me.” In spite of these distractions, George Whitefield continued to preach for three hours. He had the most recognizable name in America, drawing thousands of listeners wherever he preached. Brutal mobs sometimes attacked Whitefield and his followers, and once he was stoned until nearly dead. He preached in fields rather than churches and even without amplification, could be heard by 30,000 or more. He pushed himself so hard and preached with such intensity, that afterward he often became ill. After preaching at Harvard it was reported that “The College is entirely changed. The students are full of God.” Praised as “the greatest preacher that England has ever produced,” George Whitefield lived each day doing what God had called him to do.

April 24, 2008 – Deism and the Founding Fathers

The belief in a Creator-God who is not personal and does not react with his creation was quite fashionable around the time of the War for Independence—but not nearly so fashionable as we have been told.  Many historians claim that the Founding Fathers were not Christians, but Deists.  Deists believed in a “God” who created all things but does not intervene in the workings of His creation.  Most of the Founding Fathers who are said to have been Deists were really what would later be called Unitarians. Unitarians, like Christians, believed in a “God” who both created all things and rules all things by His divine providence.  Like Deists, however, Unitarians denied the Trinity: denied that Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, and denied that the Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Trinity.

It is true that Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and George Washington did dabble in Deism to varying degrees.  Franklin and Jefferson were what would later be called Unitarians, and John Adams later became a Unitarian. (Jefferson, of course, had no part in the framing or ratification of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.) But most of these men thought and acted fairly consistently within a Christian worldview. Their view of man’s sinfulness and of the proper God-ordained role of government generally followed the Bible. Moreover, as historian M.E. Bradford discovered (to his surprise), very few of the statesmen who gave us our independence, the Articles of Confederation, and Constitution were Deists or Unitarians.  At least fifty-one, and probably fifty-three of the framers of the Constitution, and a similar proportion of the leaders of the state ratification conventions, were Christians, not Deists or Unitarians.

April 23, 2008 – Shakespeare and the End of America

Some people believe that the translators of the King James Bible asked William Shakespeare (1564–1616) to help them put at least some of the Psalms into English verse. There does not seem to be hard empirical evidence to support the theory, but staunch believers think that Shakespeare left a hidden clue, a signature of sorts, in Psalm 46. Look at a KJV version of the psalm. Count 46 words from the beginning. Then count 46 words from the end. (Do not count the “Selahs.”) What do you come up with? “Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof” (46:3). . . . He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire” (46:9). Did you know that in 1611, the year the King James Bible was completed, Shakespeare would have been 46 years old? This brings us to the latest end-time prophecy, this time by an Islamic scholar who claims that America will be destroyed by a tsunami in 2007. By counting verses in the Koran, he contends that America has a lifespan of only 231 years. “Silwadi said that by combing a number of suras hinting at US sins he reached the numbers 1776 (the year the US achieved independence) and 231. He added the two numbers and the result was 2007, the year when the US is expected to disappear.” I suspect that with enough imagination the Bible can be made to say anything, and the Koran too. If William Shakespeare can be found in a Psalm, then maybe an American Armageddon can be found in a sura.

April 22, 2008 - Explorer Finally Receives Recognition

Henry Hudson’s voyage came to be regarded as the start of European exploration of New York, but 85 years earlier, Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed into New York Bay. Born and educated in Italy, Verrazzano moved to France where the king provided two ships for the Italian explorer to discover the westward passage to Asia. In 1524, he arrived off the coast of North Carolina and continued northward. He was the first European explorer to name North American discoveries after people and places in the Old World. Verrazzano was raised from obscurity by the Italian Historical Society of America during the 1950s and 60s. Through the Society’s efforts, a number of landmarks have been named for Verrazzano, including a bridge and a ferry.

