By Kieran Doherty, (NY, 2007)

The saga of the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, like all such events, is a combination of many different stories of providence. From the life of John Smith to the massacre of 1622, amazing and interesting tales combine to demonstrate the myriad ways God was carefully bringing together the men and women who would create an English speaking Christian civilization along the shores of North America.

From the historian’s perspective, the lives of those diverse and often reckless saints and sinners seem haphazard at best and totally chaotic at worst. One moment the English are trading with the Indians and planting crops. The next time we look, the two cultures are bullying each other, engaging in mutual target practice, and starving to death. The leadership of the colony is uneven. The masterful and ingenious John Smith is replaced by the incompetent and self-destructive George Percy. The Powhatans offer friendship and mutual benefit then turn unwary settlers into archery targets. Ships arrive from England and disembark some hard workers, but seemingly more dandys, and layabouts who consume the imported food and die like flies from famine in the winter.

At just the point that all seemed lost and the Virginia Company enterprise was going to fail, along came a God-sent relief to enable survival for a little longer. Sometimes salvation came in the timely accession to power of a new leader who infused wisdom and discipline into the recalcitrant settlers, as happened with John Smith, Sir Thomas Gates, or Thomas West, Lord De La Warre. At least twice, ships arrived with enough food to stem the starvation for a while.

Continue reading “Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival, And The Salvation of The First English Colony In The New World” »

Posted on October 30, 2007 | Permalink

By Peter C. Mancall
400 pgs. Yale University Press. $38.00.
Available for Purchase from VisionForum.com

“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away” (Emily Dickenson)

Richard Hakluyt the Younger (1522-1616) lived and breathed the above aphorism two hundred years before it was stated by the poet. He combined that thought with another — there is no frigate like a frigate to carry the Gospel and promote English prosperity in far-flung corners of the globe. Hakluyt, an Anglican pastor, became the most important and prolific “travel writer” of England in the sixteenth century. His unswerving dedication to promoting English overseas expansion helped provide the intellectual groundwork for the first successful English colony in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. One historian has called Hakluyt “the press agent of adventure.”

Because he left little information about himself, and the books he wrote have had few readers beyond the scholars of exploration, Hakluyt remains an almost unknown founding father of Jamestown. With the publication of Hakluyt’s Promise, the veil of obscurity has been lifted just in time for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown.

The 1600s have often been called “The Spanish Century.” The Iberian explorers and conquistadors sailed to the far ends of the earth, claiming lands and conquering peoples. In the latter half of the century, His Most Catholic Majesty and Defender of the Faith, Philip II, took the throne of Spain and embarked on an ambitious plan to bring the world under the Roman Catholic Church, for the Greater Glory of God, (and Spain . . .). The English monarch, Elizabeth I (1553-1603) watched those developments with a wary eye, trying to maintain good relations with the Spanish king, yet wondering how English national interests could be preserved and, perhaps extended. One of her subjects, a brilliant scholar who matriculated at Christ’s College, Oxford in 1570, helped show her the way to accomplish those goals. Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616) played a key role in the success of English exploration and overseas settlement, first through his research and publishing efforts and then through information he gleaned as a spy in France for Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s chief advisor.

Initially as a Christian scholar, then as an ordained Anglican clergyman, Hakluyt believed that Englishmen could and should be persuaded to carry the Gospel to the heathen people of the New World and, through exploration and colonization, spread English culture to unknown lands and perhaps make inroads into Spanish hegemony in America.

Ironically, Richard Hakluyt lived in relative obscurity, translating every travel account he could find from every country that sent out adventurers to explore the unknown, including ancient Greeks and Romans. He spoke and translated six languages and popularized overseas exploration more than anyone before him, engaging the imaginations of countless mariners and the Queen herself. In this unique biography of Hakluyt’s life and times, Peter Mancall sums up Hakluyt’s purpose in life: “to advance the cause of reformed religion and enrich the realm and encourage colonization.”

Continue reading “Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America” »

Posted on March 23, 2007 | Permalink

By Luther W. Hopkins
320 pgs. Virginia Gentleman Books.
Available for Purchase from VisionForum.com

Christina Hoff Sommers wrote in The War Against Boys that certain elements of our culture are penalizing boys for being boys and “trying to make them, well..., into girls.” Her book deals primarily with the influence of radical feminism on the educational system, but the attempt to feminize boys, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, has also permeated children’s literature. The next time you are in your neighborhood Barnes & Noble or Borders, take a stroll through the children’s books section, especially “literature” for young teens, and do a brief survey of the offerings.

