“Lee Reconsidered” – My First History Conference
Posted March 29, 2010 at 6:36PM in History.
Liz, myself, Chris, and Dr. Marsh following the 2010 Phi Alpha Theta Conference at Liberty University
On March 20, 2010, I traveled with Dr. Brandon Marsh and two other History and Political Science majors from Bridgewater College to Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, to present a paper at the Phi Alpha Theta history conference.
Phi Alpha Theta is a history honor society, of sorts, for college students. Each year, Virginia PAT hosts a conference somewhere in the State where students are invited to present an academic paper for review and criticism. Last year, the PAT conference was held at Bridgewater College, and I attended as an “onlooker” to watch others present. This year, I was asked to give a presentation myself. Not having any recent work that I was particularly confident in presenting at such an event, I revived an old paper I wrote for a scholarship before I began my freshman year at Bridgewater.
The paper, entitled “Lee Reconsidered: A Second Look at the Accusations of Mr. Alan T. Nolan” is a response to a book, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History, written by Mr. Nolan, in which he suggests that Lee should have taken it upon himself to unilaterally surrender the entire Confederacy before the April 9th surrender of his Army at Appomattox Court House, or in the least to have encouraged the civilian authorities to bring an end to the conflict before Palm Sunday, 1865. My paper offers an argument against the notion of a military authority seizing the reigns of power from superior civilian authorities, and also provides evidence that Lee did seek to encourage President Davis and the Confederate Congress to end the bloodletting before his Army was completely defeated.
Below are links to the paper and to an MP3 of my talk.
MP3 Audio of Talk “Lee Reconsidered” – PDF of “Lee Reconsidered” Paper
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Posted March 10, 2010 at 10:59AM in "God-sufficiency", Christian Life.
I know this blog, over the last three posts, at least, has been a place of fairly “deep” theological thinking, and I’ll get back to that, but I want to post something rather casual here today. I’ve written before about my dear friends, the Lansings. One of the great things about knowing them is seeing them work towards self-sufficiency, or something I prefer to call “God-sufficiency.” Essentially, it is the intention of keeping God’s consistent commandment throughout the Bible that man should work with his hands, and learning to make use of the resources God built into creation to sustain life. The problem is that the world, in all its sin, has built cities and industry to exploit those resources, eventually resulting in a man who is more dependent on industrialism and the world than on God, seeking financial gain and millionaire status — the almighty “American dream” — instead of eternal riches in Heaven, “where neither the moth nor canker corrupteth, and where thieves neither dig through nor steal” (Matthew 6:20).
So my friends, the Lansings, in working towards this simple, God-sufficient life, have started selling natural products through their home business, Days of Old Herb Farm. Emily Lansing makes soap, which I have been purchasing and using since last August. Several weeks ago, I discovered that she also made shampoo. My curiosity peaked, I bought a bar. Yes, it comes in bar form! (more…)
“If your eye causes you to sin…”
Posted February 26, 2010 at 4:11PM in Christian Life.
For now we see through a glass darkly: but then shall we see face to face. Now I know in part: but then shall I know even as I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Have you ever known a time when it seemed like your life was totally out of order? Maybe things weren’t going according to plan. You’d planned to get up at a certain time, and forgot to set your alarm clock. You woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe you’d imagined that the day, or even your life would go in one direction, yet things weren’t going according to plan. Sure, we all have.
Now, have you known a time, some minutes, hours, days, or even years down the line when you looked back on that disorder and realized that there was a reason for it? I’m sure that, if you’ve been walking with God for any length of time, you can remember many of these such cases.
Things have been pretty hectic for me these last couple of weeks, and even though I’d planned to post here no less than once a week after my last post, I just haven’t been able to find the time. Like my last post on predestination, I’ve had the topic of this post in mind since the summer of 2009. However, I’ve got a feeling that God is about to take this in a slightly different direction than I had originally planned to take it. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, it was easy for me to get frustrated at not having the time or willpower to write this lately, when I was “seeing through the glass darkly,” but now that God has had His way and I have time to write again, the picture has suddenly become clearer, and not only do I now know better what to write, but I also understand why my vision was darkened before.
