American Minute
with
Bill Federer
On APRIL 16, 1859, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville died.
After nine months of traveling the United States, he wrote Democracy in America in 1835, which has been described as "the most comprehensive...analysis of character and society in America ever written."
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:
"Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention...
In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions.
But in America I found they were intimately united."
De Tocqueville continued:
"The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other...
They brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion."
In Book Two of Democracy in America, de Tocqueville wrote:
"Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America...
In the United States...Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
He drafted the Declaration of Independence, was Governor of Virginia and founded the University of Virginia.
As the 3rd U.S. President, he approved the Louisiana Purchase and had Lewis and Clark explore it.
He sent the Marines to stop the Muslim Barbary Pirates of Tripoli.
His name was Thomas Jefferson, born APRIL 13, 1743.
Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC are his words:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty.
Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."
In his Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786, Jefferson wrote:
"Almighty God hath created the mind free...
All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments...tend only to begat habits of hypocrisy...and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone."
In his 2nd Inaugural, Jefferson wrote:
"I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Noah Webster first published his Dictionary on APRIL 14, 1828.
This 26-year project with 30,000 new definitions, standardized spelling and gave American English its identity.
Proving unprofitable, the rights were purchased after his death by George and Charles Merriam.
In the preface of his original edition, Noah Webster wrote:
"In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed...
No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."
Noah Webster concluded:
"To that great and benevolent Being...who has borne me and my manuscripts in safety across the Atlantic, and given me strength and resolution to bring the work to a close, I would present the tribute of my most grateful acknowledgments."
Noah Webster's Dictionary defined "Property" as:
"The exclusive right of possessing, enjoying and disposing of a thing; ownership. In the beginning of the world, the Creator gave to man dominion over the earth...It is one of the greatest blessings of civil society that the property of citizens is well secured."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Millions of people in 91 countries are helped by The Salvation Army, founded by William Booth, who was born APRIL 10, 1829.
William Booth began by ministering to the poor, drunk and outcast.
He fought to end teenage prostitution in England.
Awarded an honorary degree from Oxford, Booth traveled the United States, met President Theodore Roosevelt and opened a session of the United States Senate with prayer.
William Booth wrote:
"While there is a drunkard left, while there is a lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God-I'll fight! I'll fight to the very end."
Years after his death, William Booth's daughter, Evangeline, became their new leader.
President Franklin Roosevelt sent her a telegram, September 4, 1934, saying:
"Please accept my sincere congratulations on your election as General of the Salvation Army throughout the world.
In these troubled times it is particularly important that the leadership of all good forces shall work for the amelioration of human suffering and for the preservation of the highest spiritual ideals."
FDR concluded
"Your efforts as Commander-in-Chief of the Salvation Army...have earned the gratitude and admiration of millions of your countrymen."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Born in a slave hut APRIL 5, 1856, was Booker T. Washington.
In dire poverty after the Civil War, he moved to West Virginia to work in a salt furnace and coal mine. At age 16 he walked 500 miles to attend Hampton Institute in Virginia and later Wayland Baptist Seminary in Washington, DC.
He taught in West Virginia until he founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he recruited George Washington Carver as a professor.
At his death, the school had 1,500 students and a faculty of 200 teaching 38 trades.
The first African American to have his image on a U.S. coin and postage stamp, Booker T. Washington wrote in Up From Slavery, 1901:
"If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian."
Of his speech in Atlanta, 1895, Booker T. Washington wrote:
"The afternoon papers had forecasts of the next days' proceedings in flaring headlines...I did not sleep much that night...
The next morning...I also kneeled down and asked God's blessing...
I make it a rule never to go before an audience...without asking the blessing of God upon what I want to say."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Henry Opukahai'a was an orphan raised by his uncle to be a pagan priest but he became disillusioned with rituals and chants and left Hawaii for New Englandwith a friend, Thomas Hopu.
They were befriended by Yale students and became the first Hawaiian Christians.
Henry studied Greek and Hebrew and translated parts of the Bible.
In his memoirs, which sold 500,000 copies after his death in 1818, Henry Opukahai'a wrote:
"My poor countrymen, without knowledge of the true God, and ignorant of the future world, have no Bible to read, no Sabbath."
This inspired Thomas Hopu and Hiram Bingham to be the first missionaries to Hawaii, arriving MARCH 31, 1820.
