Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast

Eric Metaxas: How can we be laboring in the dark for decades not understanding that this is the founding of the nation? There was a consequence for standing up, and it had to do with comfort and convenience. It wasn't just principle. How do I live in a free nation? How do I keep freedom? How do we govern ourselves? How does that work? Well, the ultimate instruction book is the Bible. Where did all the ideas of the revolution come from? The Bible.

And if you want to know why we're losing our liberties or you want to know why things are crazy, why we're on this kind of crazy war with the insane left, it is because we have forgotten this. Let's go back and let's become a nation that celebrates this history.

Allen Jackson: Welcome to *Culture and Christianity*. We have a treat today. I have my friend Eric Metaxas with us. Welcome back to Tennessee, Eric.

Eric Metaxas: Thrilled to be here.

Allen Jackson: I was trying to remember. We met, the first time I remember meeting, you were doing your tour promoting *Bonhoeffer*. How the world has changed. How God has blessed our lives. There is more than water under that bridge. But you have a new tome. I love the tiny books you write. This one is *Revolution*. You need to see this part of the book, too. I have read it. It is doable.

Eric Metaxas: Listen, I'm telling you, Allen. I have to say this upfront because people don't believe it. I cannot tell you how many people have said to me, "I couldn't put it down. It's a page-turner. It reads like a novel." That, as a writer, that's the greatest thing you could hear. But I've heard that with it even if you just read the Amazon reviews. I'm not soliciting them.

Listen, I'll say this upfront, too. It's an amazing true story. It's inspiring. It's encouraging. I would encourage people to read it. And then I will bully them into reading it because we have to read it. We have to know our history. I say this emphatically.

Allen Jackson: Can we send a copy to the lady at the Smithsonian? She is clearly having a little trouble interpreting our history. I said "lady." I was being very generous to that woman that's directing the Smithsonian.

Eric Metaxas: Listen, these people are crazy. They have bought into the propaganda over decades. Basically, it's why I wrote the book. I said we need a true accounting of the story. We haven't been getting that. In our lifetime, we've gotten a lot of crazy negativity, and the true story is beautiful. I just wanted to tell that story.

Allen Jackson: I want to get to the story, but it's more than that. They're not crazy. They're intellectually dishonest.

Eric Metaxas: It's a spectrum. Some of them are intellectually dishonest. You're absolutely right. Some people are just deceived. It's just a spectrum of crazy. But it really depends because you talk to some people—and you and I have had this conversation—some people do not understand certain things. Even if it's in front of them, they can't read it. It's like reading Chinese.

When they see the language of faith, it doesn't compute. Now, there are some people that just hate the language of faith. But there are other people that genuinely don't get it. They just don't get it. And so they ignore it and talk about what they understand.

Allen Jackson: I believe that. But if you dabbled in the occult, whether you do it intentionally or not, I think you get spiritual impediments that make it almost impossible to understand it. But that's another podcast. We'll do that another day.

So, *Revolution*. This is readable. I started out to do the cheat like I do when I have lots of books to read. I was going to read every fourth chapter. I got about three in and I thought, "To heck with this. I want the rest of the story." Because it really does pull you in. It's a narrative that pulls you through, and you get to know the people.

By the time you get to the end, there's not a lot of history books I read that bring tears to my eyes. And I know the story of Washington's farewell speech when he pulls his glasses out of his pocket, but when you're telling that story again, I've got tears running down my face. And I'm thinking, "Okay, Eric made me cry. I will confess when the cameras are running."

Eric Metaxas: Listen, this is all true. This is not a novel I wrote. This is all true. I just found what I think is the most exciting, important, humorous stories and just put it all together. But I think that we're responsible for this information. This is not extra credit. I didn't write this book for history buffs. I wrote the book for Americans.

If you're an American, you need to know this stuff. If you can get this information better in a better place than this book, go for it. But I just said I want to put everything in one book so that everybody in the year of our super-centennial 250th can re-familiarize themselves. I think it's an encouragement to us at this season, which frankly we need.

