Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure

I recently watched the Kirk Cameron movie Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure. I have to say I felt dumbfounded after watching the movie.  My perception of what the role of religion was supposed to be, according the pilgrims and founding fathers, completely changed.

Growing up in elementary school, we are always taught that the pilgrims and the founding fathers are heroes of our nation.  But as I got older, around college my initial perception changed, perhaps because of my very liberal/ borderline socialist college professors at Linfield College in Oregon.  In colleges across the country we are all taught that the pilgrims weren't the nice hopeful community we learned about in elementary school, but rather radical religious people who ran away from the tyranny of England to start their own tyranny here.

However, after seeing the movie and hearing from Sue Allen the world's leading expert for the Puritans/Separatists and Marshall Foster, the "truth" that was revealed in college was actually historically inaccurate.  Yes, at the time the pilgrims came to  America there was some friction between some of the people who arrived from abroad and the natives, but it wasn't from the Separatists, but rather conquistadors and merchants who came to America to make money.  The pilgrims on the other hand saw the natives as equals.  There's even one account where the pilgrims used the testimony of two Native Americans against one of their own members of their community.  I found this interesting since it was completely contrary to what I was taught in school.

As for the Founding Fathers, we are taught that their intention for our country was to completely separate ourselves from religion, which is why we have a secular government.  However their actual view of a secular government and what is taught in school is completely different.  Today in colleges and law schools across the country, we learn that government buildings, schools, and organizations should have no trace of God  or religion, and that is how the Founding Fathers intended our government to be.  We are also taught that if it wasn't for those "crazy religious Republicans" of the 50's and 60's our country would be following the path our Founding Fathers actually intended us to be on.  Yet, this is also historically inaccurate.

We were never intended to be a government so secular like France is, where Muslim women can't even where Hijab in school, or Turkey.  Rather our Founding Father's knew the importance of secularism as well as the importance of religious tolerance.  In fact, the first bibles that were printed here in the United States were by Congress, and they were made for public schools.  Can you believe that?  Bibles were made from government money to be used in public schools.  So, in actuality when we forbid students from praying at school, or religious student groups from forming at schools, we are not practicing the religious tolerance that our Founding Father's wanted us to have.

There are so many more lessons from this movie, and it is totally worth the watch.  The movie completely opened my eyes.  As a person who thought I knew a lot about history I was dumbfounded to find out what I was taught in school was wrong.  I don't believe that my professors and teachers growing up were consciously trying to fool me, but in general, I believe that somewhere along the line how we as a country started to teach history changed.  It was by people who consciously were trying to rewrite history, and those who followed along naively spread the word thus creating a misguided group/nation of followers.

To learn more about the film, feel free to go online and check out the site here.  Below is the trailer for the movie, watch it.  And one last thing I should point out is that you educate yourself about the National Monument to Our Forefathers, previously titled the Pilgrim Monument.  There is so much symbolism in that monument that it's worth investigating.