By Dr. Joel McDurmon
I had the opportunity last week to speak at American Vision’s Georgia Christian Heritage Day event. The first thing I did (months ago) when preparing for this event was to review, well, Georgia’s Christian Heritage, especially in its earliest period. What I found was that despite some surface references to “Christianity,” some Christians being involved, and some decent motivations in a couple of places, there really isn’t much to thesubstance of Georgia’s Christian Heritage. Instances of the name of Christ (and plenty of preachers) are not hard to find, but a substantial biblical worldview is a whole different story.
This review led to an obviously analogy to today on many fronts, with the message: it’s not enough to have Christians at the helm of government, or to have the name of Christ—“In God We Trust”—written across the front of the institutions. We have to have a biblical worldview in place with biblical law or else liberty will disappear and tyranny will ascend. And the worst of it is, we will have done it in the name of Christ. Worse than a failure, this is blasphemy. It is bearing the Lord’s name in vain, and it makes Him a reproach among the nations.
The whole of my 45 minute talk with a bit more detail than what follows is available in the link below. The text that follows includes just a couple of examples of what I am talking about.
Next to the “city on a hill” motif of the Puritans and Pilgrims in early New England, perhaps no colonial experiment bears surface evidence of “Christian” motivations in its founding more explicitly than the last of the original thirteen, Georgia. One Christian history text relates the “proprietors’ purpose” in the words of one document from the era:
Christianity will be extended by the execution of this design, since the good discipline established by the society will reform the manners of those miserable objects, who shall be by them subsisted, and the example of a whole colony, who shall behave in a just, moral, and religious manner, will contribute greatly towards the conversion of the Indians, and taking off the prejudices received from the profligate lives of such, who have scarce anything of Christian but the name.
The text notes this as proof that Georgia was founded as a “Christian Culture, by Design.” Taken alone, this looks pretty impressive for the cause of Christ. But lest we commit the type of errors for which I criticized David Barton recently, we have to back up and be honest about the bigger picture. When we do so, things begin to change considerably.
Yes, it is true, there are some Christian motivations at the origins of Georgia’s conception. Dr. Thomas Bray, a minister noted for philanthropic work and missions, devoted the later part of his life to the causes of preaching the Gospel among Negro slaves and improving the conditions of the poor, especially debtors in London’s notorious prisons. Bray’s work led to a seminal idea to help these people escape their terrible condition by removing them to a new life in a distant colony. Not a bad idea for a preacher.
Bray’s religious mission work among the jails (“gaols” in the literature of the day) was joined in heart and soul by an energetic and ambitious soldier and member of Parliament, James Edward Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe had a friend who was jailed due to debt, but when he went after a short while to visit him, he found the man dead from small pox—a disease rampant in the harsh conditions of the jails. The visit was an awakening for Oglethorpe who vowed to reform the jails as a result. In no time, he was appointed to a committee in Parliament to study the issue. Quickly, legislation was introduced and passed, freeing tens of thousands of debtors from prison altogether. It was a triumph!
Except, it caused a tremendous social problem. Now London had tens of thousands of hapless, poor, sick, homeless, indebted, former prisoners wandering her streets. Like many political solutions, its unintended consequences caused even more problems and required more attention.
It was at this point that Oglethorpe adopted the theory often attributed to Dr. Bray: to create a colony in America specifically to transport these poor debtors to a new land, thus giving relief to London’s streets and allowing the debtors to start a whole new life free and clear. On top of this, the Trustees of the new colony, unlike those of other colonies, would be purely charitable—not owning property or taking profit in the new colony at all. As a bonus, Negro slavery would be outlawed. All of these things, including the virtuous lives of these transplanted colonists, would become a natural means of evangelism to the Indians as well. The plan looked like the triumph of Dr. Bray’s religious society, and Dr. Bray’s religious mission put to action. Now there’s not a much more openly Christian society than that, is there? This is how the quotation above reads.
The problem is that it turns out that the quotation above is a tiny excerpt from a long piece of promotional literature written for the sole purpose of raising donations for the project. In this literary work—one among several—the uncolonized land of Georgia and the goals for which the Trustees were aiming are spoken of in the most glowing terms possible. So much so it was the eighteenth-century equivalent of a modern luxurious timeshare ad, except without the encumbrances of modern truth-in-advertising laws. And thus there’s so much in our “Christian” version of the history that is left out.
