BJU Press Blog

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Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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“The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” You might recognize this text from Isaiah 40:5. Some might also recognize it from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech, which he delivered more than fifty years ago.

Dr. King quoted God’s Word as he sought unity among the races. He reminded the people of his day that they all had a single unifying bond that connected them regardless of race, culture, and wealth—the idea that “all men are created equal”—which is fundamentally a biblical concept. La Shawn Barber, a columnist at World magazine, has said, “As the church grapples with racial issues today, King’s life may serve as an example of someone who challenged the church to live up to biblical ideals and invoked Christ in the name of racial justice. . . . He infused the civil rights movement with Christian principles.”

Today race relations in our nation have improved and basic civil rights are extended to all Americans. And Martin Luther King Jr.’s words are now most commonly seen in history books—except Isaiah 40:5.

Like the rest of the Bible, this piece of God’s Word is timeless. It’s just as relevant today as it was in 1963 and in Old Testament times. “Black only” drinking fountains or “white only” lunch counters are artifacts of the past, but our nation remains divided. Today there are more lines: black, white, brown, tan, red, and blue. Even Bible-believing Christians are divided and often distracted from what really matters.

While it is true that Dr. King was a man with flaws, we find in his speech an acknowledgement that God’s Word speaks to mankind’s problem of division. He also had the courage to say it in front of the world. Today, few public figures or leaders would make such a bold statement. Few would risk the backlash from the media in a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to the Truth. It’s critical that we train the next generation of leaders to understand and correctly apply the truths of the Bible. God’s Word transcends all debate and must be the foundation on which Christians base our relationships with one another (Philippians 2:1–4).

Image Source: The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

Celebrate America’s Past with Christmas Traditions

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We all enjoy different Christmas traditions, but one is a special delight for almost all Americans—Christmas cookies. Whether at church fellowships or at home on Christmas Eve, these holiday treats seem to be everywhere. But where do Christmas cookies come from? I confess that I hadn’t thought about the origin of this tradition until I was preparing to teach my second grader about the middle colonies in colonial America using BJU Press Heritage Studies.

The Middle Colonies

The middle colonies were uniquely diverse among the English colonies. New York and New Jersey were both settled by Dutch people. And Pennsylvania’s religious freedom attracted large numbers of Germans and Dutch even though it was founded by the English Quaker William Penn. The multicultural nature of these colonies had an impact on US history, but that fact can easily be lost on a seven-year-old. So BJU Press Heritage Studies 2 uses Christmas traditions to illustrate how these different nationalities contributed to America’s unique cultural identity.

(Image use) WP 12/2016

Our Christmas Traditions

As Heritage Studies 2 presents the story of the founding of the middle colonies, it discusses how the different nationalities brought different Christmas traditions with them. Germans brought Christmas trees and nativity scenes, and the English decorated their homes with evergreens, berries, and candles.

Then there were the Dutch. Since cooks in those days didn’t have a way of measuring the temperature in their ovens before baking cakes, they would take a small amount of batter and put it in the woodstove ovens to test the temperature. People in Holland called these test cakes koekje (KOOK-yieh), which means “little cake.” Eventually, they started making koekjes into people shapes that could be decorated after being baked. That was the basis for gingerbread men and other Christmas cookies we still enjoy every year.

As my daughter and I learn about the founding of these critical American colonies, it has been fun and insightful to see how BJU Press helps me use Christmas traditions to demonstrate how the nationalities in those early colonies influence our lives even today.

Find out more about how BJU Press textbooks support teaching history.

History Begins at Creation

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I’m a few weeks into teaching Heritage Studies 2 to my oldest daughter. One day as we started our history lesson after family worship, my daughter exclaimed, “I learned this in Bible class!” (That’s because our second-grade American history textbook began with creation.) She was surprised to be learning something in history class that she learned from the Bible.

As a parent, I was pleased that my daughter recognized our study of American history started with a historical account from the Bible because my wife and I have committed to give our children a biblical worldview education so that they will view each subject by faith. When we study history, faith demands we begin the study with creation, understand humanity in light of creation, and see civilization through creation.

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By Faith Begin History with Creation

When I took world history in high school and college, the textbooks began with civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. My Christian teachers dismissed evolutionary “prehistory,” but they never replaced these myths with the account of the beginning of human events in the Garden of Eden. When we as parents start to teach “history” without the creation account, we treat it as a secularist would, as something other than an account of how the world actually began. I want my children to approach all subjects by faith. That means taking creation seriously in their history course.

