[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Journey Hometown Journal.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Our main professor on the American Revolution will be speaking on the American Revolution as a global conflict.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: Welcome to the Hometown Journal. I'm Mark Edwards. And today we're going to continue our series on America's 250th anniversary. We'll be sharing some information with you about one of the events coming up, and that is the 250th commemorative conference to be held at Liberty University.
Professor of history Dr. Samuel Smith is with us. Dr. Smith, welcome. Give us an overview of the conference.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: We're very excited about the history department hosting this America 250th conference. It's titled America's Legacy and Influence.
As you know, there are celebrations across the country of America's 250th since the Declaration of Independence.
And there's also the Virginia 250 and we're part of that initiative, a statewide initiative.
And our focus in this conference is it's going to be a student paper conference with keynote addresses.
Our keynote address will be Major General Jason Boehm, the dean of the Helms School of Government, who has a fantastic book on the history of the Marine Corps.
He'll be speaking on that. Actually, the Marine Corps is one year older than the United States formed in 1775, so he'll be speaking on that. We'll have other plenary sessions. I'll be speaking on Baptists and religious liberty in America.
We'll have another professor, our main professor on the American Revolution will be speaking on the American Revolution as a global conflict and many other student presentations and alumni and other faculty.
We actually have one student coming from Okinawa to present a paper at this conference. So we're very excited about this, the conference.
[00:02:01] Speaker D: Who is it open to?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: It's open to the public. It's free. Held at the business school on April 17th. The plenary, the keynote address will be at 7 o' clock on the 17th. That's a Friday. And then the paper conference will be all day Saturday.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: What's the feedback been like already about the conference? As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary, we
[00:02:26] Speaker B: were amazed at the number of people that wanted to participate in this conference.
We're going to have upwards of 40 different presentations at this conference. So when we put the call for papers out, we were very pleased to see people from all over the country interested in participating in our conference. So we're very excited about it.
[00:02:50] Speaker D: You mentioned the biblical, the religious part of the conference. Talk a little bit about that. How much religion has played in the founding of our country, in the shaping of our country.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: That's going to be kind of a centerpiece of what we're doing in this conference. The biblical founding, the Christian founding of this nation, is indisputable when you really look at the documents, studies have been done. For example, professor at the University of Houston Donald Lutz examined 15,000 pamphlets during the Revolutionary era and found that by far biblical references out distance every other reference of people like Locke, Montesquieu and others.
So when you start looking at that and see that the founders were deeply embedded in trying to find out the biblical foundations of government, how it played a role in America's founding, there's something called Hebrew republicanism that a lot of people have not studied that much. But founders such as Roger Sherman, even Benjamin Franklin were heavily invested in trying to figure out what were the biblical foundations before the monarchy. In the Old Testament, it was really a republican form of government. It was a federal type of government. And they actually spent a lot of time examining the book of Deuteronomy, for example, to see what were the principles that they could lay in the founding of this country. So it's a fascinating topic that we'll be exploring at this conference.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: That is Dr. Samuel Smith of the History department at Liberty University. The university is hosting the 250th commemorative conference. It's titled America's Founding, Legacy and Influence. And as he mentioned, the conference is free and open to the public. And the dates are April 17th and 18th. That's a Friday and Saturday. You can find out more at Liberty Eduhistory250.
We'll be back with more of the Hometown Journal in a minute.
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[00:05:52] Speaker A: Now back to more of the journey.
[00:05:54] Speaker C: Hometown Journal, Mark Edwards back with you as we share details about the upcoming 250th commemorative conference at Liberty University.
That will be April 17th and 18th. The conference is titled America's Founding, Legacy and Influence. Dr. Samuel Smith of the University History department is with us. Dr. Smith, right before the break you were sharing how religion has played such a large role in our country.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: That's right. And we're starting to see a lot of, I would say, big name scholars that are discovering and writing about these things. Mark David hall, for example, who has written a book called Did America have a Christian Founding? And he clearly points out that you have to say, yes, it had a Christian founding.
Daniel Dreisbach, who published a work with Oxford University Press called Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
He shows the amazing and fascinating use of the Bible in all sorts of areas of life, including political life.
And that's something that we emphasize in our history department.
Sort of a well rounded view of the founding. Of course there were secular elements, of course there were economic and constitutional principles and so forth.
But you really can't divorce it from the biblical founding.
[00:07:22] Speaker D: You've got to be excited as a historian, what this year means, obviously for the country and its anniversary, but the opportunity for people in so many different ways to learn what America is all about, why it was founded.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: That's right. And one of the things we will focus in this conference is that the founding is not frozen in time.
The legacy and influence of this founding is still with us today and still shaping our nation and what we want it to be.
And that's something we want to recall and that's something that history does well. When you can look back and see where you came from and see what the roots are and start applying those things to our present day, it's very exciting and I think it's something that's very valuable.
[00:08:20] Speaker D: Again, the dates and, and the location.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: April 17th, Friday evening at 7, and then April 18th a Saturday starting at 8:30 and it'll go on till about 4:30. We're also going to have tours of our chaplain's museum on that day. You know, we have a wonderful chaplain's museum on the campus in the library, Jerry Falwell Library. And we're going to highlight that.
And those dates will be there. And it will be in the business school on the campus of Liberty University.
[00:08:57] Speaker D: If you have served in the military, especially the Marine Corps. And this is an opportunity to hear General Bohem, I heard a little bit of him speak at a leadership conference. And I think people will really enjoy him.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: He is, of course, a great statesman, great military leader and a scholar. And I think people will really enjoy his talk?
[00:09:20] Speaker C: Well, that is Dr. Samuel Smith with the History Department at Liberty University, and he has been with us today to talk about the 250th commemorative conference coming to Liberty University April 17th and 18th. And again, information about the conference is available on our website, myjourney fm.com and then also through the Liberty University site. That's Liberty.
I'm Mark Edwards. Thank you for joining us for the Hometown Journal.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Journey Hometown Journal. If you're a part of an organization or know of one in the communities we serve and would like to be considered as a guest, please make your
[email protected] email officeyjourneyfm.com or call 800-424-9594. The Hometown Journal is a presentation of the Journey.