April 21, 2008 – Guano Wars

The word “guano” is a South American term meaning bird or bat droppings. The Incas valued guano as a fertilizer before Columbus, but it took the rest of the world until 1840. President Fillmore addressed the issue in his first State of the Union Address by saying it was the government’s duty to do use its power to import guano at a reasonable price. The frenzy for control of the guano trade became intense and led to the Guano War of 1865-1866, involving Spain, Peru, and Chile. The US Navy also fought a battle with Peru for the guano and claimed over 50 islands in the Pacific and Caribbean using the Guano Islands Act. By 1900 the guano deposits were depleted and replaced with chemical fertilizers but not before many had made fortunes in bird droppings.

April 18, 2008 – Hoover's Dam

Hoover Dam was named after President Herbert Hoover who was instrumental in its construction. This marvel of engineering began in 1931 and was completed two years ahead of schedule in 1936. Hardhats made of two baseball caps dipped in tar and allowed to harden were used for the first time. A surveyor was one of the first people to die in the dam’s construction. The son of the surveyor was the last person to die thirteen years to the day of his father’s death. When Franklin Roosevelt defeated Hoover in the 1932 presidential election, his Secretary of the Interior removed Hoover’s name from the project and unofficially renamed it Boulder Dam. After Roosevelt’s death, Congress restored the name Hoover Dam. Amazingly, the concrete used in construction of the National Historical Landmark is still curing and gaining strength every day.

April 17, 2008 – The Fugitive Translator

If England were ever to be evangelized, William Tyndale was convinced that it would take place only if people could read the Bible in their own language. His efforts to get permission to translate Scripture failed, so Tyndale left England. He settled in Antwerp where he worked translating the Bible. When his English Bibles were smuggled into England, Tyndale became a hunted man. For seven years Tyndale eluded his pursuers who eventually tracked him down. At his trial, Tyndale was condemned to die. But the story does not end there. After his death, the king was presented with one of Tyndale’s New Testaments and he proclaimed without realizing the translation’s source, “In God’s name let it go abroad among the people.” Two years later, every church in England displayed one book of the whole Bible in English as directed by the king.

April 16, 2008 – The Poisonous Sock

When President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly of heart disease on August 2, 1923, Vice-President Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as President of the United States. Before long, rumors began to spread that Harding had been poisoned, either by his own hand or by that of his vindictive wife. Within a year, a less sinister but equally bizarre poisoning rumor would attach itself to a tragic death in the Coolidge family as well.

Coolidge's two sons set out to play tennis on the White House tennis court. 16-year-old Calvin Jr. wore tennis shoes but no socks. Young Calvin's sockless exertions raised a blister on one of his toes, which soon became infected. The modern antibiotics that would quickly clear up such an infection today did not exist in 1924. By the time White House physicians were summoned to treat Calvin Jr., it was too late — he died of pathogenic blood poisoning a week later. Before long, a rumor began circulating that Calvin Jr.'s death was caused by the dye from his black socks entering his bloodstream through a cut and poisoning him. The public knew that whatever killed Calvin had something to do with a wound on his foot and blood poisoning, so perhaps the sock rumor got started because it seemed like a logical explanation to those who were not privy to the details of his injury. The rumor certainly seemed plausible because some of the coloring agents commonly used back then to give socks their color did often cause serious inflammations when the unabsorbed chemicals came into contact with a wearer’s skin.

April 15, 2008– King of the Wild Frontier

A number of celebrities and lesser knowns threatened (promised?) to leave the United States if George W. Bush was reelected president in 2004. But before Bush, there was Martin Van Buren, and before today’s political malcontents, there was Davy Crockett (1786–1836), “king of the wild frontier” as the popular 1955 politically incorrect “Ballad of Davy Crockett” described him. In a letter written to Charles Shultz dated December 25, 1834, Crockett complains about Andrew Jackson’s influence over American voters. He describes them as “Volunteer Slaves” and declares his plan to leave the United States and move to Texas if Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s vice-president, is elected to office.

