Reading: Total Truth-Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey

This power-packed book is 396 pages long, filled with historical, philosophical and cultural themes laced in Biblical Worldview discussion, and took me two months to read because I could only read three or four pages at a time without having to set the book down to digest the material. However, in the last 25 years I have not read a book that has had more of an impact on me than Total Truth. It summarizes and brings together the bits and pieces of the Biblical Worldview concept that have been bouncing around inside of me since 1980.

Pearcey's overarching theme is that truth comes with a Capital "T", not a lower-case "t". She exposes the false notion that knowledge is divided into public and private realms. She admonishes Christians to see that Truth pervades every area, every arena, of life, not just the spiritual arena. And she traces the beginning of the slide from capital "T" Truth all the way back to the Great Awakening of the 1740's, where private Christian experience began to move toward the forefront of Western Christianity, ultimately supplanting the historical, time-tested creeds and even the Holy Scriptures as the primary definers and explainers of the faith.

Anyone interested in understanding the power of Worldview should consider a look at this book. I guarantee you that a reading of Pearcey's comprehensive volume will change the way you view Christianity.

Native American Stories

A plethora of material awaits those who enjoy reading. There is much to learn about our nation’s native American heritage. True human drama is often fun, sometimes more fun than fiction. Below are a few of my favorite true stories, characters and sources.

Romance:
Tecumseh and Rebecca Galloway: Who would have thought that the fierce Shawnee leader, the mighty warrior who allied the nations of the mid-west against the European tide of expansion, once fell in love with and nearly married a white woman, the young Rebecca Galloway.

William Clark and Sacajawea: Lewis and Clark received resourceful guidance on their two year trek to the Pacific from this brave, young pregnant woman, daughter of the chief of the Shoshoni nation. Captain William Clark, a married man and Sacajawea, the widow of a scurrilous French trapper, developed a deep respect and profound affection for one another though Clark remained faithful to his wife.

Adventure
Simon Kenton: Born in Fauquier County, Virginia on the western side of Bull Run Mountain, Simon Kenton nearly murdered a man over the love of a woman. He fled to Kentucky where he became a renowned frontiersman, a friend of Daniel Boone and the legendary Cut-ta-ho-tha, feared friend/enemy of the Shawnee.

Blue Jacket: Young Marmaduke van Swearingen pledged to his younger brother Charles that when he became a man he would leave the white world and become an Indian warrior. In 1771 the Shawnees adopted him. They named him Weh-yah-pih-her-sehn-wah or Blue Jacket. He matured into a respected Shawnee leader who fought valiantly in many battles.

George Rogers Clark: Clark, the older brother of William Clark above, and a native of Caroline County, Virginia, is the forgotten hero of the Revolutionary War. Clark and a small band of men single-handedly defeated the British on the western frontier, subduing territory from the eastern edge of Pennsylvania west to Iowa and south to Tennessee while making alliances with countless Indian nations.

Mary Draper Ingels: The pregnant Ingels, captured by the Shawnee, made her daring escape and miraculous journey home through five hundred miles of wooded and unexplored frontier.

Tragedy
Incident at Gnadenhutten: Late in the winter of 1782, ninety-six Delaware Indians, Christians of the Moravian faith, were deceived into capture by soldiers under the command of Colonel David Williamson. Within two days, men, women and children were systematically and brutally murdered, bludgeoned to death with a mallet to the head.

Check out these books. They are some of my favorites:

• The Frontiersman by Allan Eckert
• Follow the River by James Alexander Thom
• Long Knife by James Alexander Thom
• From Sea to Shining Sea by James Alexander Thom
• Sacajawea by Ann Lee Waldo

It's in Our Nation's Soil

Sixty years ago, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and other film-star cowboys galloped across the silver screen killing Indians. Now film producers tell the story from a different point of view. Dances With Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, and many other film and television productions portray frontier expansion in a fresh light. The TBS series, The Native Americans, paints upon a broad canvas, picturing key players, places, battles and tragedies.

But we don’t need film and television to remind us of how intricately our lives are linked to our native American past. Many state, city, town and waterway names find their origin in native tongues. Potomac and Occoquan are two local examples.

Look more closely. We drive Pontiacs and Cherokees. We cut our lawns with mowers powered by Tesumseh engines. Our kids wear Oshkosh jeans. We eat our meals on Oneida dinnerware. We shop at the Waccamaw outlet store. We vacation in our Winnebagos.