Allen Jackson: It reminded me, in a way, the Book of Acts doesn't have a conclusion. And I've always said it's because we're the 21st-century edition; the story is still unfolding. One of the things I took away from this is this story is still unfolding. Don't read this like we're reading a history lesson. Read this to inform our decisions, not to take up arms and shoot our adversaries.

Eric Metaxas: It's kind of like this book to me is kind of like the instruction booklet for how do I live in a free nation? How do I keep freedom? How do we govern ourselves? How does that work? Where's the instruction? The ultimate instruction book is the Bible. Where did all the ideas of the revolution come from? The Bible, which is the main takeaway of my research on this thing. This was all Christians doing Christian stuff. This is not compatible with Christianity. This is Christianity poured into political life and into the form of a new nation.

Every American needs to know that. Every Christian certainly needs to know that because it's true. But most of us didn't know that. I didn't know that. People always think, "Eric, you must know all this stuff. You're smart. You went to Yale." I know nothing. I know this much. I just know enough that I'm going to do the research. When I do the research and I see this stuff, I'm embarrassed that I didn't know it. And then I feel the zeal. I've got to tell the world. We're late to the party. We've got to get on the stick.

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I have a degree in history. But the cultural divide that you highlight, and particularly the opulence. I wasn't thinking of a Gilded Age before the Gilded Age. You highlight that so well, and I think it's a relevant story for us because there was a consequence for standing up. And it had to do with comfort and convenience. It wasn't just principle.

Eric Metaxas: The reason—and again, I'm not going to pretend like I knew this beforehand. This is as I'm doing the research. I knew very little. I just knew my assignment is I want to tell the whole story. So starting with the end of the French and Indian War kind of starts off the conflict between Great Britain and the colonists, which leads to all the crazy stuff: the Stamp Act, and the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party, and Lexington and Concord—all that stuff and then the war. I just want to tell the story.

In the course of doing the research, I was not expecting any of this. I saw what I had never seen and never heard ever. That this was a culture war. That the British elites were like the Hollywood elites. If you think of the Hollywood elites or the elites of the *New York Times* running, governing a town of homeschoolers in Oklahoma, the cultural divide was infinite.

They spoke the same language, they're in the same country, but they could not be more opposite. Everywhere I looked, I saw more and more evidence of this. How come I've not heard this before? The British were decadent. The British elites were decadent, cynical, corrupt, sneering at the Christian faith of the American colonists. Not just not sharing the faith, sneering at it, mocking it.

That's kind of where we are today. You have the cultural elites. They don't speak the language that we do, and they think we're the bad guys. They think, "You're just nothing but a religious hypocrite because nobody really believes that. We all know nobody really believes that."

Well, yes, we do really believe that, and the colonists really believed it. Most of the folks in the 13 colonies were steeped in the Bible. The whole culture was Christian. Again, how come most people don't know that? Because that's true. This is not a Christian version of this history. This is the history.

Allen Jackson: In fact, I thought you were fair-minded. You told the story in a way that you're not always selling Christianity.

Eric Metaxas: Because I want everybody to read this book. This is not a book for Christians. This is a book for anybody who's an American. I want people to get this is the true story. This is not my version of the story, believe me.

As I did the research, it became clearer and clearer to me that even I had just not heard this. I thought, "How can we be laboring in the dark for decades not understanding that this is the founding of the nation?" This was profound Christian. The lie they were deists, the lie that oh, just a few of them were Christian, that is such a lie. But again, it's only in doing the research that I realize the magnitude of this lie that's been sold to us.

If you turn on Ken Burns's PBS series 12 hours on the Revolution, you would think that faith had nothing to do with it. I'm here to tell you, faith had everything. Not a big part, everything came out of the Scripture and Christian faith. That's not debatable once you do the research. And then you think, "But people aren't talking about it." People act like you could get liberty in America without the Christian faith. None of the founders believed that. Not one, including Jefferson and Franklin.

Why don't we all know that? Because that's true. So I put it in the book, but the book is not about that. The book is just the stories. But when you read the stories, you just say, "Well, there it is." I don't need to read a book about that. I just need to read the facts, and it kind of comes out.

Allen Jackson: And you highlight beyond the history, which I want to come back to some of the characters, but even the birth of this nation coming forth on this continent prior to the Reformation, from this vantage point you can see the hand of God.