The western and southern men dare not to sustain Jackson in his mad Caesar [like rages], and when they refuse all the blood in the nation will be let loose on them.

The time has come that virtue is expected to be transferable and as negotiable and a promissory note of hand in these days of glory and Jackson and reform &c. Little Van [Martin van Buren] sits in his chair and looks as sly as a red fox, and I have no doubt but that he thinks Andrew Jackson has full power to transfer the people of these United States at his will and I am afraid that a majority of free Citizens will submit to it and Say amen. Jackson done it, it is right. If we judge by the past, we can reach no other calculations.

I have almost given up the ship as lost. I have gone so far as to declare that if Martin Van Buren is elected that I will leave the United States, for I never will live under his Kingdom. Before I will submit to his government, I will go to the Wilds of Texas. I will consider that government a Paradise to what this government will be. I never will submit to his government. In fact, at this time our Republican Government has dwindled almost into insignificance. Our boasted land of liberty has almost bowed to the yoke of bondage. Our happy days of Republican principles are near at an end when a few is to transfer the many. These are Van Buren principles. There are more slaves in New York and Pennsylvania than there are in Virginia and South Carolina and they are the meanest kind of slaves there are—Volunteer Slaves. [At least] our Southern slaves are of some use to their owner.

Van Buren won, and Davy Crockett moved to Texas and fought and died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. His tombstone reads: “Davy Crockett, Pioneer, Patriot, Soldier, Trapper, Explorer, State Legislator, Congressman, Martyred at The Alamo. 1786–1836.” Unlike today’s political malcontents, Crockett did what he said he would do. He followed the dictates of his own motto: “Be Sure You’re Right, and Then Go Ahead.”

April 11, 2008 – Up, Up, and Away

The idea of using balloons for transportation had always intrigued George Washington from the time of the first manned flight in Paris in 1783. When the greatest of the aeronauts, Jean Pierre Blanchard, crossed the Atlantic to give a demonstration, Washington was present. The site chosen for the lift-off was the Walnut Street Prison courtyard in Philadelphia, the nation’s capital at the time. Arriving at 9:00 A.M., Washington presented Blanchard with a passport he himself had signed. Not knowing how far the balloonist might travel, Washington had thoughtfully prepared a passport, just in case. It would seem that the nation’s president had high hopes for Blanchard’s flight.

When the 46-minute flight ended in New Jersey, 15 miles away, Blanchard was met by two astonished farmers, one carrying a gun! Blanchard, who didn’t understand English, waved the paper with the presidential signature and produced a bottle of spirits. Fortunately for Blanchard, his actions lessened the tension, and he was given a warm reception and passage back to Philadelphia. The balloonist presented Washington with the first flag literally to fly over U.S. soil.

April 10, 2008 – Those Terrible Vikings

The Vikings attacked and plundered because of envy—they wanted what their victims had. They believed that they did not have as much as others because their gods were not as powerful. This envy led to the introduction of Christianity into the Viking world. It was a time when groups of people converted together with their leaders. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ that resulted from a changed heart was a nonexistent concept. In the Viking’s world, the god to worship was often decided by the man left standing. There is debate over whether or not people believed the world was going to end at the close of the first millennium. There is little doubt that for Scandinavia, the end of the world as the Vikings knew it actually happened. Their pagan way of life ended and was replaced with a new Christian world.

April 9, 2008 – Christianity & the Civil War

The impact of religion on those who fought in the Civil War is often ignored. When the United States erupted into civil war, religion became a major force on both sides. In the early stages, most soldiers gave little thought to religion. As the war dragged on, massive revival broke out among the soldiers in the North and South. Soldiers gathered around campfires at night to participate in the revivals. Thousands and thousands of converts was the result. Overwhelmed by the gravity of the military task before them, veterans sought support in religion. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson set aside days for fasting, prayer, and repentance. The Confederate constitution—unlike that of the United States—distinctly recognized the nation’s dependence upon God. The war took the lives of thousands, but untold thousands gained a new life in Christ.

