Kevin Stilley

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America’s Christian Heritage

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were … the general principles of Christianity…. Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.
~ John Adams, in The Works of John Adams: Second President of the United States, vol. 10 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1856), page 43.

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
~ John Adams, in a message on October 11, 1798, to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts

The first and almost the only book deserving of universal attention is the Bible.
~ John Quincy Adams

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men, with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity… in short, of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.
~ Samuel Adams, in a letter to John Adams, 1790. In Four Letters: Being an Interesting Correspondence Between Those Eminently Distinguished Characters, John Adams, Late President of the United States; and Samuel Adams, Late Governor of Massachusetts. On the Important Subject of Government. (Boston: Adams and Roads, 1802), pages 90

Let us not trust to human effort alone, but humbly acknowledge the power and goodness of Almighty God who presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our country’s history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our labors.
~ Grover Cleveland, 22nd President of the United States

The strength of a country is the strength of its religious convictions.
~ Calvin Coolidge

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.
~ Justice William O. Douglas, in a Supreme Court decision, March 1952

When England grew corrupt, God brought over a number of pious persons and planted them in New England, and this land was planted with a noble vine.
~ Jonathan Edwards, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1.

The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth–that God governs in the Affairs of Men.
~ Benjamin Franklin, addressing the Constitutional Convention on June 28, 1787

In the year of Chist, 1755, This building was piously founded,
for the relief of the sick and miserable.
May the God of mercies bless the undertaking.
Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.
~ Benjamin Franklin, composed for a cornerstone inscription for the Pennsylvania Hospital, 1751

The Bible is the anchor of our liberties.
~ Ulysses S. Grant

The Bible is the cornerstone of American liberty. A student’s perusal of this sacred volume will make them a better citizen.
~ Thomas Jefferson. According to Daniel Webster, Jefferson said this to him in regard to why the Bible was foundational in the educational plan he helped program for the school system in Washington D.C. Daniel Webster to Professor Peace, June 15, 1852 in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, edited by Edward Everett, (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1903).

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Almighty God … hath diffused the glorious light of the Gospel, whereby, through the merits of our gracious Redeemer, we may become the heirs of His eternal glory.
~ Thomas Jefferson, November 11, 1779, in a Day of Prayer proclamation while Governor of Virginia. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 3, 18 June 1779 – 30 September 1780. ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pages 177-179

Let us look forward tot he time when we can take the flag of our country, and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribe for our motto, “Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,” and exclaim, Christ first, our country next!
~ Andrew Johnson, America’s 17th President

The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed.
~ Patrick Henry

The general diffusion of Christian knowledge hath a natural tendency to correct the morals of men, restrain their vices, and preserve the peace of society.
~ Patrick Henry

It is announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.
~ Abraham Lincoln, March 30, 1863, in his Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day. In the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.

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, int he deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. 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.
~ Abraham Lincoln, proclaiming a National Day of Prayer, March 30, 1863.

We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government. Far from it. We have staked the future on the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, control ourselves, and to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
~ James Madison

The Bible is the Constitution of Christian civilization.
~ Gordon Palmer, in By Freedom’s Holy Light (NY: Devin-Adair Co., 1964), page 4

Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.
~ William Penn,

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. And this be our motto – “In God is our Trust.”
~ The Star Spangled Banner

I believe that no one can read the history of our country, without realizing the Good Book, and the Spirit of the Savior, which have, from the beginning, been our guiding genius. Whether we look at the first Charter of Virginia, or the Charter of New England, or the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, or the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present, a Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and a belief in it. Freedom of Belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under the law, and the reservation of the people, I would like to believe that we are living today in the Spirit of Christian religion. I would also like to believe long as we do, no great harm can come to our country.
~ Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. In an interview with Time Magazine, February 14, 1954.