Oglethorpe’s own promotional writing appeared in 1732, but there was already an established precedent of promotional literature in place. As early as 1717, one Sir Robert Montgomery pumped the Carolinas and Georgia as “the most delightful country in the universe.” Oglethorpe picked up this strain. He described the “Fertile mixture” of soil which requires no fertilizer or manure at all, and yet “will produce almost everything in wonderful quantities with very little culture [cultivation],” returning “an hundred fold increase for taking very little pains.” And this was no exaggeration, he assured his readers: Georgia had “such an air and soil can only be fitly describ’d by a poetical pen, because there is but little danger of exceeding the truth.” And Oglethorpe had just the poem from one Waller, ending with the couplet,
Heav’n sure has kept this spot of Earth uncurst,
To shew how all things were created first.
By comparison to one Dr. Burnet’s description of the local climate, someone born in this latitude, Oglethorpe suggested, “has a moral probability of living three hundred years” like in antediluvian times.
Now of course the first irony in all of this is that Oglethorpe had never even visited Georgia yet. He had no idea what it was like. The second irony is less of an irony than a disgrace: the reality of Georgia and the Georgia Project itself was the polar opposite of Oglethorpe’s lavish descriptions.
The Reality
The Real Ends
It’s what else Oglethorpe wrote that truly reveals (as do many other sources) the true nature and intent of this great “Christian” colonization project. There were primarily two real reasons for the project aside from the original suggestion of relieving debtors. The first was to create a military buffer between His majesty’s interests in the Carolinas and His majesty’s enemies: French to the west, Spaniards to the south, and Indians all around. By populating the land south and west of the Carolinas, these enemies would be kept at bay from disturbing trade in those already established but vulnerable colonies. This was hardly a biblical Christian reason to send people overseas (to be glorified human shields, albeit themselves armed). Far from biblical evangelism, this was more like the stratagems of pagan empire. Sure enough, in his promotional literature, Oglethorpe referred not to Scripture but to ancient Rome as his model: this was how the Roman Empire “discharged . . . its ungovernable, distressed multitude . . . into colonies on the frontiers of their empire. ‘Twas by this policy that they elbow’d all the nations around them.” The sentiment was echoed by others.
Secondly, the Georgian colony would feed the crown’s standard mercantilist interest: “We shall be their market for great quantities of raw silk, and perhaps for wine, oyl, cotton, drugs, dying-stuffs, and many other lesser commodities.” At a discount rate to the crown, of course. And, “The raw silk . . . will employ forty of fifty thousand persons in that country.” The silk industry was especially eyed because the hyped sub-tropical climate would be perfect for it, and meanwhile the crown was paying premium rates to foreign countries for this basic necessity of royal living.
But to prevent any fears among potential donors about these surrounding enemies and conditions, Oglethorpe doctored the available maps of the area when he published them in his promotional literature. French settlements to the west were removed, Indian settlements were removed, Spanish-occupied St. Augustine was moved 60 miles further southward down the coast, the Altamaha River (which was to be the southern boundary of the colony) was moved further southward, and a description of the land as “Full of Swamps” was removed entirely. It was an instant Eden with the stroke of an eraser.
Indeed, so central were the interests of state and crown that the religious interests in the colony were essentially buried even before the first boat left. The most powerful member among the Trustees was Lord Percival, upon whom Oglethorpe relied for several acts of persuasion at the higher levels of government. Percival himself wrote to the famous bishop George Berkeley already in 1730 stating that the Georgia idea was “entirely calculated for a secular interest.” In 1734, two years after the affair was underway, he would write again: “our design was no less than to be a barrier to the southern colonies of America, which are in a poor condition to defend themselves.” The religious note had already faded. It had made a useful impetus for a start, and useful propaganda at the beginning of the campaign, but as soon as the religious right of the day cast their votes and sent their donations, their causes were largely cast to the wayside.
The Real Recruits
Not only did the ends shift per the state’s designs, but so did the personnel. Here is where the old idea of Georgia as a debtors’ colony proves to have been a phantom, and later a myth. Few if any debtors were ever actually sent. Out of 2,122 settlers who were sent over on the charitable contributions during the Trustee period (1732–1751), the number of debtors appears to have been no higher than about twelve. This was already the design of Oglethorpe himself, despite any public ideas to the contrary, as early as 1731. It was made explicit in his 1732 promotions, where he made an overt decision not to focus on the released debtors but instead to help those “unfortunate” ones who were of “reputable families, and of liberal, or at least, easy education.”
