Tag History

Perils of Politics: A Quint of Quotes

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Fellow travelers,

Here is another “Quint of Quotes” from my collection.  Five quotes somewhat related to each other, but not exactly in agreement.  The book Faithful Presence by Bill Haslam opens by describing how polarized and angry America has become. In this environment, he asks the question: “do [Christians] just give up on the public square as a place to solve problems?”  These quotes aren’t an answer to that question, but I hope you find them interesting and thought-provoking.  Enjoy!

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” – Pericles, Greek statesman

“Only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history…A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870…The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics.” – G.K. Chesterton

“The less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs” – Warren Buffett

The opening of the U.S. Constitution. Public Domain.

“I once carried on a brief correspondence with a man who objected to my interpretation of Romans 13. He said that all government was of the Devil and that Christians must not bow to the authority of ‘the powers that be.’ I pointed out to him that even his use of the United States mail service was an acceptance of governmental authority. The money he spent buying the paper and stamps also came from the ‘powers that be.’ For that matter, the very freedom he had to express himself was a right guaranteed by—the government!” – Warren Wiersbe

“When we are wrong, make us willing to change. And when we are right, make us easy to live with.” – Peter Marshal

The Kingdom Jesus Wants

Todd R 2 Comments

At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, He spent 40 days alone in the wilderness and at the end of this time was confronted directly by the devil with three temptations.  In the first, the temptation was to fulfill His physical need for food.  In the second, to display His power presumptuously.  This post will focus on the third temptation, as recorded in Matthew 4:8-10:

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”  Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,
             “‘You shall worship the Lord your God
                        and him only shall you serve.’””

As with the first and second temptations, Jesus uses God’s Word to combat the temptations, in this case quoting Deuteronomy 6:13.  Jesus knew that to live a life of perfect obedience, He needed to worship God only in every action He took.  Even one action that gave in to Satan’s ideas for Him would have made Him an imperfect sacrifice and we would all still be dead in our sins.  There would be no Christianity and no salvation for anyone.

But I also think Jesus knew that the kingdoms of the world just weren’t worth ruling.  Sinful people need a Savior who can heal them, before anyone will be able to rule them.  Therefore, Jesus was not interested in the unredeemed kingdoms of the world, but in redeeming His people and building His perfect kingdom person by person.  The world as it is just isn’t good enough.

After all, what good is a kingdom full of people who only worship the wrong things?  What good is a world without hope of redemption in Christ?  In his book A History of Christianity, British historian Paul Johnson doesn’t shy away from the evils of the world and the failings of the church, which some say disprove that there’s a loving God.  However, in the epilogue Johnson asks what if there was no Christianity at all?

“Certainly, mankind without Christianity conjures up a dismal prospect. The record of mankind with Christianity is daunting enough… for there is a cruel and pitiless nature in man which is sometimes impervious to Christian restraints and encouragements.  But without these restraints, bereft of these encouragements, how much more horrific the history of these last 2,000 years must have been!”[1]

On the other hand, what if Christianity is true?  In a world redeemed by Christ, man does not have “a cruel and pitiless nature,” but the perfect sinless nature of Jesus.  There will be nothing but encouragements to live a life of love for God and others.  Restraints won’t even be needed.

This is the kingdom that Jesus finds worth ruling, and will rule, eternally, thanks to His overcoming of Satan’s temptations and perfect life of obedient love, so we someday may have a perfect life.  In this kingdom,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God
                        and him only shall you serve.’””

Eternally.  Amen.

[1] Johnson, Paul.  A History of Christianity.  (1976).  P. 517.

What Was the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ Really About? – History for July 21

Todd R 2 Comments

Some events in history bring a faint glimmer of memory to many people, but what they remember may not be the most relevant point. One such event was the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” decided on July 21 in 1925. What actually was this trial? Wikipedia’s summary[1] is that “a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held.” The trial descended into theatrics and was covered by national news organizations. Time magazine called the trial a “fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war.” Each side had a famous lawyer seeking publicity: the Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan, who ran for president three times, was the prosecuting attorney, and the agnostic Clarence Darrow defended Scopes.

The immediate result of the trial was that Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay a small fine, but years later, that’s not what people remember.  For some, the lesson of the Scopes trial is simple: “science good; religious fundamentalism bad.”  Another group of people might think the lesson was: “religious fundamentalism good; science bad.”  But did the case conclude either of these things?  It didn’t, so what’s the real issue?