April 8, 2008 – Religion, Politics & Thomas Jefferson

Early in his campaign for president, Thomas Jefferson was accused of being an atheist by many prominent clergymen. One of Jefferson’s most vocal early critics was Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College. On July 4, 1798, Dwight delivered a speech urging the voters to defeat the Jeffersonians—“the illuminati, the philosophers, the atheists, and the deists.” Dwight predicted dire consequences if Jefferson and his party were elected: “We may see the Bible cast into a bonfire, the vessels of the sacramental supper borne by an ass in public procession, and our children, either wheedled or terrified, uniting in chanting mockeries against God.”

Rev. William Linn of New York voiced similar concerns over a Jefferson presidency when he proclaimed that “the election of any man avowing the principles of Mr. Jefferson would . . . destroy religion, introduce immorality, and loosen all the bonds of society.” He further warned that “the voice of the nation in calling a deist to the first office must be construed into no less than a rebellion against God.” The New England clergy especially vilified Jefferson, “whom they hated for `disbelief in the deluge and his opposition to Bible reading in the schools.’“ Even the press got into the act. The Federalist Gazette of the United States framed the key question of the election, “to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart, as: `Shall I continue in allegiance to God—and a Religious President; Or impiously declare for Jefferson—and No God!!!’”

April 7, 2008 –Bones that Started a Reformation

England had a head start on the Reformation because of the work of John Wycliffe (c. 1324–1384). It was Wycliffe who held that the Bible alone (sola Scriptura) set forth the definition of true Christianity. Wycliffe’s efforts to translate the Bible into the language of the people prepared the way for a reform movement that would take England and the New World by storm. His hand written translations were based on Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, the only source text available to Wycliffe. Like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Tyndale, Wycliffe’s reform efforts did not go unopposed. Thirty-one years after his death, the Council of Constance condemned Wycliffe on 260 different counts, ordered his writings to be burned, and directed that his bones be exhumed and buried in unconsecrated ground. In 1428, on orders from the Pope, Wycliffe's remains were dug up and burned. His ashes were thrown in a nearby river. Wycliffe's followers, called Lollards,* carried on his work under severe persecution from Henry V (1413–1422). Because of continued opposition from the Crown and the outlawing of Bible reading in the English language, the Lollards worked in secret. But by the late fifteenth century, the activity of the Lollards began to grow more bold and effective. They brought the discussion of theological issues to the masses which in turn led some people to question certain aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine. In the end, Wycliffe’s views won out. His ashes became seed for a Reformation that transformed the world. “The sacred Scriptures,” Wycliffe wrote, “be the property of the people, and one which no party should be allowed to wrest from them.”

*The Lollards derived their name from the medieval Dutch word meaning “to mutter” (lollaerd), possibly a reference to their style of worship, which was based on reading the scriptures. The derivation may be of Latin origin, from lollen, “to sing softly” (cf. Eng. lull).

April 4, 2008 – Making Hebrew Writers Speak German

Martin Luther's main goal in translating the Bible into German was to make God's Word available in words that men and women use in everyday speech. He recognized that "God is in every syllable. No iota [the smallest Greek letter] is in vain." Luther's translation had the effect of making Germany the first modern nation to adopt a single language over a cluster of regional dialects. Translating the New Testament was relatively easy for Luther. He only needed eleven weeks to complete his German version. The Old Testament, written in Hebrew and some Aramaic, was a different matter. With the help of friends, the task of translation took nine years! At one point he considered giving up the task. "How hard it is to make these Hebrew writers talk German," he complained. For example, sixteenth-century Germans had no knowledge of the chameleon. The closest Luther could come was the weasel. His complete German Bible, with a thoroughly revised New Testament translation, was completed in 1534. Before Luther's death in 1546 more than 750,000 copies of his various Bible translations were on the market.