Why such a change in what seemed to be most fundamental element in the design of the Georgia plan—to relieve the debtors of London, and London of her debtors? When you consider the true goals of the colony, it makes perfect sense. If your design is to create a military buffer and a mercantilist colony, do you really want to send over the poor, huddled masses? Hardly. You want the skilled, educated, “poor” who can succeed in self-defense and industry. You want people with skills and initiative who will work and produce. Looking at their original stated group—debtors and failures—the Trustees decided to alter their plan. Thus began a lengthy program of placing the thousands of applicants under intense and detailed scrutiny for skills, health, morals, and work habits. In the end, on that first boat there were butchers, bakers, candle makers, merchants, farmers, smiths, trades of all sorts, and—despite literal promises to the contrary—two lawyers (both aptly named “Will” ).[1]
The Real Rules
Far from being ushered into a new life of paradise and prosperity, the Georgia colonists were thrust under a “Nanny State.” Whatever promises may have been given or perceived on the front end, the real rules for the colony were socialistic to the core, and dictatorial: there was barely any resemblance to private property, and no representative assembly for the people in any branch of government. All power and all laws were dictated by the absentee Trustees, and enforced by Oglethorpe and their agents.
Land use regulations limited individual holdings to 500 acres, with each family receiving a grant of 50 acres. Parcels could not be divided, sold, rented, traded, mortgaged, or willed; they could be inherited only by a single son who promised to continue working the land. Otherwise, parcels reverted to the trustees. Daughters could not inherit at all.
But the land was parceled out by lot, haphazardly, randomly. As a result, many families were stuck with unworkable lands and swamps. One group of citizens complained in 1738 that they had been assigned an infertile pine barren. The Trustees took up their petition in London at Oglethorpe’s house:
He said he knew the land at Hampstead perfectly well, and it was indeed most of it pine barren, but with pains might be rendered very fruitful as other pine land had been rendered by others; that if these people were humoured in this, there would not be a man in the Colony but would desire to remove to better land, who yet have at present no thoughts of it. That the disorder this would occasion in the Colony is unexpressible. That we ought to consider that if these men were allowed to remove to a new land, they would expect a new allowance of provision for a year, which we are not in a condition to give, and the same would be expected by others.[2]
There was total rationing of all of aspects of life by the Trustees. They published “Rules for the year 1735” outlining the rations:
They will give to such persons as they send upon the charity, To every man, a watch-coat; a musket and bayonet; a hatchet; a hammer; a handsaw; a shod shovel or spade; a broad hoe; a narrow hoe; a gimlet; a drawing knife; an iron pot, and a pair of pot-hooks; a frying pan; and a public grindstone to each ward or village. Each working man will have for his maintenance in the colony for one year (to be delivered in such proportions, and at such times as the Trust shall think proper) 312 lbs. of beef or pork; 104 lbs. of rice; 104 lbs. of Indian corn or peas; 104 lbs. of flour; 1 pint of strong beer a day to a man when he works and not otherwise; 52 quarts of molasses for brewing beer; 16 lbs. of cheese; 12 lbs. of butter; 8 oz. of spice; 12 lbs. of sugar; 4 gallons of vinegar; 24 lbs. of salt; 12 quarts of lamp oil, and 1 lb. spun cotton; 12 lbs. of soap.[3]
Of course, this was total fantasy land. How in the world could any man be expected to get by on only one pint of beer per working day? On the serious side, one modern writer looking back from the vantage point of free markets and private property rightly condemned the whole experiment as the failure of a “planned economy.”[4]
The issue of representation was not addressed until after continual criticism and complaint, in 1751. Even then the Board only caved because they were about to give up the colony to the crown, and feared it would be absorbed into the Carolinas if it did not have its own legislative body. Until this time, food, tools, beer and all other aspects of life were completely subject to the whim of the Board. This was so much the case that Thomas Causton, official storekeeper and de facto governor in the absence of Oglethorpe said that the colonists “had neither lands, rights, or possessions; that the trustees gave and that the trustees could freely take away.”
The Real Outcomes
Instead of an unspoiled, “uncurst” paradise, the colonist landed amidst swamps, pine barrens, mosquitoes, disease. The mortality rate matched: 29 of first 114 settlers died in first year. Over first ten years, 47 of this same original group died and 20 left for South Carolina or back home to England.