In another popular work, published in the 1980s, a Canadian author recommended four hundred of what she considered the best books for young readers. All of them were fiction! Many of the titles are books worth reading but very few have connection with history and even fewer relate in any way to heroism in battle or defending family or civilization against enemies. I suspect that recent lists by conservative writers include some of the more traditional heroic literature that boys of generations past enjoyed, but precious few nonfiction titles for younger readers, written by participants in great events, appear on any shelves.

When I was a boy, I loved to read exciting stories, especially tales about warriors or men of the Wild West. Our library was well-stocked with my favorite “We Were There” books and the diverse and well-written “Landmarks.” The stories of the first type were fictional eye-witness accounts ostensibly written by children on exciting expeditions or witnessing important historical events. The real settings and the vivid descriptions recreated such events as the Alamo (how did those children survive?) or the Battle of Gettysburg (no place for children but I wanted to be there myself). The “Landmark” books specialized in biographies of famous people, written in a novelistic style, with interesting dialogue and commentary.

Most of the books I read in my early years reflected my own keen interest in history and heroes. What those books lacked, though I did not realize it then, was the reality of experience by actual participants in the events described. The narrators were fictional characters, the dialogues invented, the pleasant endings unrealistic. Unfortunately, I discovered G.A. Henty’s historical novels for boys thirty years too late, when I no longer had time to indulge my voracious reading appetite for unlimited hours. Henty based a number of his books on his personal experiences as a war correspondent thus making them a little closer to real life, the best example of which was probably By Sheer Pluck, a story of the war in which he himself fought against the Ashanti tribe, but still fiction with a happy ending.

Continue reading “From Bull Run to Appomattox: A Boy's View” »

Posted on November 28, 2005 | Permalink

By J. William Jones, D.D.
624 pgs. Sprinkle Publications. $25.00.
Available for Purchase from VisionForum.com

The American military chaplaincy boasts a long and distinguished history from colonial times until today. Several recently published books concerning particular chaplains in World War II and the War in Iraq have received critical acclaim, No Greater Glory by Dan Kurzman and A Table in the Presence by Cary Cash. Although the use of pastors in the armed forces of the United States has enjoyed widespread acceptance through the years, opponents of “government-sponsored religion” occasionally raise objections.

In a recent New York Times article headlined “Evangelicals Are Growing Force in the Military Chaplain Corps,” Laurie Goodstein noted the declining number of chaplains from mainline denominations and the steady increase of evangelical chaplains in the armed forces. With fewer numbers of Roman Catholics entering the priesthood and the increasing number of women pastors from more liberal Protestant churches with little interest in military service, gaps in the chaplaincy ranks have been filled by more evangelical pastors.

Kristen J. Leslie, an assistant professor of pastoral care and counseling at Yale Divinity school observed the chaplains at the Air Force Academy and found, to her apparent dismay, that evangelicals administer “Bible-centered care” in which “the notion that the religious message is core, and you bring everybody to it and that’s how you create healing.... If someone is struggling with a supervisor, a spouse, or depression, an evangelical chaplain urges them to turn their life over to Christ.” Because of the religious diversity in the armed forces, some critics believe such proselytizing for Christianity is inappropriate. Preaching the message that Christ alone is the way to salvation violates two great shibboleths of modern America — never be judgmental and never be exclusive.

The Bible-centered, Christ-centered ministry of Christian chaplains should come as no surprise to even the casual observer of United States history. The American Civil War, especially, provided abundant evidence of the work of God through chaplains and other Christians in the armies. Historian Mark Noll in a recent lecture entitled “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis” stated that “religion was the number one most important cultural norm [in the United States] in 1860 ... at least one third of Americans were members of churches and total attendees of worship services were at least two times the formal membership.” Five million men voted in the 1860 election — fifteen million Americans were regular churchgoers! Ninety-five percent of the churches in America in 1860 were Protestant.