Eric Metaxas: You see, that's the thing. We could see it, they could see it, but modern historians never talk about it. They act like that's just crazy talk. Everybody involved at the time, including Thomas Paine, who is not some big Christian, they all saw the hand of God in the Reformation. They saw the hand of God in the discovery by Europeans of this new continent where dissidents, where people who'd suddenly discovered the God of the Bible, they want to read the Bible, they want the Bible translated to their own language.

They're being persecuted in their countries in Europe. Now there's a place they can go. Where would they go before? Let the nut jobs go across the ocean, and they can form their little Christian communities and see how they do.

Well, that's what happened. Everybody involved saw it as providential history, that this is God has done this, he's preparing us for a new era. Once you get to the 1760s and 1770s, the men of the Revolution start putting it together. "You know what? We may have an opportunity now for these 13 colonies, because we're being persecuted together by Great Britain, that we could unify and create a nation based on this." Not just a colony in Massachusetts or a colony here, an entire nation based on these ideas.

They were aware that this looks like God's plan. Is God opening a door? They all believed that this is a reprisal of the Israelites leaving Pharaoh and bondage in Egypt, coming out into the wilderness to look directly to God to govern themselves, to make a covenant with God. That's how they all saw it.

Even if you don't see it that way, you need to know that's how they saw it. So if you have a secular historian today says, "Well, I don't believe that," you don't have to believe it, but you need to be aware that's how they read the tea leaves, so to speak.

Allen Jackson: And you do a nice job. It's not like everybody involved were church mice. The Sons of Liberty were on the edge of scoundrels and they used the mobs, which you're very candid about. But they still had a sense of faith and destiny and all of that woven into their carnal.

Eric Metaxas: Again, like anything, there's going to be a spectrum. But the leaders did get this. The leaders were the ones that—especially John Adams—were aware of the fact that we need to play this right. This is not about winning. This is about, is this God's idea? If this is God's idea, we better behave correctly.

So we can't have mob violence. We can't have some of that, but that does not continue. They're aware of the fact that that's not the path forward. This is not the French Revolution. This is something else.

Allen Jackson: It very much stands in contrast to that. You tell me, you did the research. Do you have favorites? Did you come out with some surprises, somebody you really enjoyed as you did the work?

Eric Metaxas: The number one is probably John Adams. John Adams should be a thousand times more famous than Thomas Jefferson. John Adams was an amazing man of God and very humble, very funny, very acerbic. He, like any of these great figures in history, they cared more about the cause than about their own glory. Because of that, in some cases we don't know them so well because they said, "Well, it's not about me. It's about we want to win."

So Samuel Adams, second cousin to John Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, all the figures of the Sons of Liberty in the 1760s while this is developing, they were engaged in something they thought, "We can't stick our necks out too much here because the British are going to hang us." So we have to work behind the scenes. If you work behind the scenes, you're not going to get the glory.

But if you care about the cause, you don't care about getting the glory. But John Adams is kind of like that. He should be a Mount Rushmore. John Adams is a giant. And as I say, this is not to denigrate Jefferson, but Jefferson cannot hold a candle to John Adams. I'm just amazed.

Allen Jackson: But he made a tremendous sacrifice, the time he spent overseas working on all the things that had to be done.

Eric Metaxas: There's a ton of things you could say about John Adams. But just since I mentioned Jefferson, the reason I think Jefferson is so well-known is because I think the people who don't like the God side of the story, they kind of picked Jefferson as he's our guy. He's the French Enlightenment rationalist guy, and we're going to go with him. We're going to push him.

Now that's not even that true of Jefferson. But the point is that they kind of created the Jefferson in their own image that he was this French Enlightenment guy, he was for the French Revolution. So that's that lie that you could get liberty and equality without God. That's a lie.

The contrast, the reason the book is called *Revolution*, not *The American Revolution*, is because there has been only one revolution in world history that succeeded in doing what it wanted to do. That's the American Revolution. Why? Because they replaced an earthly king with God as king, and they knew that.