By Faith Understand Humanity in Light of Creation

Secularists try to find ways to define humans. They sometimes call us tool-using-creatures or symbol-using-creatures. Without the creation account, we have a poor basis for understanding human beings. How can our children properly study a subject that records and interprets human events yet doesn’t define our humanity? Our history textbook taught my daughter that we’re all created in God’s image and that God gives us two important directions: fill and rule the earth. While the Fall (also covered in our textbook) twisted us, our identity is still rooted in the one in whose image we are made and the directions He gave us in the beginning. Creation is foundational to understanding that humans and humanity are the central focus of historical study.

By Faith See Civilization Through Creation

In general, secularists claim that humans started to congregate and plant crops, which in turn led to civilization. They claim civilization allowed for occupational specializations, such as priests who invented gods. In contrast, the creation account tells us that God ordered humans  to “exercise dominion” over the earth. In the first generation, people began cultivating crops (Cain) and practicing husbandry (Abel). Even when murderous Cain began founding cities, he did so because of God’s call to rule over the world. Civilization didn’t beget God, instead God’s direction to man gave rise to civilization.

As my daughter continues to study American history, these foundational concepts are central to her understanding of the events and people we will learn about. My wife and I want our daughter to view history through the lens of faith. That’s why we want a history text that begins with creation.

Learn more about teaching from a biblical worldview by signing up for our homeschool email.

Our Homeschool Field Trip Journal

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Field Trip Journal

This summer our family had the opportunity to visit Jamestown Settlement. It isn’t on the original site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, but it is nearby on the James River. It’s a terrific place to teach children about history. All over the living history museum, docents encourage the children to touch everything. There are replica ships, a life-sized fort, even a Powhatan village. The site also has hands-on activities, so my daughters got to help remove fur from a deerskin with oyster shells and try on armor.

My wife and I had visited Jamestown Settlement before, so we knew the children would have fun and get an introduction to colonial life. But we wanted our four-year-old and six-year-old to view this as a learning opportunity and not an amusement park with a historical theme. But on the other hand, we didn’t want to remove the joy of learning that comes from an opportunity like this. So we developed a field trip journal. Using learning strategies that we gleaned from the BJU Press reading curriculum, we planned “pre-reading” and “post-reading” questions to improve our children’s learning comprehension.

Before the Field Trip

Just as we ask pre-reading questions to activate prior learning before reading a story, we asked our children to answer questions about what they knew before we arrived at Jamestown Settlement. Our six-year-old has finished first grade, so she wrote short sentences to answer questions. But both she and our four-year-old used crayons to draw pictures to express their thoughts. As they drew pictures of Native American tepees and horses, they were thinking through what they already knew about early American life. Their pictures were wrong since they drew cone-shaped tents. But that was good. They were setting themselves up to have their misconceptions corrected on the field trip.

We also asked them what they were looking forward to seeing the most at Jamestown. This created a sense of excitement and helped them look forward to the new things they would be learning.

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After the Field Trip

Leaving the settlement, we sat at a picnic table to eat sandwiches, chips, and grapes. After lunch we pulled out their journals and asked them some more questions. We guided them to think through what they had learned and to draw pictures of the Powhatan huts, so they could see the difference between what they thought they knew before the field trip and what they knew afterwards. We also asked them to draw what they most  enjoyed seeing. These questions cemented the learning for our children and helped turn a fun trip into long-term memory. The journals also became souvenirs that were far more valuable than the ceramic mugs at the gift shop.

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Homeschooling During an Election Year

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JH Politics and HS

The controversies surrounding the 2016 presidential election have at times made me want to shut politics out of my life until the election is over. But each time, I decide against that because I know how important it is.  As Christians, we can’t hide from the issues since many directly impact us. It’s our responsibility to make sure that both we and our children are well informed and ready to cast our votes now and in the future. There is no better time than an election year to be teaching children what the political process of our nation involves and how to evaluate the issues and candidates from the perspective of a biblical worldview.

Our Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption textbook (pages 239–40) says it well:

God laid the foundation for government as He laid the foundation of the earth. Government has been part of God’s good and glorious plan from the beginning. . . . Governments have power from the Highest Power. But governments are made up of fallen people who twist that power in frivolous ways.

Government in itself is not bad and is something that has been planned by God (Romans 13:1). So it’s important for all Christians to understand their nation’s government and participate in it appropriately. However, it’s also true that all governments are made up of fallen individuals, making it equally important for us as Christians to be well informed about what the Bible has to say about the issues and the candidates who take positions on those issues. It’s also our responsibility to make sure our children are prepared to do the same.

I strongly encourage teenagers who are looking forward to voting in this election for the first time to work though Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, and Redemption. It takes the biblical values they have been hearing from you as well as from BJU Press curriculum and applies those values to politics, government, and adult life. It also can help you prepare them to defend their Christian faith against the many challenges they’ll encounter as they transition into college and adult life.

Take a look inside the book here.