I can only imagine how much fun historians will have in 50 or so years from now will have in trying to come to terms for the era we are living in now. Will they try to give it some sort of official historical name like the Era of Ill Feelings. The Rouge Era, where political institutions went off the rails. The Second Great Awakening when religion finally brought government and God together. Or will they simply name it after a person like the Victorian Age and call it the Trumpian Age.

Historians in many ways are like astronomers without space mounted telescopes to look back in time. Instead of telescopes, historians use data, observations, primary sources from the time in question. And today, with so much technology, social media anybody with a smartphone can be a chronicler of history. There is a no dearth of information available. Our technology is so acute that we can even pick up somebody farting during an interview. Not that there is a whole lot of historical significance in that.  

But, just imagine if John Kennedy’s assassination took place in the age of the smart phone. Abraham Zapruder filmed one of the most defining moments of the 20th Century using a an 8mm Bell & Howell home movie camera. He filmed in Kodachrome but without sound. His 27 seconds of film has created never ending controversy and conspiracy theories to enthrall generations of conspiracy buffs. (With the emergence of the cell-phone cameras Kodak stopped making Kodachrome in 2009. The following year it went bankrupt.)

Today, football instant replays have more cameras and angles to determine if the nose of the football “broke the plane” of the end zone than we had in 1963 to determine which way Kennedy’ head was moving at impact. I know, too soon; but it is a point of conspiratorial contention. 

Just think how many smartphones would have filmed Kennedy’s assassination. And from all sorts of angles revealing information that investigators can only dream of—and not to mention Closed Circuit Camera filming traffic. We probably would have had well over 500 videos of the assassination. Heck, somebody was able to film Wagner Group’s mercenary leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s, plane “crashing between the villages of Kuzhenkino and Kuzhenkinskoe in Russia’s Tver region. All 10 aboard were killed” according to CNN. I am sure the twin “K” villages are no comparison to Dallas/Fort Worth—even in the1960s. But somehow somebody manage to get a video—Putin vision. Was there a lone missile man on the ground behind the goat pins; or was it a bomb in the luggage? Only the Main Directorate of the GRU knows and they ain’t sayin’.

Historians also can be prognosticators of the future. Look at ESPN’s College Gameday. Every Saturday during football season pundits try to predict this week’s games and how they relate to each other. Searching for which team will be upset ruining their quest for the coveted Number One ranking. Those commentators look at the past trying to piece together a future. 

For instance, we can look back 200 years ago and see some historical similarities of today. In 1817 President James Monroe went into the heart of Federalist territory: Boston Massachusetts. His visit was spun as a goodwill tour but to some Federalist Party members at that time it could have been seen more as an “in your face” moment. 

With the death of Alexander Hamilton the headless Federalist Party got thumped in the 1816 elections and again in 1820. They had lost every election to a clan of Virginian Democratic Republicans since 1800. (Those Republicans are no relation to today’s GOP.) Some, Federalist however, could see the writing on the wall. Our country was in the midst of what Boston journalist, Benjamin Russell, writing in the Columbian Centinel, termed as the “Era of Good Feelings.” The Federalist Party was still around but for all practical purposes it had already started to fade on into the history books.

What made it an Era of Good Feelings was basically the fact that Monroe and the Democratic Republicans had no opposition barking at them. Monroe basically ran unopposed in his second presidential bid, technically the last president to run unopposed since George Washington. So yes maybe it was a time of good feelings. Monroe and company were like the Yankees of the 1920s and ‘30s; the 40’s and 50’s.

Today it is different. It is time where civility has turned to an age of toxicity. The social atmosphere of this planet could be compared with that of Venus, where sulfuric acid rains down creating a hellish place to be caught without your stainless steel umbrella.

And then there is Mike Johnson the new Speaker of the House.  He said, “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

 That might be good spiritual advice in a swampy Louisiana bayou.  But today, I am not sure if most people are gonna find comfort in a leader looking back five or six thousand years for advice from Moses. I am not sure which part of the Bible Johnson prefers. For instance, if it is the Old Testament where it took two or three witness are needed to have a person stoned to death for certain crimes, Donald Trump might be in big trouble in Georgia. Three of his lawyers could put him center stage at a rock concert. 

However, Trump might want to thank James Madison. It could possibly be argued that Madison looked to Moses’ example of separating the Red Sea for inspiration in separating church and state when he wrote: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Hence, comes the belief in church and state working different street corners in peace. This could then dovetail into the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause, which could keep Trump out of the rock pit in the belief that stoning someone to death sounds a bit cruel. So which is it, Old Testament fire and brimstone or New Testament forgive and love your neighbor–but no coventing?

But we have had Biblical difference before the New World even got settled and on its feet, Catholics and Protestants were going at it in Florida. In 1565 Spanish Catholics massacred French Huguenots (Protestants) who  tried to set up a colony, Fort Caroline, north of St. Augustine on the St. Johns River. Spanish General Pedro Menendez de Aviles made sure that the Protestant colony never got settled when he killed more than 300 settlers and soldiers. Menendez, however, being the good Catholic, and probably adhering to the current worldview at the time, gave the Frenchmen a chance to convert to Catholicism. Most refused and were put to the sword. I am not sure where Menendez found that worldview in scripture.

I do not mean to question the Bible. I will, however, question man’s interpretation of it. So whose world view is Mike Johnson talking about? Is the Bible being pulled off the shelf a Vulgate Bible, which according to vulgate.org “is a Latin version of the Holy Bible, and largely the result of the labors of St Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus), who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 A.D. to make a revision of the old Latin translations.  

Or is Johnson cracking open The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Bible. According to the episcopaliannewservice.org “The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Bible is the result of a commission of the Society of Biblical Literature by the National Council of Churches, which includes dozens of denominations representing 30 million church members.”

But here is the real kicker about this Bible. This “ecumenical and interfaith” Bible can be the one Bible “suitable in Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish context.” Furthermore, “It attempts to reverse the historic trend in translation history from the 19th and 20th centuries in which some Christian communities and scholars of the Bible were historically excluded from the translation endeavors of our English Bibles.”

Sounds sort of woke to me. I just wonder what “Christian communities” could have been excluded. 

What is amazing about all of this is that it comes at a time when a portion of our country cannot agree on the results of the last presidential election. What makes us think we can decide on which Bible to pull off the shelf to get a unified worldview.  Or election results.