Living in the World
The 110th Congress

We're not prisoners of the past. We're shaping the future, and it's all about the children.
Nancy Pelosi

The 110th Congress convenes today. Two new developments in the republic will occur. Nancy Pelosi will become the first female Speaker of the House. And, Keith Ellison will be sworn in using a Quran instead of the Bible. Interestingly, the Quran is an English translation owned by Thomas Jefferson, which Islam views as no Quran at all because the true Quran is in Arabic.

Much has changed, and is changing, in this republic. Over at http://sgmmagazine.blogspot.com I have begun a series on the American Founding. Did religious principles factor into that founding and were they Protestant religious beliefs? While change is inevitable, it is not necessarily all good. Akin to constitutional construction and immigration, each of us has to decide whether there are founding principles, what they are and what can and cannot be changed.

As to Mrs. Pelosi’s quote above, here is a voice from the past to which she is not a prisoner;

But what shall I say of those women who claim on their own behalf, or of their advocates who claim for them, a participation in the labors, occupations, rights and duties which have usually been considered as exclusively appertaining to men? There are those who would expunge the line of demarcation which nearly all nations have drawn between the duties and occupations of men and those of women. Christianity has provided a place for women for which she is fitted and in which she shines; bur take her out of that place, and her luster pales and sheds a feeble and sickly ray, Or, to change the metaphor, woman is a plant, which in the seclusion of its own greenhouse will put forth all its brilliant colors and all its sweet perfume; but if you remove it from the protection of its own floral home into the common garden and open field, where hardier flowers will grow and thrive, its beauty fades and its color is diminished. Neither reason, nor Christianity invites woman to the professor’s chair, conducts her to the bar, makes her welcome in the pulpit, or admits her to the place of ordinary magistry. Both exclude her, not by positive and specific commands, but by general principles and spirit, alike from violence and license of the camp, and debates of the senate, and the pleadings of the forum. And they bid her beware how she lays aside the delicacy of her sex and listens to any doctrines which claim new rights for her, and becomes the dupe of those who have out themselves forward as her advocates only to gain notoriety or perhaps bread….The Bible gives her her place of majesty and dignity in the domestic circle—the heart of her husband and the heart of her family, It is the female superiority of that domain where love, tenderness, refinement, thought, and feeling preside, It is the privilege of making her husband happy and honored, her sons and daughters the ornaments of human society. It is the sphere of piety, prudence, diligence in the domestic station and a holy and devout life.

John Angell James, A Woman’s Mission, exerted from the book Female Piety

Voices have been raised over Ellison’s use of the Quran as being damaging to the Christian tradition of America. But, could it be that a woman speaker is even more damaging? Again, what are the founding principles and what can or can not be changed? It should be an interesting two years if the Lord tarries.