The French Revolution said, "We're going to kill the king and queen, then we're going to start killing the priests and nuns. We don't want God to have anything to do with this. This is a secular utopia." This is like a proto-Marxist view. How does that end? How does it go for the French? Can you get those things? They don't. They get a bloodbath, they get a nightmare bloodbath, and then they trade the king and queen for an emperor dictator named Napoleon. That is a very bad trade. It totally fails.

So the lie that many secular historians in our lifetime that kind of act like, "Well, this all came out of the French Enlightenment," they have really muddied the waters and confused it. Some of it comes out of the Scottish Enlightenment, whatever. But where did all these ideas come from? They only come from the Bible.

If you push the God of the Bible out, it's not going to end well. And so that's part of why I think they keep pushing Jefferson as opposed to Adams, because he's their guy. They act like they can have their cake and eat it too, but it just doesn't work.

Allen Jackson: No, it really doesn't. And the reminders about Washington were really helpful to me. On more than one occasion, he declined the opportunity to have been the ruler.

Eric Metaxas: He's so godly, he just embarrasses all of us. You just realize this is a man of such character that you just think, "Was he real?" And it's like, "Yeah, God created someone who had stellar character."

I'll tell you, Allen, it's interesting. It made me realize—I've been thinking this for years but I haven't really said it—I was getting there with my book *Letter to the American Church*. We don't talk about character enough. We talk about theology: "Oh, you're saved by grace, it's all Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." It's like, okay, and then what? You're saved, you believe. Now it's supposed to be reflected in your character.

We've kind of forgotten. We kind of act like, "Well, that doesn't matter, that's works righteousness." No, it's not works righteousness. It is obedience to God. The men of the Revolution, they got that. Washington got that. That virtue, character, you've got to work on this stuff. It's not easy. And I really believe that the only path forward for us in America today is we have to get back to that: talking about character.

Allen Jackson: But it started young. They were young men when they stepped into this. And the pressure of it revealed their character. I think we have this imagination, "I'm going to get some character when I'm through sowing my wild oats and having my fun. And then I'm going to go find some character at Walmart or order some from Amazon." It seems to me that we either start to build that in when we're young or it's really difficult to sort that out.

Eric Metaxas: We have to talk about it. It has to become part of the cultural conversation. "Are you a man of character?" Because think about this: we focus so much—I'm speaking about we evangelicals—we always talk about faith and theology. We talk about that. What about character? Because I know a lot of people, they can talk a good theological game, but their character—if we get really honest, you get more clicks if you'll be a character. Having character's kind of boring and dull.

What I really mean, I guess, is the reason I think a lot of Christians are uncomfortable talking about character is they're more worried about somebody getting the theology, like, "Do you understand Jesus died for your sins?" They act like that's the only thing that matters. And I think that if you're talking about character, even somebody that doesn't understand the gospel, because we're created in God's image, we can get the right and wrong in the character issue.

If you tell a young man, "Hey, this is how you behave. This is how you talk to your mother," something inside us responds to that even if we don't get the theological background. And I think we need more of that. We don't always have to dress it up in religious language. That can come with it, that can follow.

But I think we need that because I think there are people—I've seen this in the last few years—people that are just patriotic Americans that I know they don't get the theology, but they get right and wrong. They get sacrificing for what is right. They get standing up against lies. If you get that, you're leaning to the kingdom there. You can't have that in a vacuum.

And I think that the men of the Revolution got that more. They understood that being a man of character matters. And I think somehow we just haven't talked about that as much as we need to. We have to get back to talking about character because to me, Washington is the ultimate example of character.

And what I find funny—and again, when I was doing the research, I had no clue—but the two figures that were more qualified than Washington on paper: General Charles Lee and General Horatio Gates. They were the ones that they're thinking Congress is going to pick me to run the Continental Congress, not going to pick George Washington. "I have more experience than George Washington."

Well, Congress picks Washington, and then Washington proves himself to be the man for the job, mainly because of his character. In other words, the military stuff ends up being less important than the character because he had this ability to withstand suffering and whatever.

And the two guys that I just mentioned, you realize their character was not so good. They were gunning for his job, they were undermining him, they wanted the glory. They wanted the glory for themselves. They were carrying about their reputation and about their careers.