I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion. But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of public institutions.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Whatever makes a person a good Christian makes him a good citizen.
~ Daniel Webster

If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we or our prosperity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.
~ Daniel Webster

Let us not forget the religious character of our origin.
~ Daniel Webster

The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles…to this we ow our free constitutions of government. 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, in the preface to Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scriptures.
~ Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, on May 7, 1911 in a speech delivered in Denver, Colorado

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Freedom – select quotes

freedomFreedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
~ James Baldwin

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.
~ Jeffrey Borenstein

The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win.
~ Leonid Brezhnev

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
~ Pearl S. Buck

I preach deliverance to others, I tell them there is freedom, while I hear my own chains clang.
~ John Bunyan

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
~ Edmund Burke

The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree.
~ Thomas Campbell

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
~ Albert Camus

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.
~ Hodding Carter

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.
~ Noam Chomsky

A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.
~ Ramsey Clark

Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.
~ William Cowper

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
~ Clarence Darrow

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.
~ Moshe Dayan

History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads.
~ Charles de Gaulle

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.
~ John Dewey

To begin with unlimited freedom is to end with unlimited despotism.
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Devils

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live slaves.
~ Frederick Douglass

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
~ Frederick Douglass

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
~ Frederick Douglass, in an 1883 Civil Rights Mass Meeting speech in Washington, D.C.

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
~ William O. Douglas

As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom.
~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
~ Albert Einstein

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, in “Boston” Stanza 15

If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of philosophy.
~ Epictetus

We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
~ Epictetus

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
~ William Faulkner

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.
~ Marilyn Ferguson

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights.
~ Felix Frankfurter

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
~ Viktor Frankl

Freedom lies in being bold.
~ Robert Frost, in an interview by Bela Kornizer of NBC news on November 23, 1952.

You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.
~ Robert Frost

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.
~ Lillian Hellman

The fact, in short, is that freedom, to be meaningful in an organized society must consist of an amalgam of hierarchy of freedoms and restraints.
~ Samuel Hendel

We feel free when we escape – even if it be but from the frying pan into the fire.
~ Eric Hoffer

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.
~ Molly Ivins

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
~ Thomas Jefferson

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
~ Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned — this is the sum of good government.
~ Thomas Jefferson

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
~ Thomas Jefferson

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is like taking a bath — you have to keep doing it every day!
~ Florynce Kennedy

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
~ John F. Kennedy

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.
~ John F. Kennedy

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
~ Søren Kierkegaard

There are two freedoms, the false one where one is free to do what he likes, and the true where a man is free to do what he ought.
~ Charles Kingsley

Every right is married to a duty; every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility; and there cannot be genuine freedom unless there exists also genuine order, in the moral realm and in the social realm.
~ Russell Kirk, in Redeeming the Time (Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996), page 33

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Him that I love, I wish to be free — even from me.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.
~ Walter Lippmann, in A Preface to Morals

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.
~ Rosa Luxemburg

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
~ Thomas Macaulay

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
~ James Madison, in a speech to the Virginia Convention in 1788

We are free, truly free, when we don’t need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.
~ Ricardo Flores Magon, in a speech on May 31, 1914

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.
~ Peyton Conway March

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
~ Somerset Maugham

We have to call it “freedom”: who’d want to die for “a lesser tyranny”?
~ Mignon McLaughlin, in The Neurotic’s Notebook

Freedom means choosing your burden.
~ Hephzibah Menuhin

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right… The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
~ John Stuart Mill

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them — and then, the opportunity to choose.
~ C. Wright Mills

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
~ Edward R. Murrow

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don’t agree with.
~ Eleanor Holmes Norton

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
~ Thomas Paine

If a man does only what is required of  him, he is a slave.
If a man does more than is required of him, he is a free man.
~ Chinese Proverb

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
~ George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman, “Maxims: Liberty and Equality,”

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
~ Carl Shurz

How can you call a man free when his pleasures rule over him.
~ Socrates

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
~ Adlai Stevenson, from a speech in Detroit, 1952

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
~ Henry David Thoreau

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.
~ Mark Twain

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
~ Voltaire

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
~ Virginia Woolf

To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot.
~ Virginia Woolf

No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
~ John P. Zenger

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Reading Church History

“It is always essential for us to supplement our reading of theology with the reading of church history… If we do not, we shall be in danger of becoming abstract, theoretical, and academic in our view of truth; and, failing to relate it to the practicalities of life and daily living, we shall soon be in trouble.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Can We Learn from History?” Puritans, pp. 215-16

Below are some of the books on Church History recommended by Mark Dever, Chris Armstrong, Michael Craven, David Calhoun, Bruce Hindmarsh, Daniel Akin, Tom Ascol and others.  What books would you add to their lists?