When the war came, those churches found multiple ways to communicate the gospel and to provide spiritual counsel to the soldiers. Regimental chaplains led the way and they were assisted by evangelists, colporteurs, and devout soldiers, from privates to generals. They preached the Gospel regularly, held Bible classes and prayer meetings, and witnessed personally of their hope in Christ. Denominational and non-denominational Christian ministries and societies printed millions of pages of materials for the soldiers; Bibles, tracts, newspapers, journals, and books were sold or given to the soldiers. One pastor from Richmond, Virginia — Moses Hoge — slipped through the Union naval blockade and brought back thousands of Bibles from England for the Confederate armies.

Countless thousands of men confessed Christ as Savior, Christians were encouraged, and membership in churches expanded, all in the midst of the greatest slaughter of Americans that the nation would ever know. Why have these facts been excluded from most histories of the Civil War? Have historians known of the powerful religious revivals that the armies experienced and the importance of faith to many Americans of that day and just ignored them as unimportant or considered them inexplicable?

Continue reading “Christ in the Camp” »

Posted on November 8, 2005 | Permalink

By Otto Scott
472 pages. Ross House Press. $20.00.

Otto Scott is not an ordinary historian. He is rough-hewn like a character from a Louis L’Amour western, though the cowboys of the L’Amour novels were not born in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City. I once naively asked Mr. Scott about his collegiate alma mater. He laughed and said he matriculated at the school of hard knocks.

Otto Scott is an autodidact, a self-taught independent scholar who has written ten substantive books and hundreds of articles. Mr. Scott is well known for following the evidence, writing with (sometimes disturbing) candor, and caring not a whit for the prevailing historical fashions.

James I: The Fool as King is a volume in what he chose to call “The Sacred Fool Quartet,” an Otto Scott title if there ever was one. The other sacred fools of history whose lives attracted his critical attention were Robespierre (The Voice of Virtue) and John Brown (The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement). The irascible octogenarian was never able to complete the story of the tenor of the quartet — the final sacred fool, Woodrow Wilson. The man of progressive visions has unfortunately escaped the historical autopsy by Mr. Scott, but James Stuart did not.

People who know anything of James I, most often just associate the king with the commissioning of the Authorized Version of the Bible. Otto Scott, however, reveals James Stuart as a monarch of singular moral depravity, surrounded by men who vied for his sexual favors, schemed with him against the Reformed Protestant Church, and wrote pseudo-intellectual arguments against his detractors. This biography shows how a young prince, tutored by Reformation men who loved God, liberty, and Scotland, betrayed his teachers, pursued his lusts with unbridled greed, and sowed the seeds which eventually bore fruit in the Puritan diaspora and the English Civil War.

Otto Scott never hides his presuppositions and always defines his terms: “The figure of the Fool is widely misunderstood. He is neither a jester nor a clown nor an idiot. He is, instead, the dark side of genius. For if a genius has the ability to see and make connections beyond the normal range of vision, the fool is one who can see — and disconnect. James the First was such a fool. He was an extraordinary one not only because he was learned and intelligent, but also because he was a king.”

As son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnly, James would inherit the English crown if Elizabeth died without an heir. His family legacy would include his mother’s alleged murder of his father, her flight to England, and her eventual execution for treason. The great reformer John Knox had placed young James under the tutelage of George Buchanan who taught the young monarch the strict Calvinism of the Scottish Kirk with the hope that he would lead the English-speaking peoples in a continuing and thorough reformation away from the Roman Catholic Church.

Continue reading “James I: The Fool as King” »

Posted on August 9, 2005 | Permalink

By Sean Michael Lucas
Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing.

Back in my graduate school days, I wrote a research paper entitled “Robert Lewis Dabney, The Cassandra of Yankeedom,” hoping to tweak the nose of my socialist, feminist, anti-southern professor. I was disappointed she hadn’t heard of R.L. Dabney before, but delighted at the twisted proboscus that resulted from her exposure to him. It is gratifying to record that a hundred years after his best writing, the learned Virginia theologian and philosopher could still challenge, if not appall, humanist intellectual elites.

Unfortunately, Dr. Dabney might even anger modern evangelicals if they consider his arguments against government education, feminism, evolutionary theory, and industrial capitalism, not to mention his bold teaching of Calvinism, love of the patriarchal old South, and defense of the Confederacy.