Washington was—he cared about the cause. He had a sense of destiny that, "This is my assignment and I have to do this even if I suffer, whatever." So I just see that played out in those two characters. Both of them get their comeuppance. They totally get humiliated because pursuing their own glory—it's like a movie. You just think, "Well, that guy, it's not going to end well for that guy." And then of course, there's the tragic story of Benedict Arnold.

Allen Jackson: But I didn't know the heroic parts you told. I learned something. Which is what makes it so tragic.

Eric Metaxas: It's kind of like Lucifer. "Yeah, you're so wonderful." And then you think, "Yeah, I'm wonderful. I'm really wonderful. I deserve more credit." Pride goeth before a fall. But the classic case is Benedict Arnold because he was outrageously talented, and he knew it.

To me, that's a character study like I just said. I've got to tell that story because it's so sobering.

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You wrap the book talking about its implications for us now, which I think is so helpful because what this reminds me of is God continues to work through history. We tell it like it's an accident because we're right in the middle of it. But if you get any space at all, you see God working through history. When you read the Bible, you see it, but he's doing it in the 21st century.

And so we want to be people of character. You can have the law of God written in your heart and you can't spell Nebuchadnezzar and you can still do the purposes of God, which is really good to know. And this reminded me of that in such a powerful way, in such an emotive way that it made me want to find the courage we need to engage our culture.

Eric Metaxas: Well, I really do believe that's why the Lord called me to write the book. And I do believe the Lord called me to write the book. I thought that—for me, if I get an idea like I think I'll write a book, I've got to think, "Are there books out there already? Do we need another book?"

And I realized there's tons of books on the Revolution, but there isn't one that tells everything in one book. I said there needs to be a book that tells the whole story and that does not skew it in this secular direction as though, "Well, yeah, it happened."

It's like, no. The men of the Revolution believed this was God's will. They called it the "sacred cause." And they believed that if we don't behave worthy of God in how we fight, we will not win. In other words, they didn't think it's about tactics and about having the bigger army. They knew they didn't have the bigger army. They depended on God.

I write about it—I use their own words—over and over. All of them said it. Washington said it, Samuel Adams said it, John Adams said it. They all knew that if we repent and look to the Lord, that's the only way we could win. Why aren't we teaching that in schools? That's American history. Even if you don't agree with it, that's American history. That's how they looked at this war.

And so we need to know that that's how this nation began: with a covenant relationship that they said we can only win, we can only succeed if we look to the Lord and if the Lord blesses us. That is our history. We simply need to know that. And I think that it's the only way forward for us right now. We need to be inspired by knowing that story.

And I think it's part of the way the enemy works. If we can just get people to forget their history, then we can tell them anything. They'll buy any lie, they'll buy socialism or Marxism. They'll buy that because they don't know the history. They don't know that that's not how you get self-government and liberty.

We all used to know this, as I said, and I think we have generally forgotten it. And then the versions we're getting—like I mentioned Ken Burns's PBS series—that's not going to inspire anybody. I was amazed. That was like if you make a remake of the *Rocky* movie and you come out and you're like, "So who was the hero in that? There were two sides to that story. I don't really know who to root for." That's what the Ken Burns PBS was.

I was blown away. My wife and I just kept looking at each other like, "Wow." And then the heroic stories, Nathan Hale—oh my gosh, one of the greatest heroes in the history of this nation. Every single person needs to know the story of this extraordinary young man of God. What an amazing story. We need to have everybody needs to know his story.

And in the PBS thing, they gave him 10 seconds. They dealt with hours talking about the Native American tribes who allied with the British and all this bizarre peripheral stuff, and then one of these figures, one of the greatest figures of our history, barely mentioned.

Allen Jackson: You gave some quotes from speeches and things written by people who weren't ready to join the Revolution, and they were pretty well-reasoned why they would not encourage the Sons of Liberty to do what they were doing. And I'm reading that and I think it sounds like the current conversations today.

And there's a segment of the evangelical community then that won't engage because they hear those voices saying, "No, we should just go hug the British." "I'd rather serve the tyrant I know than the tyrant I don't know." And I'm thinking, "Oh, I've heard that speech lately."