The Culture Behind the Scopes Trial
In the background issues were simmering which still linger today – whether religion should have a voice in how science is used and taught.  Tim Keller notes that “Few people remember…that the textbook Scopes used, Civic Biology by George Hunter, taught not only evolution but also argued that science dictated we should sterilize or even kill those classes of people who weakened the human gene pool by spreading ‘disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country.’ This was typical of scientific textbooks of the time.”[2]  Wikipedia notes that “Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant.”  So, the trial did not hinge on Scopes’ teaching, this textbook, or even eugenics, but the subject of eugenics sheds some light on how over-simplified the take-away of “science good; religious fundamentalism bad” really is.

Geneticist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, popularized the term “eugenics” from the Greek, meaning “good birth,” to describe ways humans could use evolutionary science to improve their condition.  He usually left unspoken that he meant not specific humans, but some abstract sense of humans in aggregate, and also that he meant to improve the condition of those humans in charge, or those humans with a voice among the humans in charge.   These beliefs were not rare, but quite mainstream.  Joseph Loconte, writing of the culture J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis lived in[3], notes: “In Britain, the Eugenics Education Society was founded in 1907 to take up the cause.  By 1913, the American Genetic Association was established in the United States to promote the doctrines of racial purity.”  The United States was actually the first country where compulsory sterilization was legalized, and some practices implemented by Nazi Germany were lifted right out of laws used by U.S. States.  U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote “Three generations of imbeciles is enough” in defense of Virginia’s sterilization law.

The church was not entirely immune from the eugenics movement either.  According to Loconte, “Ministers in the Church of England held a Church Congress in 1910 in Cambridge, inviting several members of the Royal Commission on the Feeble-Minded to participate.”  Also, “By the 1920s, hundreds of American churches participated in a national eugenics sermon contest.  As the Rev. Kenneth McArthur, a winner from Sterling, Massachusetts, put it in his sermon: ‘If we take seriously the Christian purpose of realizing on earth the ideal divine society, we shall welcome every help which science affords.’”

This background to the Scopes Trial, often simplified to a “science” vs “fundamentalism” debate, makes us ask: which science and which fundamentalism?  Was eugenics, for a moment, part of “religious fundamentalism” for some of the church?  And is perfecting society on earth truly a fundamental Christian belief?  With a rule of thumb of “science good; religious fundamentalism bad,” or the opposite, what do you do if a scientific idea becomes also central to religious belief?

Also, if you take away science and religion from the equation altogether, which is better: “all humans have dignity and are worthy of care and love” or “some people deserve to be neutered like an ordinary animal”?  If science is the only source of our “fundamentalism,” where do we turn when it insists on destruction for the less favored?  Tim Keller argues that “Secular, scientific reason is a great good, but if taken as the sole basis for human life, it will be discovered that there are too many things we need that it is missing.”  What is missing is a meaningful reason to love your neighbor, regardless of their scientific knowledge, religious belief, disability, economic impact, level of intelligence, or any other characteristic.

It’s Not (Entirely) a Fantasy
Loconte says that although Tolkien and Lewis wrote of fantasy worlds populated not only by men, but also by elves, dwarves, orcs, and many other races, the topics of eugenics and other Progressive Era ideas served as background.  In Tolkien’s epic The Lord of The Rings, the solution to conflict between the races was not for one race to rule the others, or (even worse) to eliminate them.  Instead, the answer is to utterly destroy the Ring of Power, representing the desire of any tribe to use power to rule others “for their own good,” as some say.  While Tolkien insists his story is not a direct allegory, he may have been thinking of the centuries of tribal conflict between the English, Irish, Scots, and Welsh.  Or the conflict between any group of conquerors and the conquered.  By using fictional races, Tolkien was arguing that this lesson applies to everyone, in all places and at all times.

Therefore, when scientific fundamentalism says it’s OK not to love some people, Christians need to respond without exception that every person is a creation of God with innate dignity and should be loved as Christ loved us.  However, as shown on the cross, power is not the answer.  As Jesus told his disciples in Mark 10:42-45 – “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

God does not expect us to understand every issue of history, or even in our daily news feed, which is increasingly a “fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war,” but when we all meet our Lord in heaven, He will say “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” – Matthew 25:40

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
[2] Keller, Timothy.  Making Sense of God (2016).  This post draws from pages 12-13.
[3] Loconte, Joseph.  A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918 (2015).  This post draws on pages 15-19.

