The Book That Made America: How the Bible Formed Our Nation
by Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.
Nordskog Publishing, Inc.
ISBN-10: 0-9824929-0-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-9824929-0-1
June 2009
277 pages
Trade paperback: $18.95 at Amazon.com

Jerry Newcombe takes great pains to disabuse the rest of us of a patently false notion: that America isn’t now and never was a Christian nation. He proves beyond doubt that the United States was conceived along Biblical lines, born in Biblical liberty, and nourished into adolescence on Biblical principles. Only now, some four centuries later, are perceptive Americans seeing the dangers of abandoning their Biblical heritage. Men and women who devoutly believed in the Judeo-Christian God founded America, relied upon Him for guidance and protection, and gave proper thanks to Him for delivering them from their external enemies.

But now, in the early 21st century, there are unmistakable signs that America’s external foes sense an opportunity to bring the United States down to their level—and they have good reason for their optimism. As America has become more secularized, it has collectively forgotten where its liberties came from—not the government, the sole function of which is to secure liberty, but from Almighty God. Only He can grant the right to be free; this simple but profound truth drives Statists up the wall. In the past people who would rather see the State control citizens’ lives—for their own good, of course—kept colliding with the Biblical precepts underscored in the Declaration of Independence.

Now that secular, politicized, state-run schools have had nearly a century to wean Americans away from the Biblical foundations of America so that this country’s Christian heritage has effectively been largely expunged from history, “the fix” as they say “is in.” Only one generation separates America—or any nation, for that matter—from total ruin, and that generation is always the one now in charge. At the highest levels of government, the ones in charge evince no respect for—but rather show either indifference to or outright contempt for—America’s Judeo-Christian foundations.

As Jerry Newcombe proves in The Book That Made America, there’s one text that was not only responsible for birthing and guiding America but also might yet be able to save it in mellow middle age from premature terminal senescence and collapse—no, not The Audacity of Hope—the Bible.

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From the text:

We are standing on a threshold. Unless we teach the next generation about our unique heritage, it will be lost in the revisionist mishmash of half-truths and political correctness.

In other words, the reason our Christian heritage matters, ultimately, is the freedom to preach the gospel and to live out the Christian faith. Religious freedom is the lynchpin of all other freedoms. Remove religious freedom, and other liberties will soon be taken away as well.

The link between the Puritans’ constitutionalism and the American Constitution is no minor point. Their governing documents were political versions of their spiritual covenants. And all of these political compacts and constitutions paved the way for the Constitution …. In short, no Bible, no Puritan covenants. No Puritan covenants, no U.S. Constitution. This is a history lesson most of us have never learned. It is a lesson that America by and large has forgotten. The Bible thus played a critical role in the shaping of America by teaching this concept of covenants, which has been enshrined for all time by the Constitution.

This is why the age-old argument from Plato is correct: culture precedes politics. To change the politics, you first have to change the culture. In modern America, we Christians have our work cut out for us, to change the culture. Some Christians may argue that Christ does not call us to change the culture, but just to change lives. That is true in one sense. But it is also true that when Christians authentically live out their faith, it cannot help but impact culture as God intends.

I think it is safe to say that until the early part of the twentieth century, most of the justices that served on the Supreme Court were Christians. Certainly, they acknowledged the Christian heritage of the country. Again, there was not a change for the worse until the twentieth century and the acceptance of evolution, and specifically, the idea that since everything evolves, then law, too, should evolve and is not based on fixed principles. Oliver Wendell Holmes is an American icon to some. But I would put him in the hall of shame for being one of the key change agents in applying evolutionary principles to law.

While modern Christians have often avoided getting their hands dirty with professions like politics, we have assigned politics to the non-believers—and it’s no wonder we are in this current mess.

Anyone who would deny that we are in a culture war does not seem to be very discerning in my opinion. It is possible that America might not last. Nowhere is it decreed that our nation will last forever. Other nations have arisen and failed. We may just continue to implode and become a shell of what we once were. Consider the history of some past civilizations who neglected God.

“I have 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?” — Benjamin Franklin, 28 June 1787, at the Constitutional Convention

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Also available:

Besides The Book That Made America, other related texts that might be of interest are available on Amazon.com:

Gary DeMar’s America’s Christian History: The Untold Story (8th edition, 2007)
Brion McClanahan’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (2009)

—Mike Gray