Eric Metaxas: Well, in the end you'll find out who was right and who was wrong. As I was telling this story, you see a couple of times these people who have a prophetic voice: Patrick Henry. Most people, when he said what he said, they're looking at him like, "What, is he nuts? Slow down. Back it down. You're going too far."

He was exactly correct. He knew, and you can't help but think he's hearing from God. He's saying this stuff, and the common wisdom says, "Oh no, you're a hothead." Same thing with—well, there were a few figures like that. John Adams is like that, that a lot of people they just weren't there yet.

But what we call those people? We call those people leaders. They see what other people don't see and then they rally people to begin to see what they see. They're painting a picture and they're saying, "Do you see this? Do you see this?" And some people will see it and some people won't. And that's that story. Samuel Adams is definitely one of those figures. What a hero.

But yeah, there are a number of them that they see this stuff. And then you get the quote-unquote "moderate voices" like John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. On July 1st, 1776, he's arguing against independence. Strongly arguing against independence at that late moment. The war had already been going on for 14 months. They'd already been fighting and bleeding and dying, and he's still thinking, "No, I think we can patch it up."

Turns out he was wrong. And then there are people like John Adams and others who saw the situation. They called it, and thank God they got the votes. And thank God people like John Dickinson had the wisdom and the humility to go along with the majority even though they didn't see it.

Allen Jackson: But I think that's really important. Because when we read our Bibles, we like to think, "If I was in the middle of that, I'd have been with Moses every day. I'd have been right there with Moses. I got your back."

But the reality is the whole community grumbled their way through that to the point that the overwhelming majority of them didn't get the payoff for the whole Exodus drama. And I think we've got to recognize—because I think many of the people around me are like, "Well, I'll get in when it's abundantly clear what the outcome's going to be and nobody could understand anything except God is doing this."

Well, I'm like, pretty think when the Red Sea parts, you could vote God's doing this. But 72 hours later, they're all grumbling when they get to Marah. And I see so much of that in here. "I'm all in for God today, but on Tuesday."

And that we need one another. I need you to write a book and remind me of stuff that I have read much of before. And we have to have those voices because there's another voice in us that tells us just be chill, take a cruise, you don't want to be one of those.

Eric Metaxas: Well, that's—and listen, let's be clear—that's the voice of the devil. The devil can be moderate when it suits him. That's why we need to hear a sermon at least once a week. We need to be reminded of what we should know but we forget. We need to be reminded and encouraged. That to me is a spiritual truth.

But then when it comes to the story of the American Revolution, as a nation we have to know this stuff. And we're late. This is like somebody who hasn't heard a sermon in a year. Pretty soon you're going to slide off the edge here. You've got to get back to understanding the basics that you have drifted. American culture, we have drifted. We all used to be pretty much on this page.

And so I feel like this is our time to revisit it. This is the 250th. I call it the super-centennial. It's an exciting moment to revisit what happened 250 years ago. And I say that it's kind of like—I say we're in the third existential crisis of our history. The first is the Revolution, the second is Civil War, and the third is now.

And in the second existential crisis, in the Civil War, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes *Paul Revere's Ride*. He writes this beautiful poem to remind people to say let's go back to the Spirit of '76—actually, Spirit of '75—and we need to go back to remember what happened then for now. That was 1860. And that's where I think we are now.

Allen Jackson: But both of those crises were buttressed, preceded by a real period of renewal, awakening, spiritual renewal. And I think if we're going to have an outcome that extends liberty and freedom, we'll have to have a similar renewal.

Eric Metaxas: There's no doubt. And we haven't talked about George Whitefield, but you see the Great Awakening before the Revolution. And I think we're in the middle of that right now. I think it's beginning. I see cultural evidence constantly. Such and such a pop star giving their life to Jesus or being baptized. Ten years ago, that was not happening. This is new. This is in the last five or so years. We're seeing something cooking.

Allen Jackson: I've learned as a pastor there's a tremendous difference in a crowd and a community of faith. When people decide to step out of the crowd and invest their time and their resources, they become a part of a community and it changes their lives. I want to give you that invitation. I'm grateful you're a part of the crowd who watch the ministry. I want to ask you to consider becoming a monthly ministry partner.