A Man in Need of an Ally

Todd R Leave a comment

Do you hate paying taxes?  Maybe you think you pay too much.  That others don’t pay enough.  Maybe you don’t like what its being used for.  Maybe the system is just too complicated and a hassle.

In Jesus’ day, people also hated paying taxes.  As noted in a prior post, Jesus lived and ministered during the “Pax Romana”, or “Roman Peace”, which was announced by Roman Caesars in “gospel” messages telling the people they benefited from unprecedented peace and prosperity due to the godlike powers of the Caesars and their Roman government.  Of course, these benefits could be expensive and had to be financed.

Worse than Turbo Tax

Enter the tax collector, or as some historians say: the tax “farmer”.  Instead of collecting taxes themselves, the Roman state sometimes sold the right to collect taxes to individuals at contracted rates.  Tax farmers collected required taxes, including “ground-, income-, and poll-tax. The ground-tax amounted to one-tenth of all grain and one-fifth of the wine and fruit grown; partly paid in kind, and partly commuted into money. The income-tax amounted to 1 per cent.; while the head-money, or poll-tax, was levied on all persons.”[1]

On top of this, the tax farmer invented other taxes for his own benefit, “such as on axles, wheels, pack-animals, pedestrians, roads, highways; on admission to markets; on carriers, bridges, ships, and quays; on crossing rivers, on dams, on licenses”.[2]  These taxes the farmer would keep for themselves, usually making them incredibly wealthy.

Adding insult to injury, they sometimes would use Roman soldiers to enforce payment, or if they were especially well-off, they had their own private enforcement squads, subjecting citizens to the “vexation of being constantly stopped on the journey, having to unload all one’s pack-animals, when every bale and package was opened, and the contents tumbled about [and] private letters opened.”[3]

Not Religious Freedom
Now enter Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea and Samaria, who later presided over the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Pilate was the man in charge of maintaining the hypocrisy of the “Pax Romana” while the soldiers under him harassed citizens for taxes.  He had a history of provoking the Jews and reminding them of their powerlessness, including seizing money from the Jewish Temple treasury to build an aqueduct, and by prominently posting Caesar propaganda within Jerusalem.  Both instigations are recorded by first-century historian Josephus[4].

Therefore, to many Jews of Jesus’ day, tax payments were seen as not only supporting the corruption of the tax collector, but also as financing an oppressive government and its pagan gods.  Often, the tax collector was Jewish himself, putting themselves forward for the job, then being appointed by their province.  In them, Jewish leaders saw not only a symbol of their contempt for “Pax Romana”, but also traitors and cheaters, representatives of an enemy power.  “They were a criminal race, to which Lev 20:5 applied,”[5] which says “then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.[6]”  All tax collectors as a group fell under the Rabbinic ban, or their version of excommunication.  Under the ban, a person or group of persons became “like one dead”, not allowed to socialize with other Jews, who could not even give them directions.  “It was forbidden to eat or drink with such a one.”[7]

Zacchaeus Has No Friends
In Luke 19, we meet one of these chief tax collectors, Zacchaeus, who appeared to be having a mid-life crisis.  He was a very rich, successful man because of the abuses described above, but was trying to reform.  Luke 19:8 records Zacchaeus’ words when he met Jesus: “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.[8]’” Comically, he had to climb a sycamore tree to see Jesus at all, who was surrounded by crowds.

Excommunicated from the Jewish faith, and probably less popular with his Roman bosses due to collecting less tax, Zacchaeus was looking for anyone to accept him.  We don’t know for sure what led Zacchaeus to search for Jesus, but maybe he knew about John the Baptist calling tax collectors to “Collect no more than you are authorized to do”, as recorded in Luke 3:10-13.  Later, maybe Zacchaeus heard Jesus’ teaching about taxes and tax collectors as did Matthew, another tax collector and eventually author of the first book of the New Testament.  In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus contrasted the obnoxious self-righteousness of a Pharisee to a humble tax collector begging for forgiveness.

When Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the tree, he called out “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”[9]  Then came the complaints of the Pharisees, a group of religious leaders, who “grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’”  See, the Pharisees were right that Zacchaeus is a sinner.  They were right that he was an oppressor.  The Pharisees divided the world into “us” and “sinners”, and expected Jesus to do the same.  After all, the Rabbinic ban applied to the entire class of tax collectors and if Jesus wanted to be a Rabbi, he had to enforce the ban.  If they were Mandalorian, they would have said “This is the way!” [10]

In contrast, earlier in Luke 6:27-32, Jesus taught:

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.  Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.  And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.  If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”

The first part of this seems to be describing precisely the actions of tax collectors and their thugs, and saying “Love them!”.  The latter part sounds like a rebuke to the Pharisees.  What the Pharisees did not understand is that from Jesus’ perspective, all are sinners and all are enemies of God.  Fortunately, He does not leave it at that: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – Romans 5:8. If Jesus had not loved His enemies on the cross, we – including the Pharisees – would all be without hope, like Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree.

Jesus announced “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” – Luke 19:9b-10. In saving Zacchaeus, Jesus was proclaiming a new paradigm, where there is no “Us versus Sinners”, but in His death and resurrection He created a church that is “Him for Them”, and then “Us for Them”.  He elevated Love above “truth”, letting the Pharisees know that although their accusations against Zacchaeus and all tax collectors were “true”, that truth was not good enough.  The truth of the Law condemns because we are all sinners. Jesus is the Truth we need, that brings peace and sets free.  Zacchaeus was excluded from church and state, but Jesus offered a third, superior kingdom that would accept him.  By disowning his sin (Luke 19:8 above), Zacchaeus didn’t become perfect, but he acknowledged Jesus as the Savior and King he needed and relied on His grace.

Ripple Effects
The Pharisees continued longing for a political messiah who would get rid of traitors like the tax collectors and overthrow Rome.  Their worldview pointed back to the reign of King David, who oversaw a sovereign Jewish nation governed by the laws of the Pentateuch[11], with a “pure” system of Jewish law centered around worship and sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Rather than being reformed by the Zacchaeus episode, Pharisees later tried to force Jesus to take sides between church (as the Pharisees saw it) and the occupying Roman state in Luke 20:19-25, asking “Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?”  Jesus deftly replied, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Jesus did not condemn paying taxes even though he knew fraud and corruption was involved, but he earlier demanded that those responsible for corruption repent.

If you feel like a Pharisee in this story, break the stereotype of “Us vs. Them.”  Find a Zacchaeus out there and bring the love and forgiveness of Jesus to them.  I guarantee you know one.  The nightly news or your social media feed are probably very good at identifying enemies.  However, “Blessed are the peacemakers”[12], because they are like Jesus.

Zacchaeus probably continued to collect taxes, but as a reformed man.  He would refuse to be a cog in a corrupt machine.  As a chief collector, he may have influenced subordinates to be less corrupt, and therefore his conversion was good for the citizens while also making Pax Romana look more like its propaganda and less like what the Pharisees hated.  A bit of the righteousness and justice of heaven was injected into Pax Romana because Jesus saw Zacchaeus as a person, and not as a category or type, beyond redemption under the ban.

If you feel like Zacchaeus in this story, cast out and rejected with unforgiving enemies on every side, turn to Jesus.  Perhaps you feel like the religious establishment doesn’t like you or your kind.  Jesus is not the religious or political solution the Pharisees and Romans wanted, but He is the solution – the Answer[13].  For you.

The Right Side of History
When people say they are on “the right side of history” they’re implicitly claiming to know the future and also claiming the right to judge the present based on that knowledge.  However, they often ignore the One who actually does know the future.  When Jesus met Zacchaeus, saving him from slavery to the kingdom of sin was more important at that moment than overthrowing Rome and saving the Jews from state oppression.  Jesus knew that Zacchaeus’ soul was eternal, but that Rome and all its institutions and culture were temporary.  Only in hindsight do we know what Jesus already knew at the time: in AD 66, Rome would invade and level the city of Jerusalem, including desecrating the temple.  In 410 AD, Germanic tribes would sack the city of Rome and eventually overthrow the empire of Pax Romana.

What was Zacchaeus’ fate in AD 66?  We don’t know, but if we are Christians, we know we will meet him in heaven.  He was rescued, spiritually, just days before Jesus went to the cross for him.  Jesus overcame the temporary power of the world – the oppressing power of sin and darkness that enslaves us – by offering Himself and the radical power of forgiveness.  Zacchaeus was a state oppressor of the Jews as an agent of Rome, and also religiously oppressed by the Jews who tried to keep him from God, but he will outlast both systems.  He overcame, in Jesus, the Oppressor that cuts across all categories of people – sin.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28

From the perspective of eternity, being on “the right side of history” is when the oppressor loves the oppressed and the oppressed loves the oppressor.  Isaiah 11:6-9 describes the future from which Jesus will judge our present actions and whether we are on the right side:

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
            and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together;
            and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
            and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
             for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

Amen.