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David Calhoun

In his course on the Ancient and Medieval Church at Covenant Theological Seminary, David Calhoun used the textbook The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation by Justo Gonzalez, and in his lecture on “The Study of Church History”, he recommended the following texts:

Clarke, Kenneth. Civilisation: A Personal View. 1969.
An overview of western history with special emphasis on the arts and a humanistic interpretation of what it all means.

McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction. 1994.
Historical theology presented ably and as simply as possible.

Moffett, Samuel H. A History of Christianity in Asia: Beginnings to 1500. 1992.
The first of two masterful volumes covering the neglected story of Asian Christianity, this history traces the spread of Christianity to Persia and India, and then overland to China, where evidence exists of Christian activity dating from the 7th century.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols.)
The magnum opus of a great scholar (a Lutheran who recently converted to Eastern Orthodoxy).

Potok, Chaim. Wanderings: History of the Jews. 1978.
A wonderfully written story of the Jews by an acclaimed novelist.

Schaeffer, Francis A. How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. 1976.
Schaeffer’s influential study of the rise and (mainly) the decline of western thought.

Shaw, Mark R. The Kingdom of God in Africa: A Short History of African Christianity. 1996.
Part 1 covers the church before the emergence of Islam; part 2, the medieval centuries of Islamic domination; part 3, the missions and colonial eras; and part 4, the remarkable story of twentieth-century African Christianity.

Williams, Charles. The Descent of the Dove. 1939.
Idiosyncratic, brilliant, perplexing, and illuminating history. Eugene H. Peterson wrote in Take and Read, “When I started reading [Charles] Williams [The Descent of the Dove], I was a sectarian, ‘related’ only to a small coterie of people who lived and thought and prayed like me. When I finished, I was part of a congregation centuries deep and continents wide” (p. 1).

& & &

And in the subsequent lecture on “The Growth of the Church,” he recommends:

The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in Transmission of Faith.
One of the most important books of Christian history of the 1990s. By a Scottish mission
historian and missionary.

& & &

In lecture three on The Martyrs, he quotes from and/or recommends the following:

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis

F. F. Bruce, Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to the Conversion of the English

Maier, Paul L. The Flames of Rome: A Documentary Novel

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Mark Dever

The following titles on CHURCH HISTORY are included in the 9Marks reading list for pastors:

Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, Roland Bainton

The Early Church, Henry Chadwick

The Dumb Ox (A Biography of Aquinas), G.K. Chesterton

George Whitfield (2 vols.), Arnold Dallimore

Handbook to the History of Christianity, ed. Tim Dowley

Theology of the Reformers, Timothy George

The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch

The Waning of the Middle Ages, Johan Huizinga

A History of Christianity in the U.S & Canada, Mark Noll

Quest for Godliness, J.I. Packer

The Church Under Siege, M.A. Smith

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Danny Akin

Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has recommended the following books on Church History.

Berkhof, Louis. The History of Christian Doctrines. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975.

Bingham, D. Jeffrey. Pocket History of the Church. Downers Grove: Baker, 1975.

Bromiley, Geoffrey. Historical Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church. rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981.

Cunliffe-Jones, Hubert, ed. A History of Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Douglas, J.D., ed. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978.

Gonzalez, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought. 3 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1970.

_______ . The Story of Christianity. 2 vols. San Francisco: Harper, 1984.

Hannah, John D. Charts of Ancient and Midieval Church History. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming.