“As a preacher, as a teacher, as a writer, he achieved greatness” wrote the renowned Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield of Dr. Dabney. A.A. Hodge of Princeton called him “the best teacher of theology in the United States, if not the world.” Yet, Dr. Dabney rejected the pleas to join the faculty of Princeton and remained a professor for thirty years at the small Presbyterian seminary located at Hampden-Sydney in Virginia. Robert Lewis Dabney, however, was no ivory tower intellectual or academic drudge, for he acted on his convictions, never avoiding the “sharp end” of battle with his enemies. In fact, the War Between the States (1861-1865) defined for him where honor, patriotism, and Christian duty would lead the rest of his life.

After Dabney’s death at the end of the nineteenth century, his successor and friend Thomas Cary Johnson compiled a life of his mentor based on the voluminous correspondence preserved in the family archives. The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney joined the Collected Writings, The Life and Letters of Stonewall Jackson, and several other historical and theological books written by Dr. Dabney himself to round out the unique oeuvre of the contentious Southern Presbyterian.

Because he left behind such a rich trove of writing, Dabney has been the subject of several excellent Ph.D. dissertations and examination by historians of the antebellum south like Eugene Genovese, E. Brooks Holifield, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Nevertheless, the old south theologian and controversialist remains virtually unknown outside of such specialized academic circles. Sean Michael Lucas will, in part, rectify the neglect of the Union Seminary professor in Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life, the first biography of Dabney in more than one hundred years.

The key to understanding Professor Lucas’s approach is found in the subtitle of the book — A Southern Presbyterian Life. He views Dabney as both a representative Southern Presbyterian minister and scholar as well as an irredentist ex-Confederate who never stopped fighting a war with the modern world. The Yankees never left his sights and the advocates of the post-war new South felt the bitter sting of his arrows in defense of the old landmarks.

Continue reading “Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life” »

Posted on May 20, 2005 | Permalink

By Benson Bobrick
553 pages. Simon and Schuster. $15.95

One of the ironies of American history is the overwhelming scholarship and published books related to the War Between the States, while books on the War for American Independence have lagged far behind in number and quality. There are many reasons for the intense interest in the Civil War, including the wealth of primary sources available and the sense among some that the issues of that war have not been resolved. There are many people living today who knew Civil War veterans, an immediacy that is lacking in the distant war of the eighteenth century.

Until recently, good battle studies of the “Rev War” were hard to come by — those military engagements did not capture the imagination in the same way as Gettysburg or Shiloh. In the last fifteen years, however, excellent works on battles such as Lexington and Concord, Saratoga, the Cowpens, and the battles around New York City have shed new light on the personalities and combat in the fight for independence.

Just as there has been a dearth of work on the battles of independence, so too have there been few good narrative histories of the entire conflict, books that capture the imagination and give the reader the accents of command and the smell of powder. I have always appreciated and enjoyed Redcoats and Rebels by Christopher Hibbert which presents the War for American Independence through British eyes. Several other excellent studies have emerged in the ’90s and more recently. One of the best is Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution by Benson Bobrick, who dedicated this work to his ancestors who fought on both sides in the conflict.

The author’s previous books provide little indication of an interest in the American “Revolution,” but his other works were not a “hearkening to the voice of my own ancestral heritage.” Professor Bobrick’s forebears fought and died on both sides in the war, including men of English, Dutch, and Huguenot ancestry. He hopes his loyalist fathers will “forgive my own patriot bias.” The author’s diverse and contentious ancestors reflected what historians of the conflict have long known — that Americans were sharply divided — perhaps one third staunchly loyal to the crown, one third committed to independence, and one third (in the beginning) neutral.

In a chapter entitled “Nabour Against Nabour,” the conflict is described as more of civil war than a revolution; that is “there was no attempt to overturn the existing social order or to effect a radical redistribution of wealth and opportunity; nor as a colonial rebellion did it involve a subject people of different ethnic stock asserting its national identity against an alien imperial power.” The correspondence of high ranking British officers indicates that they assumed that the majority of Americans were on their side through most of the war. Many families were split down the middle.

Continue reading “Angel in the Whirlwind” »

Posted on January 25, 2005 | Permalink