The Roots of American Order:Perspective

Following are three clips from Chapter II of our online book club.

Keeping them in mind is helping me keep Kirk's landscape in proper perspective .

What picture, you say?

Remember the painting whose colors we are refreshing? (page 8 Chapter I)

The one on the right is of Dr. Kirk walking through a field....

it was painted in 1985, by a college friend of mine:

Deborah Melvin (now Beisner)





Although America is no Bible state, without some knowledge of the Bible, the fabric of American order cannot be understood tolerably well. (pg 22) 

All the more reason for all Americans, believers and non-believers to read The Bible in school.

Without venturing rashly here into the labyrinths of biblical scholarship, it is possible to describe the prophets' enduring significance for modern men, and to suggest how deeply interwoven with the fabric of American order this prophetic teaching remains. (pg 30)

This is why I am not so concerned about two Isaiahs or whether Micah or Hosea said it.

Historically speaking, such are the Hebraic roots of American order, whether or not the reader of this book wholly accepts the Law and the Prophets.  To undertake Jewish or Christian apologetics - that is, to undertake a theological defense of these beliefs on the basis of reason - is beyond our present purpose and beyond the limitations of space. (pg 38)

Kirk's purpose for writing Roots was to assist the renewal of the structure of America's order and improve it with love and prudence, in God's own good time.

For your further enjoyment, I am sharing a link to Gleaves Whitney's review of The Roots of American Order:Jerusalem.  Listed below are his main points associated with this city of symbolic of divine wisdom and the ways in which the Jews permanently changed the human estate.

1. The Hebrews' most basic insight:  religion is the bedrock of culture.
2. The Bible - the most influential assemblage of books in human history?
3. Moral Order
4. Monotheism
5. Human Rights of each individual
6. Freedom
7. A "chosen" with a Covenant and a "Manifest Destiny"
8. Judgment of the Nations
9. Remnant
10. Linear conception of time

Roots of American Order, book club posts, and Russell Kirk are peppering my everyday conversation and enlightening my take on current politics.

How about you?