The soil was poor, and crops reflected it. This was especially true of the vaunted silk industry which was a joke from the start, and which the government never stopped trying to coerce into prosperity in some way or other. For starters, the majority of the necessary mulberry trees in the land were of the wrong species to prosper silk worms—a detail either missed, ignored, or misrepresented in the promotional literature. As a result, in just one particularly difficult year, 1742, half of the entire silkworm population died. Despite being pushed and promoted to the bitter end, the silk industry never met expectations.
Between the misrepresentations of the land in the promotional literature, and the dismal reality on the ground in Georgia from 1732 forward, a strongly vocal minority rose up and began to demand changes from the Trustees. These “Malcontents” were represented among others by Patrick Tailfer, who wrote in response to Oglethorpe. Whereas the latter’s promotional purported to describe A New and Accurate Account of the Provinces of South Carolina and Georgia(1732), Tailfer provided an exposé of the real truth: A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia (1741). His work ended with the following summary of criticisms:
1. Representing the Climate, Soil, &c. of Georgia in false and too flattering Colours. . . .
2. Restricting the Tenure of Lands from a Fee simple to Tail-Male, cutting off Daughters and all other Relations.
3. Restraining the Proprietor from selling, disposing of, or leasing any Possession.
4. Restricting too much the Extent of Possessions; it being impossible that fifty Acres of good Land, much less Pine Barren, could maintain a white Family.
5. Laying the Planter under a Variety of Restraints in clearing, fencing, planting, &c. which was impossible to be complied with.
6. Exacting a much higher Quit-Rent than the richest Grounds in North-America can bear.
7. But chiefly the Denying the Use of Negroes, and persisting in such Denial after, by repeated Applications, we had humbly remonstrated the Impossibility of making Improvements to any Advantage with white Servants.
8. Denying us the, Privilege of being judged by the Laws of our Mother Country; and subjecting the Lives and Fortunes of all People in the Colony, to one Person or Set of Men, who assumed the Privilege, under the Name of a Court of Chancery, of Acting according to their own Will and Fancy.
9. General Oglethorpe’s taking upon him to nominate Magistrates, appoint Justices of the Peace, and to do many other such Things, without ever exhibiting to the People any legal Commission or Authority for so doing.
10. Neglecting the proper Means for Encouraging the Silk and Wine-Manufactures; and disposing of the liberal Sums contributed by the Publick, and by private Persons, in such Ways and Channels as have been of little or no Service to the Colony.
11. Misapplying or Keeping up Sums of Money which have been appointed for particular Uses, such as Building a Church, &c. several Hundreds of Pounds Sterling (as we are inform’d) having been lodged in Mr. Oglethorpe’s Hands for some Years by past, for that Purpose, and not one Stone of it yet laid.
12. Assigning certain fix’d Tracts of Land to those who came to settle in the Colony, without any regard to the Quality of the Ground, Occupation, Judgment, Ability or Inclination of the Settler, &c. &c. &c.
Tailfer concluded,
By these and many other such Hardships, the poor Inhabitants of Georgia are scatter’d over the Face of the Earth; her Plantation a Wild; her Towns a Desert; her Villages in Rubbish; her Improvements a By-Word, and her Liberties a Jest: An Object of Pity to Friends, and of Insult, Contempt and Ridicule to Enemies.
In the end, this was so much the case that one of the most eager among the religious proponents, Thomas Coram (today known for a founding a charitable hospital in London), gave up on the project and quit attending Board meetings after only a few years. He complained immediately after the 1735 rules were announced, particularly against the disinheritance of daughters, but also about what he called an “arbitrary Military Government.” He was even more incensed when the usual reference to “religious uses” for the colony was removed from the Board meeting minutes in 1736. At this point he quit attending, and after only a brief appearance of renewed hope after the Malcontents in 1741, he abandoned the meetings altogether.
The Great Religious Facade
But by far the worst part in all of this was the role played by the London preachers. Despite the terrible conditions, the lies and misleading, the tyranny, and the loss of nearly all religious influence in the colony, these preachers stood up and continued the Trustees’ party line with full apologetic gusto. The Georgia Project was nearly heaven on earth, and anyone who said otherwise was an irreligious scoundrel!
