On a headstone of a young child in a cemetery in England are the following words:

 

“Freddy.”

“Yes, Father.”

 

It is a three-word commentary on a life that was totally dedicated to God. Would that all of us could live so close to God that when He calls our name—for any reason—we quickly answer, “Yes, Father.” Not just in death, but in life as well.

 

The title of this week’s “TM” is “The Home as a Nation Builder.” The title is not original with me. I borrowed it from the title of a speech written by Henry van Dyke sometime after the end of World War I. He understood the principle that as America’s homes go, so goes the Nation. "Tuesday Morning" is attached below. Continue reading whenever you are ready to think about the importance of the home. 

 

Tom Barnard

A Senior Home Builder

___________________________________________________________

The Home as a Nation Builder

Tom Barnard

 

enry van Dyke (1852-1933) was an American educator, minister, author, poet, and statesman. Among his writings that became popular are two Christmas stories: The Other Wise Man and The First Christmas Tree. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, he was a Presbyterian minister and will always be remembered for the lyrics he wrote to the hymn, Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee (1907).

 

The title for this week’s “Tuesday Morning” is taken from the title of a speech van Dyke wrote (ca. 1918) that was published in One Hundred New Declamations, a collection of five-minute speeches compiled and edited by Lester Boone and published by The Babcock Company, Ft. Worth, in 1932. The opening sentence of that speech is classic:

 

“The causes that control the development of national character are three fold:

domestic, political, and religious; the Home, the State and the Church.”

 

It was true prior to America’s Great Depression, and it is true today. Unfortunately, today’s media seem focused on only two of the three causes listed by van Dyke: the State and the Church, with emphasis given most to the impact of political thinking on our nation’s character. The Home is seldom mentioned by a secular press—unless the topic is debate over the right of same-sex individuals to be legally married.

 

The truth is that one of the keys to the integrity of America’s national character is the Home. Here is how van Dyke expressed his concern for the Home in his historic speech of almost a century ago:

 

Show me a home where the tone of life is selfish, disorderly, or trivial; where success is worshipped and righteousness ignored; where there are two consciences, one for private and one for public use; where boys are permitted to believe that religion has nothing to do with citizenship and that their object must be to get as much as possible from the state and to do as little as possible for it; where the girls are suffered to think that because they have no votes they have therefore no duties to the commonwealth, and that the crowning glory of an American woman’s life is to marry a foreigner with a title. Show me such a home and I will show you a breeding-place of enemies of the republic.

 

Women’s suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually but was finally achieved with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, which provided in part that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

 

But the impact of women in national society is not limited to their right to vote. Women outdistance men in more ways than one, and their influence in the home cannot be overstated. I still remember the first time I drove past the Pleasant Street School (renamed Albert W. Hall Middle School) in Waterville, Maine, and noticed the words etched in granite above the entrance to the school:

 

“TRUE TO GOD, TO HOME, AND COUNTRY”

 

The Pleasant Street School motto is identical to the motto of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), whose theme is “True to God, Home, Country.” While not enjoying the national publicity that other volunteer-based organizations enjoy, the DAR still maintains 3,000 chapters in the United States that are made up of about 165,000 members.

 

Maybe it’s time for a return to the principles that defined our nation generations ago. Maybe it’s time to return to acknowledging the Home as the place where integrity, fidelity, and loyalty are born and raised. Maybe it’s time to return to the days when law and freedom were upheld by our courts. Maybe it’s time to return to a place where religion and the people who espouse it are not automatically considered to be hypocritical or spiritually impotent. Maybe it’s time to return to a national commitment to God, Home, Country. Maybe it’s time for a change.