________. Kregel Pictorial Guide to the History of the Church. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2000

________. Our Legacy: The History of Christian Doctrine. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2001.

Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1978.

Langin, Timothy, David Bebbington, and Mark Knoll, eds. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. Downers Grove: IVP, 2003.

McGrath, Alister E. Historical Theology: an Introduction to the History of Christian Thought. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998.

Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom. 3 vols. 6th ed. rev. and en. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1877.

_______ . History of the Christian Church. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962 (1910).

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Michael Craven

Michael Craven of the Center For Christ and Culture recommends the following books on Christian History;

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Chris Armstrong

Chris Armstrong, professor of Church History at Bethel Seminary and author of Patron Saints for Postmoderns: Ten from the Past Who Speak to Our Future, has recommended the following as “excellent historical reads”.

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The Criswell College

The following books on Church History are recommended in the publication Beginning Your Theological Library published by the Criswell College.

 

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover
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The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607-1972, by Robert A. Baker

Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of Christianity, ed. by Tim Dowley

Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity in America, ed. by Mark Noll

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Bruce Hindmarsh

In an article in Christianity Today, Bruce Hindmarsh, professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver recommended the following books as some of the best to introduce the general reader to early evangelicalism. According to Hindmarsh, “All of these books are a pleasure to read, and all of the authors are experts in their fields.”

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Westminster Theological Seminary

And, this is the list that WTS recommends to prospective students.

Hastings, Adrian. A World History of Christianity. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000.

Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Lindberg, Carter. The Reformation Theologians. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002.

Plancher, William C. Readings in the History of Christian Theology. Richmond: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988.

Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics : The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 2003.

Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Nichols, Stephen. J. J. Gresham Machen: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought. Philipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 2004.

Trueman, Carl. John Owen. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.

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Reformed Theological Seminary

Reformed Theological Seminary lists the following Church History books on its Recommended Reading list for prospective students.

  • Church History in Plain Language, Bruce Shelley
  • Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, Mark Noll
  • Church History, Volume 1: From Christ to Pre-Reformation, Everett Ferguson
  • A Religious History of the American People, Sydney Ahlstrom
  • The Story of Christian Theology, Roger Olson
  • Historical Theology, Alister McGrath
  • Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown
  • The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Brian Davies
  • Luther, Heiko Oberman
  • Calvin: A Biography, Bernard Cottret
  • Jonathan Edwards: A Life, George Marsden
  • The Early Church, Henry Chadwick
  • Early Christian Doctrines, J.N.D. Kelly
  • Christianity & Western Thought, Volume 1, Colin Brown
  • Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, R.W. Southern
  • The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols.), Jaroslav Pelikan
  • The Medieval Theologians, G.R. Evans
  • A World History of Christianity, Adrian Hastings

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And click the following link to see the Reading List for PhD Students in Church History at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

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Okay, now it’s your turn. What do you recommend?

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Robert E. Lee – select quotes

But what a cruel thing is war; to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world!
~ Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife on Christmas Day, 1862

I was too weak to defend, so I attacked.

It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I’m readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I’ll, in turn, do my best for the cause by writing editorials – after the fact.
~ General Robert E. Lee, 1863

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Abraham Lincoln – select quotes

A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.
~ September 30, 1859 – Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society

All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.
~ September 7, 1864 – Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, — “I see no probability of the British invading us”; but he will say to you, “Be silent: I see it, if you don’t.” To provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.
~ Letter, while US Congressman, to his friend and law-partner William H. Herndon, opposing the Mexican-American War, 15 February 1848

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.
~ Letter to Isham Reavis, 5 November 1855

As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].
~ Letter to longtime friend and slave-holder Joshua F. Speed, 24 August 1855

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, (August 1, 1858), p. 532.