Devising a 12-letter alphabet, they translated the Bible, set up a school, a church, a newspaper and convinced women to wear dresses.
Idolatry and human sacrifice had previously been ended by King Kamehameha II and his Queen mother Ka'ahumanu.
Just prior to her death, Queen Ka'ahumanu, who had helped spread the Gospel in the islands, was presented with the newly completed version of the New Testament in the Hawaiian language.
Her last words were: "I am going where the mansions are ready."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
During the Civil War, after issuing his Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln set a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, MARCH 30, 1863, stating:
"It is the duty of nations...to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins...with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy...
The awful calamity of civil war...may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins."
Lincoln continued:
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven...
We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God.
We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."
Lincoln concluded:
"Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for...forgiveness."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Tenth President John Tyler was born MARCH 29, 1790.
He was the first Vice-President ever to assume the Presidency when William Henry Harrison died after only one month in office.
To mourn Harrison's death, President John Tyler's first act was to proclaim a National Day of Fasting and Prayer, in which he stated:
"When a Christian people feel themselves to be overtaken by a great public calamity, it becomes them to humble themselves under the dispensation of Divine Providence, to recognize His righteous government over the children of men...and to supplicate His merciful protection for the future."
In his 2nd Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1842, President John Tyler stated:
"The schoolmaster and the missionary are found side by side." In his 4th Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1844, President John Tyler stated:
"The guaranty of religious freedom, of the freedom of the press, of the liberty of speech, of the trial by jury, of the habeas corpus...will be enjoyed by millions yet unborn....
Our prayers should evermore be offered up to the Father of the Universe for His wisdom to direct us in the path of our duty so as to enable us to consummate these high purposes."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
On MARCH 28, 1885, the Salvation Army was organized in the United States.
It was begun in England by "General" William Booth in 1865, who conducted meetings among the poor in London's East End slums.
Originally named the Christian Mission, he designed uniforms and adopted a semi-military system of leadership.
On December 1, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson remarked to the Salvation Army in New York:
"For a century now, the Salvation Army has offered food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless-in clinics and children's homes, through disaster relief, in prison and welfare work, and a thousand other endeavors.
In that century you have proved time and again the power of a handshake, a meal, and a song.
But you have not stopped there. You have demonstrated also the power of a great idea."
President Lyndon Johnson continued:
"The voice of the Salvation Army has reminded men that physical well-being is just not enough; that spiritual rebirth is the most pressing need of our time and of every time; that the world cannot be changed unless men change.
That voice has been clear and courageous-and it has been heard.
Even when other armies have disbanded, I hope that this one will still be on the firing line."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Richard Allen was born to slave parents in Philadelphia and sold with his family to a plantation in Dover, Delaware.
With the permission of his master, he began attending the Methodist meetings and learned to read and write.
Richard Allen was converted at age 16 and is said to have worked harder to prove that Christianity did not make slaves worse servants.
Richard Allen then invited a minister to visit and preach to his master, resulting in his master's conversion after hearing that on the Day of Judgment slaveholders would be "weighed in the balance and found wanting."
His repentant master made arrangements for Richard, now 26, to become free.
Richard Allen became a licensed exhorter and founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Their first church building was dedicated in 1794 by America's first Methodist Bishop, the circuit-riding preacher Francis Asbury.
By the time of Richard Allen's death, MARCH 26, 1831, the African Methodist Episcopal Church had grown to over 10,000 members. Richard Allen stated:
"This land, which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and Gospel is free."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
William Jay, son of the First Supreme Court Chief Justice, helped found New York City's Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.
His son, John Jay, was manager of New York Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society in 1834.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story helped establish the illegality of the slave trade in the 1844 Amistad case.
Salmon P. Chase, appointed Chief Justice by Lincoln, defended so many escaped slaves in his career he was nicknamed "Attorney-General of Fugitive Slaves."
Cassius Marcellus Clay, diplomat to Russia for Lincoln and Grant, founded the anti-slavery journal True American in 1845 and helped found the Republican party in 1854.
Rufus King, born MARCH 24, 1755, was one of the youngest signers of the U.S. Constitution, only 32 years old.
A Harvard graduate, Rufus King was an aide to General Sullivan during the Revolutionary War.
Rufus King later served as U.S. Minister to England and was a Senator from New York.
