National Bible Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to address National Bible Week.

The Bible is very important in this country. In part, it is important because it is the Word of God, and that makes it the most important book, but it is a particularly important book in America, and it is a book that everybody should familiarize themselves with because I don't think you can understand either the Declaration of Independence or our Constitution without reading the Bible.

You have to remember what America was like in its founding and probably at least the first 125 years after its founding. People learned to read by either learning to read the Bible itself or maybe learning to read another book, such as ``The New England Primer,'' which had many excerpts from the Bible in it, or ``McGuffey's Fourth Reader,'' which had 10 chapters, which were solely parts of the Bible and also included the Sermon on the Mount.

The Puritans, of course, who were such an important factor in the founding of America, encouraged everyone to read the Bible. In 1782, the U.S. Congress even commemorated an American Bible. The reason they commemorated an American Bible is, at that time, there was somewhat of a crisis in America. We had a Revolutionary War going on. It was difficult to get Bibles from England. So somebody else had to get a Bible or they had to get Bibles in other ways, and Congress talked about that. But when you think about that, you realize why, for so many early Americans, the Bible was so important to them.

It is kind of funny nowadays where they pretend that there is a separation between church and state in America, because John Jay, who was the first Chief Justice of the United States, was also president of the American Bible Society; and I could go on at length from early Supreme Court decisions in which they talked about the importance of God and made reference to the Bible.

Other important Americans early on, Andrew Jackson, the Bible is ``the rock on which our Republic rests.''

We can take two things out of this: First of all, we could remember that the great Andrew Jackson felt the Bible was very important, and, secondly, remind people--because a lot of people around here don't know it--that we are a Republic.

Abraham Lincoln, of course, was known as our greatest Biblical President. There are all sorts of lessons in the Bible.

I think in First Samuel it is interesting to read when the Lord did not like Israel turning from Him and viewing Him as primarily their king over Israel, but instead they wanted kind of a strong central government under a king--example one of many lessons that I think our forefathers read when they designed our wonderful country.

But in any event, I think, for National Bible Week, what every one of us should do is take some time to read the Bible, particularly the parts of the Bible in which Israel was formed, because I think it was very important for our forefathers because they envisioned our country as a country which would be pleasing to God, and they wanted the type of country that God would love and bless. I think we have been given that love and blessings not so much because of the way we behave today, but because of the faith of our forefathers.

So, again, my encouragement for whoever sits at home and listens to this, maybe say: Can I read the book of Deuteronomy or read First Samuel and learn a little bit of the Bible, not only the Bible for its own right, but to remember the type of books that were being read by our forefathers when they wrote our Constitution, when they wrote our Declaration of Independence, and those books which created their view of the world.

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