I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
~ Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 18 September 1858

I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.
~ Letter to Allen N. Ford, 11 August 1846, quoted in Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, by Roy Prentice Basler

I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.
~ Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 18 September 1858

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
~ From the first debate with Stephen Douglas in the Lincon-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the US Senate, at Ottawa, Illinois, 21 August 1858, and later repeated in his first Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861

I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams’.
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume VII, “Reply to Delegation from the National Union League” (June 9, 1864), p. 384.

I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
~ Letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning, 1 April 1838

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, “Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin” (September 30, 1859), pp. 481-482.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.
~ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, “Letter to Horace Greeley” (August 22, 1862), p. 388.

On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self evident lie.
~ August 15, 1855 – Letter to George Robertson

The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
~ Letter to Joseph Gillespie, 13 July 1849

The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.
~ Speech in the House of Representatives, 20 June 1848

The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him.
~ Letter to William H Herndon, 10 July 1848

There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.
~ Herndon’s Life of Lincoln by William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik (New York, Da Capo Press, 1983), p. 354.

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.
~ Speech to Illinois legislature, January 1837

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
~ Letter to Henry L Pierce, 6 April 1859

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
~ Communication to the people of Sangamo County, 9 March 1832)

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
~ Lincoln’s Cooper Institute Address, February 27, 1860.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
~ from his Second Inaugural Address

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
~ From the first debate with Stephen Douglas Ottawa, Illinois, 21 August 1858

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

That some achieve great success, is proof others can achieve it as well.

The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races.

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

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The problem with using quotes from the internet is verifying the authenticity of the source.
~ Abraham Lincoln

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George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best. Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

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Thomas Jefferson – select quotes

Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three-headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three-headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
~ in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than no to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.
~ in a letter to Abigail Adams, 1787)

I hold it, that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
~ in a letter to James Madison after Shay’s rebellion

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is their natural manure.
~ in a letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787

No man can bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
~ in a letter to Rutledge, 1795

I have said and always will say, that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.
~ Quoted by A.W. Pink in What Follows from Divine Inspiration

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. (in reference to slavery)

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?

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

No man can bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. ( in a letter to Rutledge, 1795)

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned — this is the sum of good government.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Determine never to be idle. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Delay is preferable to error.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

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Presidential Trivia

President Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested during his term of office. He was convicted of exceeding the Washington speed limit on his horse and was fined $20.

Grover Cleveland was the only U.S president to marry in the White House.

The “S” in Harry S. Truman was not just the initial of his middle name, but “S” was his middle name.  His parents could not agree on a middle name, so they made it “S” which was the first initial of both of Harry’s grandfathers.

John F. Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia is the most-visited presidential grave.

There have been four US Presidents who never held any other elective office: U. S. Grant, William H. Taft, Herbert Hoover, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Two US presidents were survived by their fathers: John F. Kennedy and Warren Harding.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the only US president elected four times.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to select a woman to serve in his cabinet.

Four US presidents served an entire term without a vice president: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and Chester Arthur.

Woodrow Wilson was the only US president to earn a doctorate.

James Buchanan was the only US president never to be married.

The only American president to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy was Jimmy Carter, who graduated in the class of 1946.

Abraham Lincoln, who invented a hydraulic device for lifting ships over shoals, was the only U.S. president ever granted a patent.

George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the United States.

Richard Nixon was the 1st US president to visit China in February, 1972.

Gerald Ford was the only US president not to have been elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency.

Presidents of the United States have had the following denominational affiliations: Episcopalian (11); Presbyterian (8); Baptist (4); Methodist (4); Unitarian (4); No formal affiliation (3), Disciples of Christ (2); Dutch Reformed (2); Quaker (2); Catholic (1); Congregationalist (1) and United Church of Christ (1).

Andrew Jackson, 7th U.S. president, dueled with Charles Dickinson after he insulted Jackson ‘s marriage. Jackson let his opponent fire first, giving himself time to take aim. Jackson took a bullet in the chest and, without flinching, calmly killed his man.

Throughout its history, the White House has been known as the “President’s Palace,” the “President’s House,” and the “Executive Mansion.” President Theodore Roosevelt officially gave the White House its current name in 1901.

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