Category: The Historical Muse

Thoughts on history and the historical profession. Clio is the muse of history–this category title is a play on that concept.

The Abandonment of Biblical Education

  

I’ve been cataloging the biggest failures of the church in our day, beginning with a watered-down salvation message, then on to our lack of renewed minds when it comes to putting the faith into practice, allowing worldly thinking to dominate. There’s one more leg on the three-legged stool of failure—the abandonment of Biblical education. In early America, most education was centered in the church or home, and the lion’s share of the home-schooled portion of society was Christian also. That… Read more »

Book Review: 1861

  

I read a lot. I mean, a whole lot. That’s what historians do. Sometimes, the books pile up on me and I have a hard time staying up with them. My resolve to get through the ones I already have before buying another one always weakens when I stumble across one that seems to stand out, particularly when it might be a candidate for a text in one of my upper-level courses. That’s how I came to purchase and read… Read more »

Alexis de Tocqueville & the Government Shepherd

  

Seeing where we are now headed for the next four years as a nation has reminded me of a prescient quote from Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic study Democracy in America. Tocqueville toured the United States in the late 1820s, fascinated by what he saw in the infant republic. Yet he also saw some warning signs. Here’s one of them, which is unfolding before our eyes. Speaking of a government that seeks to “care” for its citizens, he writes,… Read more »

Needed: Another Ronald Reagan Moment

  

The third, and final, presidential debate is tonight, and the topic is foreign policy. Most Americans, apparently, find the topic of lesser interest than domestic policy, yet is has a direct impact not only on pocketbook issues but our very survival as a nation. I guess what I’m saying is that we ought to be intensely interested in what transpires overseas. America has always been affected by the ideologies and actions of foreign nations. In our first decade, with George… Read more »

Humility Is the Key

  

One of the devotional classics is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. There is some historical dispute as to whether he is the actual author or just the compiler of this fifteenth-century aid to living the Christian life. Of course that’s not what really matters; it’s the substance of the book that counts, and substantive it is. As I was reading through some excerpts yesterday, one stood out to me because it took aim at my profession—education. There… Read more »

Shades of the Carter Years

  

I remember it well. It was during the final years of the Carter administration—the rise of militant Islam. The birthplace was Iran under the severe rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He had chased the Shah out of the country and taken over, along with his fanatical followers. Khomeini determined that the United States was the Great Satan. Therefore, it made no difference to him that the U.S. embassy was officially American soil; his hordes stormed the embassy and took more… Read more »

Education & the Corruption of Principles

  

Chicago public school teachers are out on strike. They’ve been treated so unfairly there was just no other option. After all, in a city where the median income is $47,000 per year, they make only $76,000. Sure, they get all their benefits on top of that, but since they are the most important people in the city, they deserve more. So you can understand why when they were offered a measly 16% raise, they hit the roof. How insulting. Wouldn’t… Read more »