(more…)
“Keep Reading,” Leaving Restaurants, and the Prophet Jeremiah
Posted February 6, 2010 at 1:46PM in Christian Life.
Hey folks! It’s been awhile since I’ve written here. My delay in doing so has been both intentional and not. Our spring semester just got going here at Bridgewater College, and I’ve been busy going through the usual routine of figuring out how to budget my time in order to get things done that I’m committed to as a student, and still ensure that I have the time and mindset to keep Christ as the center of my life.
I’m gradually coming under the conviction that, as long as I consensually give some of my time and energy to fulfilling desires of the flesh, I can never fully give everything over to Him and be a truly good and faithful servant. But this is a topic for a post on another day.
I’ve intentionally delayed writing up this post because I wanted to come again to the point where I could really believe what I wanted to write. Since I started thinking about putting this blog online last summer, I’ve known that I wanted to do one of my earlier posts on this topic, but my life’s circumstances over the last couple of weeks have made it difficult for me to imagine being honest in saying that I really believe the things I’m about to write, and know to be true. Believing that God has now again restored me to that point, I’m ready to give it a shot. (more…)
Doing Church
Posted January 18, 2010 at 9:13PM in Christian Life.
Since I announced on Facebook the other day that I launched this website, I’ve been pretty amazed at the amount of feedback I’ve gotten from folks, many who’ve been asking what my first “real” post would be about. I have decided that, since I hope to focus largely on faith issues, it would not be appropriate to begin without providing some notion of how I have come to understand God and how He is at constant work in His creation. So, the first several of my posts will be an autobiographical series of sorts in which I will discuss how I have come to know God and understand His role in my life.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given the blessing of being raised by Christian parents, who, from an early age, taught me that God deserves to be worshiped and not ignored. Indeed, most of my earliest memories are set in a small United Methodist Church in my hometown of McKenney, Virginia, where I would attend weekly services with my mother and father. My mother was the church custodian at that time, and I can remember helping her with the weekly cleaning — crawling around on the floor under the pews with the dust-buster, “helping” out, though I’m pretty sure I was probably more in the way than I was much of a help.
For most of my life, though, I mostly associated God with church and the “visit” I knew it was my duty to pay Him each Sunday morning. I knew that some people carried God with them everywhere, and worked to build a relationship with Him that transcended the four walls of the sanctuary. Indeed, I longed for that sort of relationship with God, and I tried to “get it,” but I always gave up, and never learned how to build it. I seldom ever prayed, and though I was confirmed into the United Methodist Church as a fifth-grader, I didn’t really start to come to “know God” until after I graduated high school. (more…)
Welcome!
Posted January 16, 2010 at 8:30PM in Uncategorized.
Welcome to my new website! I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a personal website since late 2007, when my new college commitments made it impossible to continue spending time working on another web project I started in high school, a political community site called PeacefulAssembly.org.
After several months thinking up what I’d like the site to look like, and then a couple weeks of piddling with HTML, CSS, and PHP script, I’ve finally got something that I can live with putting live. There’re still plenty of bugs and design issues that I need to take care of, but I think I have something that is, for now, at least half-way functional.
I should warn you that what you’re looking at now is an experiment. Since around June of 2009, I’ve been looking for an outlet to release ideas about faith, politics, Christian living, and other topics of personal interest. I hope this site will serve that purpose, but even more importantly, I hope that it will serve as a motivation to encourage me to write. I’ve found that writing helps me to translate jumbles of thoughts and ideas into more connected and coherent concepts. In other words, I’ll be using this site to better organise my thoughts and better sort out what it is that I really believe. This is, essentially, an experiment in self-improvement, with God’s help.
For more, check out the About page. Stay tuned for new posts and more content as time goes on.
