Back to Gettysburg.          Monument to the 140th New York
Infantry., Little Round Top  Monument to the 140th New York
Infantry., Little Round Top                  Search our hearts,
O Lord . . .      2. Very thought provoking blog! When I was in
high school (the 1950s), my history teacher asked us to memorize
the first part of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble
to the U.S. Constitution and the Gettysburg Address. We did not
try to read between the lines of that speech. We, in a northern
classroom, accepted it whole as a legitimate expression of
American Christian patriotism. Dr. McKenzie has undermined this
unthinking approach and has demonstrated how historians,
especially historians who are also Christians, can think
differently about this document. My question, as a history
teacher, is – should we still be assigning our students to
memorize this speech? Should we not also be helping these
students see this speech as a brilliant (but flawed?) piece of
political theater rather than a universally