April 3, 2008 – What Hath God Wrought?

Where would we be without the telephone? Who could have imagined more than 150 years ago that one day people would be able to speak to people thousands of miles away without the aid of wires? The invention of the telephone followed the invention of the telegraph and the invention of a special series of short and long symbols called the “Morse Code,” named after its inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872). Morse was the son of Jedediah Morse (1761–1826), a pastor who is best known for his textbook Geography Made Easy and his warnings about a world-wide Illuminati conspiracy. At Yale College, the younger Morse was an indifferent student until he heard a series of lectures on the newly-developing subject of electricity. He was also an accomplished painter and the founder of the National Academy of Design. With his inquisitive nature and an artist’s hand, Morse conceived the basic idea of an instrument to send and receive an electrical current over wires that would open and close a circuit to generate short (dots) and long (dashes) sounds. While Morse’s idea was not new, he was the first to develop the theory into a working model with the aid of his two partners, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail. In 1838, with his new telegraph and simplified code in hand, Morse transmitted ten words per minute at an exhibition in New York. Even with this demonstration there was still skepticism that any message could really be sent from city to city over wires. In 1843, Morse secured funds from Congress to construct the first telegraph line in the United States from Baltimore to Washington D.C. In May of the next year, from the nation’s capital Morse sent a biblical quotation over the newly strung wires, a message that revealed his own sense of wonder that God had chosen him to reveal the use of electricity to man: “What Hath God Wrought” (Num. 23:23). While a great deal of credit is owed to Morse for the telegraph, the code was equally ingenious. Morse believed that God has put us here for a purpose. God’s good creation is designed to be studied and developed to the glory of God and the benefit of man.

Benedict Arnold’s treasonous acts against America during the War of Independence should not be viewed any less harshly, but his second wife, Peggy, probably was not the innocent woman she claimed to be. Peggy Arnold may have been providing secrets to the British even before her husband decided to become a turncoat. Socialite Peggy Shippen was 18 and from a wealthy Philadelphia family when she married Benedict, a widower of 37. Marrying into the Shippen family gave Benedict Arnold the social status he seemed to so desperately need. Arnold also was continually in debt from living beyond his means. He and Peggy enjoyed the good life and spent more money than Arnold made. Arnold’s motives were personal not political when he made the decision to work with the British. His greedy desire for more money and his wife’s encouragement were behind a decision Arnold probably later regretted. His resentment with Congress, who slighted Arnold and promoted men of lesser rank, added to his discontentment. New evidence suggests that Peggy Arnold always hated the American cause and actively promoted her husband’s plan to switch allegiance. The Arnold’s went into exile in England, where they were generally scorned and unrewarded.

April 1, 2008 - Saviors from Space

Science fiction movies have always done well at the box office. Probably the most noteworthy is The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), adapted from the 1940 short story "Farewell to the Master" written by Harry Bates. Like so many movies of the era, their storylines were often set against the backdrop of the Cold War. The Day the Earth Stood Still is no exception. But there is another element that is often missed by moviegoers. There's a great deal of religion mixed in. Probably the most overt example can be found in the Star Wars movies and its use of the Force. George Lucas admitted that he "put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people. . . . I think there is a God. What that God is and what we know about God, I'm not sure." There's a more subtle expression of religion in The Day the Earth Stood Still in addition to Klaatu's stated belief in "the Almighty Spirit":

Scriptwriter Edmund H. North transformed the alien emissary Klaatu into a Christ-figure, implying that extra-terrestrials would be the true saviors of mankind. He did this in a subtle manner, having Klaatu adopt the earth name Carpenter and through the alien’s death and resurrection.

North considered it his "private little joke" hoping "the Christ comparison would be subliminal." So the next time you sit down to watch Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, and Billy Gray, who played "Bud" in Father Knows Best, see how many New Testament, Christ-like allusions you can find in The Day the Earth Stood Still.