In a speech made before the Senate at the time Missouri was petitioning for statehood, Rufus King stated:
"I hold that all laws or compacts imposing any such condition as slavery upon any human being are absolutely void because they are contrary to the law of nature, which is the law of God."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Britain imposed the 1764 Currency Act, 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act, 1765 Quartering Act, 1766 Declaratory Act, 1767 Townshend Act, 1773 Tea Act, 1774 Boston Port Act, 1774 Justice Act, 1774 Massachusetts Government Act, 1774 Quartering Act, 1774 Quebec Act, and 1775 Proclamation of Rebellion.
On MARCH 23, 1775, Patrick Henry spoke to the 2nd Virginia Convention, which was meeting in Richmond's St. John's Church due to British hostilities:
"I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery...
We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated...We have prostrated ourselves before the throne...
Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence."
Patrick Henry continued:
"There is a just God who presides over the destines of nations...who will raise up friends to fight our battle for us.
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave...
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
On MARCH 22, 1758, Princeton University President Jonathan Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation.
Valedictorian of his class at Yale, Jonathan Edwards' preaching began the Great Awakening, a revival so widespread history credits it with uniting the colonies prior to the Revolution.
Of the awakening, Ben Franklin wrote:
"It was wonderful to see...From being thoughtless or indifferent...it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in...every street."
Jonathan Edwards' grandson was Yale President Timothy Dwight.
On July 4, 1798, Timothy Dwight explained how Voltaire's atheism inspired the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, 1793-1794, where 40,000 people were beheaded:
"The...ends proposed by the Illuminati...are the overthrow of religion, government and human society...Murder, butchery and war...are declared by them to be completely justifiable...
No villainy...can be named which was not vindicated...Satanic lips polluted the pages of God...inundated the country with...immorality...
Where religion prevails, Illumination cannot make disciples, a French Directory cannot govern, a nation cannot be made slaves."
Timothy Dwight concluded:
"To destroy us therefore...our enemies must first...seduce us from the house of God."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Johann Sebastian Bach was born MARCH 21, 1685.
By age 10 his parents had died.
At 18, Bach was a church organist, followed by positions in royal courts.
Once Bach was imprisoned because a duke did not want him employed elsewhere.
Widowed with 7 children, he remarried and had 13 more.
Considered the "master of masters," Johann Sebastian Bach's works include Passion According to St. Matthew, and Jesus, Meine Freude (Jesus, My Joy!).
Johann Sebastian Bach stated:
"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not true music but a diabolical bawling and twanging."
On February 22, 1990, President George H.W. Bush stated:
"The Bible has had a critical impact upon the development of Western civilization. Western literature, art, and music are filled with images and ideas that can be traced to its pages."
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in McCollum v. Board of Education, 1948:
"It would not seem practical to teach either practice or appreciation of the arts if we are to forbid exposure of youth to any religious influences.
Music without sacred music would be incomplete, even from a secular point of view."
American Minute with Bill Federer
70-years-old, he visited his friend William Worth one evening, ate some milk and bread, read out loud from the Bible, laid down on the floor to sleep and never woke up.
This was how John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died on MARCH 18, 1845.
Johnny Appleseed's father, Nathaniel, was a Minuteman who fought the British at Concord in 1775.
Johnny Appleseed collected seeds from apple cider presses in western Pennsylvania and planted nurseries from the Alleghenies to central Ohio, giving thousands of seedlings to westward bound pioneers.
He lived at harmony with Indians, bringing them medicinal plants.
During the War of 1812, Johnny Appleseed heard the British had incited an Indian attack, so he ran 30 miles from Mansfield to Mount Vernon, Ohio, to warn settlers.
Bare foot, wearing a mush pan over his eccentric long hair and an old coffee sack over his shoulders, Johnny Appleseed had a unique devotion to nature and the Bible.
He called an apple blossom a "living sermon from God" and often quoted the Sermon on the Mount.
Poet William Henry Venable wrote:
"Remember Johnny Appleseed -
All ye who love the apple -
He served his kind by word and deed -
In God's grand greenwood chapel."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Called the "Chief Architect of the Constitution," he wrote many of the Federalist Papers which helped convince States to ratify the Constitution.
He introduced the First Amendment in the first session of Congress.
This was James Madison, born MARCH 16, 1751.
During the War of 1812, Madison proclaimed two National Days of Prayer, 1812 and 1813.
Then the British marched on Washington, D.C., citizens evacuated, along with President and Dolly Madison.
On August 25, 1814, as the British burned the White House, Capitol and public buildings, dark clouds began to roll in.
