Eric Metaxas has a new book, Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World. He is not a historian, and while there have been any number of good books written by non-historians, Revolution is not one of them.
Eric Metaxas
Metaxas has not written an American history but an evangelical playbook for controlling America with MAGA politics. Revolution is a historical impostor because its underlying purpose is to produce a right-wing government in America today.
If Revolution were a genuine history of the revolution, it would stand the scrutiny of comparison with the best works of American historians.
The best way to understand the spareness of historical truth in Metaxas is to read a couple of Gordon Wood’s works:
- The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787
- The American Revolution: A History
Never before have publishers been so hospitable to journalists, bloggers, minor philosophers and amateur historians proudly brandishing their revisionist tales as today. Endowed with a MAGA evangelical fervor, these writers are eager to denounce American history, to sound frantic alarms against the imminence of left-wing radical historians, and to commend the virtues of an alleged founding of a Christian America to all who have the wisdom to take heed. The only criteria seems for the book to be a “bestseller.”
Take note: “Bestseller” doesn’t mean accurate historical account of the American Revolution.
Rather than a chapter-by-chapter recitation of the material, I offer a series of broad-based reasons Revolution fails to reach the standard of an American history book.
American exceptionalism
Revolution has been baptized in the ocean of American exceptionalism. Evangelicals attempt to take credit for the founding of America. They push current evangelical ideology back into our national past. The subtitle screams “exceptionalism”: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World.
Metaxas is intoxicated with the “greatness” of the American revolution. In his introduction he brags, “Although this book might have been titled The American Revolution, it is simply titled Revolution, because the Revolution we often call the American Revolution is the only genuine revolution in the history of so-called revolutions, and therefore stands quite alone, requiring no adjective.”
In his view, “The creation of this new nation, which looked directly to God as the Israelites had done at Sinai, was God’s idea.”
He seems incapable of remembering what happened on Sinai. According to the book of Exodus, all the people were there. Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor says, “God’s own voice, with thunder in it and lightning cracking all around; the sound of a trumpet none of them knew how to play, with notes that made their scalps crawl; the mountain itself, smoking like a kiln, shaking so violently that the ground slid beneath their feet.”
Within a few seconds, the people wanted nothing more to do with the voice of God. And now, evangelicals speak as if they are the voice of God to the nation.
“Evangelicals speak as if they are the voice of God to the nation.”
Wood, who was America’s greatest historian of the revolution, says, “At best the Founding Fathers only passively believed in organized Christianity and at worst they scorned and ridiculed it.” Church historian Martin Marty notes references to God among the Founding Fathers are not biblical in nature.
John Fea notes, “Metaxas says that all the men who advanced the American Revolution were motivated to join the cause to restore the ‘Sinai Covenant’ in the United States. He claims that anyone who does not believe this is a liar. I do not know of any reputable historian, including most evangelical historians, who believes this. That is a LOT of liars.”
The problem here is making American exceptionalism the primary building block of America. Exceptionalism is a primary trope of demagogues. Evangelicals add a “righteousness” they allegedly possess to insist America is God’s new chosen nation. The idea of building a nation on the back of the “mother sin of the seven cardinal ones — Pride — feels obscene.
Jennifer Mercieca, in Demagogue for President says, “Appeals to American exceptionalism rely on Americans’ pride and their desire to believe that their nation is the best among others, that it is chosen by God, and that it has a heroic destiny to spread democracy and enlightenment throughout the world.”
It is amateur hour in history books
Revolution is not a ground-breaking study revolutionizing everything we thought we knew about American history. Instead, it is a historical impostor written by another false prophet of evangelical mythology.
Revolution is nothing more than a better articulation and rehash of previous evangelical efforts to revise American history. Revolution is a “gold ring in a pig’s snout,” as we learn in Proverbs 11:22.
Metaxas is not the first evangelical to write a book on American history without being a historian. Such writers are a cottage industry among evangelicals. Peter Marshall, D. James Kennedy, David Barton and Robert Jeffress are all charter members of the “I’m not a historian but I know stuff about history” club.
Metaxas writes better than Barton and Jeffress (making him more dangerous) but reaches the same false conclusions. An idealized pristine age of America that never existed is packaged as a history of the nation to promote the ideology of MAGA.
This didn’t really happen. Yet sculptor Stan Watts has created a bronze statue of Founding Fathers John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson kneeling in prayer just after writing the Declaration of Independence, which is still clutched in Jefferson’s hand. The sculpture is titled , “Appeal to Divine Providence.” There is no historical record of Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson doing this. Also, the source of a quote on the statue’s base, attributed to Jefferson, “The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty,” cannot be documented. (Shutterstock)
A hagiography of Founding Fathers
Metaxas attempts to turn the Founding Fathers into Bible-toting, Bible-quoting, born-again evangelicals. His strained mythology is as ill-informed as Washington chopping down the cherry tree. He sticks a Bible in the hands of the Founders and calls them evangelical.
“He sticks a Bible in the hands of the Founders and calls them evangelical.”
David L. Holmes in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers and John Fea in Was America Founded as A Christian Nation? disprove Metaxas’ idolatry of evangelical founders.
The American myth of a Christian founding
Metaxas fails to use the primary tools of the historian: Facts and interpretation. Lynn Hunt in History: Why It Matters says, “Determining historical truth is crucial.” Hunt reminds us, “Historical truth is two-tiered: facts are the first tier, interpretations are the second.
Metaxas claims almost all the Founders were “born-again believers.” This is simply not true. Jeffress previously made the exaggerated claim of 52 of the 55 signers of the Constitution being evangelical believers.
Revolution is an evangelical playbook for “taking back the nation.” Metaxas turns out to be no different from Barton and Jeffress.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
Related:
Bonhoeffer family and scholars warn against Metaxas and Christian nationalists
Metaxas calls Bonhoeffer’s relatives ‘Jew-hating lunatics’
How conservatives misuse Bonhoeffer, King and Reagan | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy