In God We Don't Trust
It's a good thing author David Bercot was not born in 1730. He could very well be sporting some chicken feathers by now. I mean, you don t tell American patriots that they are really rebellious rabble rousers who should quit their whining about paying a three cents tax on their cup of tea and get back to work. Like, you shouldn t expect to tell them that without getting tarred and feathered and driven out of town. Or, perhaps, even lynched.But Bercot raises his voice and makes a bold statement in his latest book,In God We Don t Trust. He has the audacity to say that, even though our US coins state otherwise, the United States of America was not founded on trust in God. So it is David Bercot against millions of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters ... not to mention the millions of paper bills that make up our United States currency. Can so much money be wrong?But more important than disproving a slogan pressed into every penny of our financial system, Bercot has a greater foe to face: Professing Christians in the United States of America are determined to prove that our nation was built upon trust in God. In fact, they are trying to teach your children that, by means of school history books.So, the battle is not merely the correct historical facts. The battle is about how you and your children view the mixture between faith and politics. And David Bercot is asking to get himself tarred and feathered. He is adamant: The United States of America was not built on trust in God.What is trust in God ?Bercot doesn t beat around the bush. "Trust means obedience." Notice those quote marks? That is because those words are pulled straight from the book. In fact, they are a chapter subheading. To trust God means to do what He says. Bercot says it this way: "Genuine faith leads people to obey God. When we deliberately refuse to obey God, it shows we don't have faith in the first place."So now Bercot has the challenge before him. Anyone can spout off statements that are contrary to popular belief. In fact, some folks seem to thrive on conspiracy theories. So can he back his proposition with some facts? He has a monumental task. I mean, everyone knows that the American colonies were being cruelly taxed to death, and that is the reason they finally had to rebel and throw off the galling yoke of British sovereignty.Can David Bercot prove otherwise?Oops, Some Indians Are In Our WayWhen Columbus finally discovered America many centuries after the Asian people had already been here, the Europeans ran into a huge problem. And the problem was, of course, they couldn t just move into this newly discovered land; others were already living here. Or could they just move in?Bercot treats that situation in a chapter titled "The Wrong Way to Spread the Gospel." He points out that although the first charters for English settlements in America listed the evangelization of the savages as one of their motives, the writing between the lines of the charters essentially said, "We have a God-given right to live in America, whether the Indians like it or not." Included in the chapter is a blood-curdling quote from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. You will need to read it for the shock of it to fully hit you. But I will pull one sentence for a teaser: "The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages."And "In God We Trust"? Hmmmm. Bercot sums up the horrible situation with some thoughtful words: "It's hard to teach someone else to obey commandments of Jesus when you aren t practicing them yourself.Ouch! --The Heartbeat of the Remnantmagazine, November/December 2011Author and attorney David Bercot is the thorough type. When he grew curious about theology, he set out to read all the works of Christians who lived in the first centuries after Christ s death. He wound up writingWill the Real Heretics Please Stand Up.That emphasis on primary sources led him to write several other books and eventually to become an Anabaptist. Bercot applied his brand of rigor both to his speaking engagements and his children s homeschooling. It was only a matter of time before the two connected. When the U.S. history textbooks he used came to the colonial era and the American Revolution, Bercot was troubled. He felt they glorified war and promoted the idea that it was God's purpose for Europeans to kill America s native people and take their land, refuse to pay taxes and use violence to gain independence.My main concern is countering the God-and-country textbooks that are definitely infiltrating Anabaptist circles, said Bercot, who lives in Amberson, Pa., and attends an independent Anabaptist house church. So he decided to write his own book,In God We Don t Trust, challenging common assumptions about America s founding, from Jamestown to the writing of the U.S. Constitution. The provocative title flips a phrase so enshrined in Americans consciousness that it s minted on every coin. Bercot believes the colonists war for independence and other actions reveal a lack of trust in God. Doing things from a human perspective and pulling a thin Christian veneer over it taking up arms and killing the enemy and giving all the credit to God that we were victorious that is what they did, he said. They didn t trust in God, but when they were successful, they gave God the victory.Bercot doesn t limit his critique to religious textbooks. He believes secular textbooks bear just as much guilt for romanticizing American revolutionaries who put more faith in gunpowder than in God. We get the impression [that the laws the colonists objected to] applied only to the 13 colonies, but in most cases they applied to all British territories, he said. The Stamp Act that applied in Nova Scotia and Jamaica, but only in America did people resort to violence.Researching the book coincided with a series of lectures Bercot has offered over the past 10 years. As both historian and attorney, he delved into original laws and charters, with surprising results. "I saw the English were originally in the right, and I didn't expect that," he said. That wasn't my original thesis, and I kept digging and finding more and more of that. They were taxing their own people [in Britain] at a far higher rate than the colonists. The colonists were paying a pittance compared to their English counterparts.The result is a 300-page work that includes a detailed index and hundreds of footnotes. "Since [this book] really steps on toes, I wanted to be 100 percent sure my evidence would stand up to withering cross-examination, he said. I feel very confident it will stand up to detractors."James Juhnke, professor emeritus of history at Bethel College in North Newton, KSan., who co-authored with Carol HunterThe Missing Peace: The Search for Nonviolent Alternatives in United States History,said Bercot takes Jesus teachings seriously. "He turns conventional nationalistic interpretations upside down," Juhnke said. Because the American Revolution is one of the most sacred events for the national civil religion, it is a controversial attack on a holy patriotic icon.Juhnke said academic historians may be put off by the use of the conservative evangelical language Bercot employs, but such an application is bound to produce beneficial dialogue. Bercot knows there are many who won t appreciate his critique of the U.S. founding fathers. The irony is that I m a conservative Christian." --Mennonite Weekly Review