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| Whose world view? |
Greetings! Thank you Bob O’Neal for inviting me to come and
chat about one of my favorite moments in history with the Alexander Hamilton Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution.
[TJ loved liberty and feared tyranny, while AH loved order and feared anarchy,
right?] I’m going to operate on the assumption that if you are a member of SAM
you already know heaps about the American War for Independence; some of you may
know heaps more than I do, maybe all of you do. So I’m not going to retell the
blow-by-blows of that history.
Somehow
along the way I began writing historical
fiction, which some people think is an
oxymoron; history or fiction: it must be one or the other but can scarcely be
both at the same time, right? There may be men in this room who on principle don’t read historical fiction;
you want to get your history straight, without the unscrupulous tampering of
some hack novelist (you like your history the way CS Lewis says he liked his Bible
and his whiskey—straight).
I’m not here
to sell you on the legitimacy of historical fiction, but it is a long and
illustrious genre appreciated by many (thankfully or I’d be out of job). That
said, I thought it might be useful for
me to let you on the inside of how a writer goes about writing about history
and creating fiction set in a particular context—in this case, exploring
the roles of the faith and freedom in the American Revolutionary War....
My providential view of history (shared with GW and his
contemporaries), in no way means that I think all patriots shared his view to
the extent that he did, but so much was it the majority view that the Am Rev
got nicknames:
“The
Presbyterian Parsons’ War” for a number of reasons:
1. John
Witherspoon, president of Princeton and devout minister of the gospel of
Jesus Christ signed the Declaration of Independence (the only minister to do
so); he also famously affirmed about freedom: “There is not a single instance
in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved
entire. If, therefore, we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time
deliver the conscience into bondage.”
2. James
Caldwell, soldier parson at the Battle of Springfield (NJ, 1780), the day
his wife and children were killed by a redcoat sniper, supported the troops,
providing wadding for muskets from the Isaac Watts hymnals at the local church,
“Give ‘em Watts, boys!”
3. Timothy
Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, chaplain in GW’s army, and later
president of Yale, was an earnest minister of the gospel, his preaching in chapel
at Yale sparked a revival of the gospel of grace in Christ, and he wrote a
wonderful hymn (c. 1800),
I love Thy kingdom, Lord,
The place of Thine abode,
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.
The place of Thine abode,
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.
I love Thy church, O God;
Her walls before Thee stand,
Dear as the apple of Thine eye,
And graven on Thy hand.
Her walls before Thee stand,
Dear as the apple of Thine eye,
And graven on Thy hand.
4. And “Presbyterian Parsons War” because of central influence of Presbyterianism on the US Constitution,
with its checks and balances, separation of powers (yes, Montesquieu helped
here), mirrors almost exactly the order of church government of Scottish
Presbyterianism, developed from the Bible and from Stuart, Divine Right of
Kings tyranny in the 17th century (including 1st and 2nd
amendments, et al)
5. And the favorite taunt of the
British toward our army was “Psalm-singing
Yankees,” singing of Psalms and hymns (as in Presbyterian worship) so
central to GW’s leadership.
When GW
arrived summer of 1775 at the encampment outside of Boston, he immediately instituted daily prayers, Bible
reading, and Psalm singing after morning gun—odd thing for a Deist to do....
.... 
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