A tornado sent debris flying, blew off roofs and knocked chimneys over on top of British troops.
Two cannons were lifted off the ground and dropped yards away.
A British historian wrote:
"More British soldiers were killed by this stroke of nature than from all the firearms the American troops had mustered."
British forces fled in confusion and rains extinguished the fires.
Madison proclaimed a National Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting & Prayer to Almighty God on November 16, 1814.
Two weeks after the War ended, Madison proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving & Devout Acknowledgment to Almighty God, March 4, 1815.
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
On MARCH 15, 1984, the Senate voted down voluntary prayer in public schools. President Reagan said:
"I am deeply disappointed that, although a majority of the Senate voted for it, the school prayer amendment fell short."
On September 25, 1982, Ronald Reagan said:
"Unfortunately, in the last two decades we've experienced an onslaught of such twisted logic that if Alice were visiting America, she might think she'd never left Wonderland.
We're told that it somehow violates the rights of others to permit students in school who desire to pray to do so.
Clearly this infringes on the freedom of those who choose to pray, the freedom taken for granted since the time of our Founding Fathers."
Reagan continued:
"To prevent those who believe in God from expressing their faith is
an outrage...
The relentless drive to eliminate God from our schools...should be stopped."
Ronald Reagan said February 25, 1984:
"Sometimes I can't help but feel the First Amendment is being turned on its head."
Reagan told the Alabama Legislature, March 15, 1982:
"The First Amendment was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values;
it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Born in Germany MARCH 14, 1879, he began teaching himself calculus at age 14.
With a doctorate from the University of Zurich, he wrote papers on electromagnetic energy, relativity, and statistical mechanics.
He predicted a ray of light from a distant star would appear to bend as it passed near the Sun.
When an eclipse confirmed this, the London Times headline ran November 7, 1919,
"Revolution in science-New theory of the Universe-Newtonian ideas overthrown."
This was Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein.
Einstein's first visit to the U.S. was to raise funds for Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
On his 3rd visit, 1932, he took a post at Princeton.
When Nazis took over Germany, Albert Einstein stayed in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940.
Einstein's theory of relativity is the basis for applying atomic energy.
Einstein's warning that Nazis could create an atom bomb led FDR to set up the Manhattan Project.
Three years before Einstein died, he was asked to be Israel's 2nd President, but declined due to age.
The periodic table's 99th element, discovered shortly after his death in 1955, was named "einsteinium".
Princeton University's Fine Hall has inscribed Albert Einstein's words:
"God is clever, but not dishonest."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
Susan B. Anthony, whose face is on a U.S. dollar coin, died MARCH 13, 1906.
Raised a Quaker, her father owned a cotton mill and refused to buy cotton from farmers who owned slaves. Susan B. Anthony's religious upbringing instilled in her the concept that every one is equalbefore God and motivated her to crusade for freedom for slaves and a woman's right to vote.
Opposing liquor, drunkenness and abortion, Susan encountered mobs, armed threats, objects thrown at her and was hung in effigy.
After the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony worked hard for the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
She succeeded in having women admitted to the University of Rochester and was arrested for voting in the 1872 Presidential Election.
Fourteen years after her death, women won the right to vote.
Quoted in The Revolution, July 1869, Susan B. Anthony stated:
"I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder...No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed.
It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who...drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
26-year-old William Penn received from King Charles II the charter to Pennsylvania on MARCH 10, 1681, as repayment of a debt owed to his deceased father Admiral Sir William Penn, who captured Jamaica and defeated the Dutch navy.
A student at Oxford, William Penn was expelled for having his own prayer services in his dorm room instead of attending the Anglican chapel.
Penn converted to Quakerism and was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
His colony was a "holy experiment" for persecuted Europeans, one of the few original colonies to accept Mennonites, Amish, Catholics and Jews.
Emphasizing his plan of Christian tolerance, William Penn named the city "Philadelphia," Greek for "Brotherly Love."
History records that since William Penn insisted on treating the Delaware Indians honestly, paying a fair sum for the land, Philadelphia was spared the Indian attacks and scalpings that other colonial settlements experienced.
Before arriving, William Penn wrote to the Delaware chiefs:
"My Friends, There is one...God...and He hath made...the king of the country where I live, give...unto me a great province therein, but I desire to enjoy it with your...consent, that we may always live together as...friends."
American Minute
