No One is Righteous: Thoughts on History

The other day I read a critique of Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States. Though I disagree with the author's general political stance, especially in regard to war policy, he does have one excellent point:  Progressive triumphalism is just as distasteful as the old-school kind.

Alternative history has been a necessary corrective to the "great men of Western civ" history which has been our only option up till now. But, as we are Christians - people who believe that sin is a universal human trait, not merely a consequence of a particular social order - we cannot stop at debunking the mythic past. As we lay "Christian America" to rest, we must also begin telling the story of the Kingdom of God, which has been growing through the centuries as a tree to heal the nations (Mark 4:30-32; Rev. 22:2).  Neither "the Founding Fathers were Christian heroes" nor "the Founding Fathers were hegemonic oppressors" are the full story.

Of course, things get more complicated when you're writing for children. It's hard to reduce the complex mass of social pressures and sins that motivate historical change into a steady narrative of progress - or decline. Still, I believe that we can do better for our youth than to offer them the choice between the People's History and Wilkins' America: The First 350 Years.

I remember celebrating Columbus Day in grade school - coloring and labeling the three Spanish ships, making Indian hats, and so forth. Then in middle school, I learned about smallpox and slavery, and I felt more than a little disillusioned, and just a bit lied to. Does history always have to be this way? I would, for once, like to see people not feel the need to always defend "their group" - whether their group is Vision Forum-like Southern agrarians, or Chomskyite anarcho-syndicalists.

I strive to do this with my own religious tradition. Consider my three greatest heroes of the faith: St. Athanasius, Martin Luther, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. St. Athanasius was an ecclesiastical tyrant, Luther was anti-Semitic in later life, and St. Bernard was one of the driving forces behind the Crusades. They were all wretched sinners - as am I.

We are all blinded by the cultural prejudices of our day, or, if we do not feel at home in present culture, blinded by our idealization of the past. St. Athanasius, Luther, St. Bernard, the Reformed faith - all are flawed vessels through which the grace of God has come to me. His strength is made perfect in our weakness; where sin is present, grace abounds.

If sin marks the history of the faith, how much more must it mark the history of our nation? Yet, as St. Athanasius said, depravity does not destroy the Imago Dei. Oppression is the pockmarks on the face of civilization.

Being a historian is like panning for gold in a polluted stream. It is a discouraging task, and it's bound to make you dirty. But the reward of your labors is wealth that lasts - foundation stones for the future City.