Every year the Trustees sponsored an Anniversary Sermon at their meetings. The preacher was almost always an Anglican bishop or other prominent clergyman. Their sermons were generally exhortations to the Christian living, but also contained plenty of pro-establishment propaganda designed to be turned into further promotional literature and distributed. As such, the pro-Trustee propaganda was prominent. Some compared Georgia to the Promised Land. George Harvest in 1749 compared the Trustees to Moses and Joshua. John Burton likened them to Abraham. In 1738, as the Malcontents issues began to rise to the fore, and thus the vast extent of the true conditions in Georgia came to be known, Phillip Bearcroft nevertheless called Georgia a “rising State” where the colonists “enjoy themselves” under the “happy influence of this Agrarian law.” In 1741, Edmund Bateman claimed that it was “easier to grow silk” in Georgia “than any place he knew of”—which raises the question of how many places he knew much about to begin with.
All of these preachers had long since been skilled in political pamphleteering. As such, when the Malcontents’ issue reached the public, they played the role of the Trustees’ bulldogs. William Best in 1742 called the Malcontents men of “an idle disposition, or a mutinous spirit” motivated by “irreligion and rebellion.” Thomas Francklin in 1750 called the continuing critics “enemies of pubic spirit, the foes of religion, and mankind.”
And, of course, the irony resounds once again when we learn that, like Oglethorpe before, not one of these preachers had ever visited Georgia.
Instead of any biblical worldview and real mission for Christian society, these preachers merely put their religious stamp upon whatever the Trustees said and did. In short, despite the near-Satanic nature of the social theory, government, and markets in Georgia, the paid preachers promoted a Christian façade to the project to help it maintain public approval. Thus in 1734, the preacher boasted of Georgia as a land of “full and free toleration . . . [with] Christianity . . . interwoven into civil government.” And yet, rather than Biblical law or explicitly Christian principles, the sermons from Samuel Smith and Robert Warren, for example, appealed with Oglethorpe to the population relocation efforts of ancient Rome to support the defensive purposes of colonization. In 1743, just off the height of the Malcontents’ revelations of lies and tyranny, James King preached that the Georgia Project “may humbly presume upon God’s particular protection.” It seemed as if the preachers existed only to give religious authority to what the 1735 Rules had assured the colonists: “The Board will always do what is right, and the people should have confidence in us.”
Lessons
The Georgia Trustee experiment was such a failure that the Board didn’t even fulfill the original 20-year charter. In the nineteenth year, problems mounted to such a head that the Trustees gave the whole project over to the crown. Things almost immediately improved, as property restrictions were relaxed and further normalized, and markets were opened more broadly. One scholar notes, “The end of economic planning brought prosperity to Georgia. By 1775, the population had increased eight-fold compared with 1752; imports had increased eight-fold and exports thirty-four-fold compared with 1753.” ((Brian Summers, “The Planned Economy of Georgia: 1732–1752,” The Freeman 26/9 (September 1976) http://bit.ly/QFCsdq.)) As such, early Georgia is reminiscent of the first pilgrim colony, which attempted to set up communal property. The difference was that in Plymouth they got the hint after only a year or two of failure; in Georgia—suffering under a much more vastly bureaucratic system—it took 19 years of suffering, government intervention, and experimentation before they gave up.
In terms of modern day lessons, the economic principles still stand. A planned economy will always fail, socialism will always bring loss and suffering, regulation will always hinder rather than help the larger economy, and total government will always squeeze the life and joy out of society. But the spiritual and institutional lessons speak the loudest: if preachers do not seek the truth and preach against socialism and tyranny in all its forms, then not only can we not presume upon God’s blessing, we can expect His judgment. When preachers refuse to preach the truth, but instead cozy up as the apologists for the establishment party line, we can expect to see the influence of true religion dwindle and society suffer. And worse, as preachers exalt ungodly principles, ungodly leaders, and pagan theories all in the name of Christ and true religion, we can only determine them guilty of blasphemy, and expect God’s judgment for bearing His name in vain.
