You might've heard the story of the invention of the telephone before, but were you aware that it was also a successful immigrant story? I sure wasn't.
From Bill Bennett's American Patriot's Almanac:
Alexander Graham Bell had two great passions: helping the deaf and inventing. He was born in 1847 in Scotland, where his father taught the art of public speaking and helped deaf people learn to speak. When Alexander was a young man, his family immigrated to Canada, and he soon moved south to Boston, Massachusetts, where he opened a school for teachers of the deaf.
In Boston, Bell grew fascinated with the idea of developing a way to send voices over telegraph wires. He became fast friends with a young mechanic named Thomas Watson, who helped him with his experiments.
For months, the two tinkered with electric currents, switches, and reeds. March 10, 1876, brought one of the great moments in the history of invention. Bell was hard at work in his laboratory, preparing to test a new transmitter he had recently designed, when he spilled some battery acid on his clothes. “Mr. Watson, come here! I want you!” he called. Watson rushed from another room to Bell’s side, not with alarm, but with excitement. He had heard Bell’s call on their instrument. It was the first time words had ever traveled over a wire. Alexander Graham Bell had just given the world the telephone.
The next year, the young inventor launched the Bell Telephone Company, which grew into one of the world’s largest corporations. But Bell had little interest in business. He spent the rest of his life coming up with new ideas and finding ways to help the deaf. He became a proud U.S. citizen in 1882 and is still remembered as one of America’s greatest inventors.
Every day, Bill Bennett provides via email--for free--a reading from his American Patriot's Almanac. You’ll read about heroes, their achievements, and key events that took place “On This Day” in American history. Click here to subscribe.
Welcome to the Intersections Blog, where I try to work out where politics, pop culture, and the Bible meet
So What's This All About?
In case you didn't know, I'm in the multi-year-long process of posting a Christian devotional at the TAWG Blog. The TAWG Blog is, and always will be, mostly apolitical. For the most part, Bible-believing Christians will find little to disagree with there. But I also firmly believe that God's word can--and should--inform everything in life, and this should include politics and popular culture. How should we vote? How should we respond to hot topics such as abortion, capital punishment, taxes, and other issues? Which party, if either, is closer to the Biblical ideal? Tony Campolo and Ron Sider, Evangelicals whose political leanings are on the Left, have made the case in several of their writings that God wants his followers to vote politically on the Left more than on the Right. At times, some of them have gone so far as to equate voting on the Left with obedience to Christ, either subtly or not-so-subtly contending that the converse is true as well: If you vote Republican, you're sinning against the Savior.
I don't agree. I think that to the degree they actually resort to the Bible, they're misinterpreting it. With a whole bunch of caveats, I think politically conservative positions are a lot more compatible with the Scriptures than the Leftist positions.
Just to clarify, I would never accuse people who disagree with me--especially siblings in Christ--of what they accuse me of. I don't judge my own heart, much less anyone else's, and I don't equate political disagreement with theological fidelity to God. I have no reason to doubt their love for the Lord and "for the least of these," but I believe that they're sincerely wrong.
Just to clarify, I would never accuse people who disagree with me--especially siblings in Christ--of what they accuse me of. I don't judge my own heart, much less anyone else's, and I don't equate political disagreement with theological fidelity to God. I have no reason to doubt their love for the Lord and "for the least of these," but I believe that they're sincerely wrong.
So there are two main purposes for this blog. One is to make a case for my political beliefs based on Scripture. The other is a bit more vague, basically to work out my political beliefs and figure out what's based on Scripture and what's based on my own biases. I certainly don't have all the answers. Some of this stuff I'm still figuring out. And I'm certainly open to correction. As long as you make your case civilly and based on Scripture, feel free to make a comment, and I promise I'll post it and consider your arguments thoughtfully and prayerfully. Who knows? Maybe we'll learn a little something from each other.
May God bless our common striving together towards both the "little t" truth and "Big T" Truth. Our watchword here is a line from C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle: "Further up and further in!"
P.S. -- Below on the left is "Topics I've Covered" which lists everything I've posted topically. It's come to my attention that some people would like to see everything just listed for them. If that's you, you can get it here. Thanks to my friend Stephen Young for the tip!
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