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These are the times that test men's souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis of spirit, shrink not only from the service, but also the very history, of their country. (To borrow and adapt from Thomas Paine’s The Crisis.)

Metaxas, the celebrated author of the Bonhoeffer biographic (2010), has a bracing response, here applying a literary tourniquet just in time for the nation’s 250th.

The subtitle, The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, gives away Metaxas’s sympathies: this robust book (nearly 600 pages) is a full-throated case for American exceptionalism. By removing the modifier "American" in the book’s title, Metaxas generalizes and expands, arguing that our humble revolution was in fact the most defining, inspired and inspiring, revolution in human history.

Indeed. I have long argued that the US Constitution, including the Declaration, to be the most God-whispered human documenst after the Bible. It logically follows that it is one of the greatest events in all human history, after only God’s incarnation on earth in the form of Jesus Christ and the Protestant Reformation.

Metaxas traces the Revolution’s roots to the 1761 Writs of Assistance, by which the new King George III, “enabled customs officers to enter the home or store of someone they believed might be trafficking in smuggled goods” [p.3] in the 13 colonies. And there began the long struggle to preserve rights once afforded to Englishmen on English soil to the English colonials in the New World.

While parliament was the ultimate arbiter, the long distances over the Atlantic and lengthy delays in communication of necessity required a large measure of self-rule through local legislatures. One might say that this geographic anomaly is what birthed the world’s first, most enduring and influential, constitutional republic – when monarchies ruled the roost nearly everywhere.

What delights in Metaxas’s tale is his episodic style of writing, going from one story, one event, to the next, while fleshing out the characters and personalities. Many of these iconic stories, such as Paul Revere’s midnight ride or the Battles of Lexington and Concord, I had first learned about in grade school – with little study since.

There is so much to re-learn and absorb! I can hardly think of a more absorbing, livelier guide to help us re-visit and better understand so many foundational stories.

There are two major themes in the book which my grade school understanding had not even approximated. The first is eerily reflected in the nation’s current crisis. As Metaxas states up front:

One of the themes at the center of our story has to do with the corruption of the British elites, and the American revulsion toward their corruption. [p.4]

The second revolves around the controversy, Was America founded as a Christian nation, or were its main architects Diests?

Metaxas capably and thoroughly skewers the secular argument, so wantonly adopted by liberal historians and scholars for over a century, by time and again quoting the supposedly soft core Founders, proving his argument in their own words.

One of the most pleasant surprises in this “new accounting” is to learn how devote and Godly all American leaders were, and how much their faith was ridiculed by the endlessly dissolute British elites, the fornicating Lords as well as the amoral Generals who abandoned every known civility in the conduct of war on the rationale that “rebels” deserve none of the niceties afforded to proper armies of foreign foes.

But one of the most telling examples of the degraded character of British culture at this time is in how they conducted the war itself…often murdering soldiers who had already surrendered, and treating their captives so cruelly that…most of them actually died in captivity. [p.572]

As the main architect (another revelation!) of the Revolution, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

Infidelity has been a growing part of the British character for many years. It is not so much to be wondered at that those who pay no regard to a Supreme Being should throw off all regard to their fellow creatures… [p.572]

Amazingly, the spunky Americans, up against the greatest miliary force and power the world had until then known, never descended to their level of butchery or spite, but like the good Christians that they were to a man responded in a dignified and just manner.

As Adams continues:

Let them reproach us ever so much for our kindness and tenderness to those who have fallen into our hands. I hope it will never provoke us to retaliate their cruelties…let us keep in mind the precepts of him who hath commanded us to love our enemies…even when they despitefully use us. [p.573]

The colonists’ main preoccupation was to maintain God’s favor and grace, as they well knew that without divine providence – and a whole series of battlefield miracles – the cause was lost.

In other words, the Revolution was quintessentially a spiritual war, from beginning to end.

In political terms the dramatic narrative of the Revolution, then, transforms from a battle of liberation to a civil war, in which the English subjects on American soil were battling for the basic rights, granted the century before to all Englishmen in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, that the corrupt British monarchy was neutralizing for all citizens, near and far.

A small cadre of intelligent Englishmen, including Edmund Burke, realized how fundamental the struggle was and counseled against both George III’s and the Parliament’s rash treatment of the discontented colonists as rebellious children badly in need of correction. How arrogant and misguided the Royals and ruling class were.

As Burke noted, “A great empire and small minds go ill together.” [p.164]

One can argue that all the best that British culture and history had created up to then fled the corrupt mother country to take up habitation in the United States of America, not only fundamental concepts of self-governance but also the spiritual and biblical foundations on which all these principles need to be based. It has been downhill since for that once great empire, formerly the most civilizing of the European colonial powers.

One quibble with Metaxas’s masterful mixing of political and spiritual themes: while mentioning the importance of the nation’s First Great Awakening, which both preceded and seeded the soil from which the Revolution sprang, he underplays its.

Even though his Selected Bibliography includes one of David Barton’s books – which implies that Metaxas was and is aware of the connection – he barely mentions the Black Robe Regiment (only cited twice in the index) and overlooks the extensive evidence that most, if not all, of the principles enshrined in the Declaration and Constitution were introduced by preachers from pulpits as long as a century before.

It is my belief that Great Awakenings, the spiritual reform and renewal that preceded all political ones, were critical to both major Civil Wars. This underlines the importance of a national Christian renewal now – and not tomorrow – in order to win the war against our most dedicated internal enemies, the Marxists/Jihadists – as well as against our contemporary manifestation of the thoroughly corrupt and secular British elites, who are just as prideful and far more boldly Godless than they were.

Yet Metaxas gets the fundamentals fundamentally right. In his epilogue, What is the Meaning of America?, he writes:

Though the America that emerged in 1776 and afterwards was no Christian theocracy, neither was it even slightly secular. It was deeply Christian, but in a way that had never before been seen in history, in a way that saw respecting people’s religious liberty as at the very heart of true Christian faith. [p.575]

May the Lord guide and protect the American experiment for another 250 years – that is, if the Lord doesn’t return before then. You owe it to yourself, and to our country, to read this rousing history.

Revolution, Eric Metaxas, Odysseus Books, Skyhorse Publishing (2026)

Ben Batchelder is the author of four extended travel yarns and has been a Contributor to The Miami Independent since its inception. Contact him at his author site benbatchelder.com

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