Further, as Christians continue to lend their support to wily politicians and parties, believing the vaunted promises made for social conservatism and religious values—promises made and rarely acted upon for decades, then we can only find ourselves in the most ridiculous of positions:
1. “Fooled again” as one friend says, and I append, “and again, and again, and again.” Trusting in men will always land us in trouble with God, especially when they’re men who do not make the crown rights of Jesus a first priority, but instead have multiple ulterior motives related to personal gain, ideology, cronyism, and fame. The remedy here is not to trust in men or men’s promises. If a leader has not performed faithfully in the past, or has rejected biblical law, then there’s no reason to expect they will change anytime soon. Personally, I believe that even if he publicly repents and changes his mind, he should be expected to step aside for some time to prove his faithfulness to his new mindset in the family, church, and private sector before being entrusted to public office again.
2. The façade of Christianity: simply put, as stated earlier, it will never do to have the name of Christ written on the surface of things if the substance does not honor His Law. It will never do to have the Ten Commandments posted in the court house if those laws are not in the law books. It will not do to have “In God we Trust” on currency that is not honest money, but instead is left to elite bankers to devalue continually at whim. It will not do to have prayer in schools that are founded on compulsion and coercive taxation, an unbiblical socialistic model. It will not do to the name “God” in a national Pledge that does not honor biblical social and political theory. It will not do to have “our Lord” written on the very Constitution when that document empowers government to confiscate private property, take eminent domain, if it decides it is profitable for the State to do so. It will not do in a thousand instances for us to place the name of Christ upon a system of unbiblical laws and morals. Not only will it no do, it is blasphemy, and it will be our undoing.
3. Compromise: as we seek in the long term to gain some ground for the cause of Christ, we will continually be tempted to gain something that we can call progress first, and then call it a gain for Christ. In this endeavor, we gradually lower our standards so that we can claim that first gain. Over time, we find ourselves so far from promoting biblical law that we may even appeal to pagan Rome, or the modern equivalents, in order to justify the goodness and reasonableness of what we have called progress.
One of the greatest of these temptations is personal prosperity. The postmillennial mind is particularly susceptible to this: when once we begin to experience personal, individual wealth, we can easily confuse this with postmillennial social progress. But instead of channeling that wealth into true kingdom advancement, we then begin to fight to keep the conditions in place which maintain that personal income, even if it requires compromises in our teachings or emphases, or even simple silence on parts of our message. When it is profitable to do so, we tend to neglect the unpopular parts of Christ’s message, and neglect to paint our heroes warts and all, because doing so would alienate our business or our more general audience. Over time, such compromises can—and have many times in history—changed a formerly devout man of God into that empty-souled “rich fool” building bigger barns for himself when he is called to account (Luke 12:13–21). The remedy here is to stand on principle. Stay grounded in the Word, particularly biblical law, and to find ways to channel our gifts back into kingdom transformation. Take dominion over the wealth rather than letting the wealth take dominion over you and lead you into compromises.
4. Presuming upon God’s blessing: We are prone, sometimes, to worship not God Himself but instead the phrase “God bless America.” But only God is sacred, the phrase is not, nor is the country per se. We only receive God’s blessing when we He gives us grace and we humble ourselves before Him. There is no other reason. Many conservatives were outraged when Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright uttered the alternative, “God damn America!” And considering his liberation theology and reason for saying this, we were right to be repulsed. But it is by no means out of the realm of possibility that American could fall under the damnation, curse, and judgment of God. And I dare say that to automatically presume upon God’s blessings for any number of allegedly patriotic reasons is to take the first step towards that judgment—to presume to pronounce God’s determinations for Him, that is, to play God.
This is especially true when, like the Georgia experiment, the name of Christ is here and there on the surface of our national and patriotic doings, but underneath we are full of socialistic schemes, corruptions, dishonest money, and a whole host of other decidedly unbiblical social constructs. There is simply no way we can presume upon God’s blessings in a land of dishonest money and dishonest gain, let alone the death of millions of babies and more—both things, by the way, that the Bible calls by the same name, “abominations.”
We must instead fight against all of these problems, and the only way to do so is to continue to stand upon principle, to preach biblical law, and live our own lives in as disciplined a manner as possible according that principle, and to demand such a firm stand on principle from our ecclesiastical and governmental leaders. Anything less, and we are not trying our best to exalt Christ in society. Anything less, and we are compromising to the same degree.
Endnotes:- Or, “Bill” would work as well. [↩]
- Quoted in Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Random House, 1958), 89–90. [↩]
- Boorstin, 87. [↩]
- Brian Summers, “The Planned Economy of Georgia: 1732–1752,” The Freeman 26/9 (September 1976) http://bit.ly/QFCsdq. [↩]
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