I believe if you'll make that regular commitment to what God is doing through this ministry, it'll bring momentum to your spiritual life and it will help us reach more people than we've ever reached with the gospel before. Thank you.

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We always try to wrap this with what can we do beyond just reading this micro-tome.

Eric Metaxas: Well, I say to people I don't care if they read the book, but it wouldn't kill them to buy two or three copies. I really do feel—sometimes you wish you hadn't written the book because I want to force this into the hands of every American who can read or listen to it on audiobook. If you hate to read, get the audio and listen to it. I read the audiobook. I think you don't get extra credit if you read it yourself. If somebody's reading it to you, it's the same thing.

But I honestly believe we must know this. This is not extra credit. This is on the test. If you're an American, you're responsible for this information. So if there's another way people can get it, but I hope I did—as you know, I do this thing called *Socrates in the City*. We did 13 interviews where I interview scholars of the Revolution, many of whose books I used in writing this book to get more.

And if that can whet your appetite or if people have read the book, watch those episodes. This is something we need to marinate in this. We need to know more and more. This is just the beginning. I hope people who read this book will want more and will start getting excited about visiting historic sites and learning about it.

Once you start getting into it, you say, "Man, this is my history. This is our history." It's the next chapter of Acts. We're supposed to be living the new chapter of keeping the Republic. And we have work to do. You can't live in a free country and do nothing. If you do nothing, you won't be free for long. And I think we've been drifting for about as long as we can drift. So I want to get people excited to ask God, "What can I do?"

Allen Jackson: Somebody sent me a video of Paul Harvey this week, a friend. And he was telling the story of the signers of the Declaration and the outcomes of their lives following those events. And it really does not line up. We were told they all did it because they were greedy and selfish.

Eric Metaxas: Oh, yeah. That's another lie. An evil lie. Oh my gosh. So many of these men were men of profound faith. Most of them were men of principle, honor. We owe them a debt. And that's why I say just knowing their names, knowing their stories, we owe them that at least.

To forget it is criminal and sinful. So I keep saying our 250th year, this is the year. Let's go back and let's become a nation that celebrates this history.

Allen Jackson: Your book *Letter to the American Church* was a very timely message. And this feels like the logical next step: to accept that letter. If you make that personal, you need this to give you the background to understand because now you're plotting points and we can get a trajectory for what we could become.

So thank you. It's an enormous amount of work to do something like that. And thank you for investing the time and then getting on the road to go talk to people like me to tell the story over and over again. I trust the seeds you're planting God will honor and we will all get to reap the benefits.

Eric Metaxas: Well, listen, you know it's a battle. The left is not promoting this book. Now this is not some right-wing screed. This is just a book of our history. But there's not piles of this in every bookstore.

Allen Jackson: So Barnes & Noble is not doing this?

Eric Metaxas: Most Barnes & Noble for some reason do not seem to have this book. And this book has been number two on the *New York Times* list twice. It has been on the *New York Times* list near the top six weeks so far. Why are they not—every other bestseller, there's piles when you walk into the store.

Allen Jackson: If you have a bookstore you want to sell popular books, you would think.

Eric Metaxas: So that's another piece of evidence that we are in a war with people that don't like this country, that don't understand what this country is all about. And so we need to be aware.

Allen Jackson: So where are you sending people to find this?

Eric Metaxas: Well, mostly Amazon, but pretty much anywhere you can get a copy. But mostly Amazon is probably the easiest at this point.

Allen Jackson: It's a great book to carry around and impress your friends. This is not a comic book, so yeah, this is a little bit of my light summer reading. Thank you, Eric.

Eric Metaxas: My privilege to be here. Thanks for having me.

Allen Jackson: We have an assignment. We can't just read history; we have to live it. I've lived long enough somebody thinks you are history. And so let's decide we're going to make an impact for the kingdom of God. Culture and Christianity—not optional. If your faith doesn't live outside the church, you don't have one. Enjoy the book.

Thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic, too. If you haven't yet, be sure and subscribe to Allen Jackson Ministries' YouTube channel and follow the *Culture and Christianity* podcast. You can do that on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith. We can change our culture. I'll see you next time.