[1] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1886). P. 357
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Josephus. The Jewish War (2.9.2) (AD 75) and Antiquities of the Jews (18.3.1) (AD 93). Cited in Wikipedia entry on Pontius Pilate.
[5] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. (1886). P. 357.
[6] Molech was a god of the Ammonites, whose followers sometimes sacrificed their children to him by fire. Ammonites were descendants of Abraham’s brother Lot, through his younger daughter who got him drunk and seduced him. (Gen 19:38)
[7] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. (1886). P. 602.
[8] Possibly referring to Exodus 22:1 – “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.”
[9] Luke 19:5
[10] In the Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, the title refers to a tribe of bounty hunters who use this phrase when referencing their shared code of conduct.
[11] The first 5 books of the Bible, or the “books of Moses”
[12] Matthew 5:9
[13] See my first post, “42 is Not the Answer” for more on how Jesus is the Answer.

“No reserve, No retreat, No regrets” – History for April 9

Todd R 1 Comment

At the young age of 25, American millionaire and philanthropist William Borden died in Egypt on April 9, 1913.  Despite never making it to the mission field in China, Christianity Today once called him “the most influential missionary of the early 20th century.”  Borden’s story has inspired Christians and missionaries ever since.

As an heir to his family’s fortune from silver mining, William Borden had many opportunities in life, yet shortly after high school he became interested in missionary work.  Some said he was “throwing himself away,” but while a student at Yale, he quickly gained a reputation for his sense of purpose and dedication to Jesus.  He established a Bible study and prayer group that eventually included about 1,000 of Yale’s 1,300 students.  Off campus, he funded the Yale Hope Mission in New Haven with his own money and was often seen with widows, orphans, homeless people, and drunks, providing for their needs, and telling them about Jesus.  It looked like God was preparing him for a fruitful future as a missionary.

After graduating Yale, Borden turned down attractive job offers, choosing instead to study at Princeton Seminary, intending to minister to Uighur Muslims in China.  He finalized his plans and set sail, stopping in Egypt to study Islam and Arabic in preparation.  However, he contracted cerebral meningitis in March 1913 and died a few weeks later on April 9.  Did God take him too soon, before his work was done?  Borden didn’t seem to think so.

After his death, family reported that in his Bible were written the words “no reserve”, referring to his willingness to put everything aside for Christ, then later “no retreat”, after turning down job offers upon graduating Yale, and finally “no regrets”, apparently written shortly before his death.

Skeptics deny this note exists, citing “no evidence.”  However, friends and family claim to have found the note, and testimony is evidence.  Even if the note doesn’t exist, he still made the choices he made, living a life which declared that the salvation given through Jesus Christ was worth more than all the earthly benefits a young millionaire could have.

Skeptics may also say Borden, and God, failed because Borden’s life didn’t go according to his plans.  What was the point?  But as they say, the LORD works in mysterious ways and His plans are not always our plans.  Borden impacted many during his days at Yale before leaving for Egypt, and by events he couldn’t control, he may have become a better witness for Christ by death than from living as a missionary.  In his will, he left his fortune to several Christian agencies, including China Inland Mission, which named Borden Memorial Hospital in Lanzhou, China, in his memory.  Seized by the government in 1951, the hospital is now the Lanzhou Second People’s Hospital, but locals know its history.

During his short life, William Borden lived with a dedication to Christ that continues to inspire believers over a century later.  Even though he never made it to China, his testimony made it there and provides hope for persecuted groups and those who Christ calls to serve them.

Having all this world could offer, he chose to live for the next world.  Engraved on his gravestone in Egypt are the words “Apart from Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.”   Even if the note is just a legend, “No reserve, no retreat, and no regrets” summarizes the life of William Borden well. 

Interested in more History? Select “History Bits” from the “Blog” drop down menu at the top of the page.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whiting_Borden
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2017/february/forgotten-final-resting-place-of-william-borden.html
http://home.snu.edu/~HCULBERT/regret.htm