Skip to content

Add your phone number?

Optional. Nothing is sent unless you choose it.
The Historic Faith
Sign in
All Questions
Question 3
When Bercot describes his son’s 5th-grade American Revolution textbook omitting men like Lafayette and Nathanael Greene to make the war look like “equal opportunity,” what parallels does he want you to see in the way some Christians retell New Testament history—and what details about the biblical text itself tend to get omitted when the goal is to push an agenda?
Another way to ask: How is the “equal opportunity” textbook like the way some people retell New Testament history today? When someone is pushing an agenda, what parts of the Bible story tend to get left out?

Direct Answer Bercot’s parallel is that agenda-driven retellings highlight selective details and suppress inconvenient ones so the story supports a modern conclusion—like feminism—rather than the truth. Applied to the New Testament, he suggests people omit or minimize clear commands on headship and then “fill in” a new backstory that makes those commands seem unnecessary or oppressive.

Support from Transcript:

  • The textbook gave “as much space” to a few obscure women in battles as to the men, while omitting major figures like “Lafayette and Nathaniel Green…John Paul Jones…Thomas Paine…Francis Marion.”
  • It made the Revolution look like “an equal opportunity war,” then used that to argue voting rights should have followed—though Bercot says “the American Revolution had nothing to do with voting rights.”
  • It omitted male suffering: no mention of “terrible suffering…during the winter at Valley Forge,” and ignored male conscription while “Females were exempt.”
  • He says feminists similarly “reshaped New Testament history” to promote an agenda opposing Scripture’s order.
  • In church practice, pastors “skip or hurry past the passages directed to women” and “expand on…teachings directed to men.”
Discussion Follow-ups When you hear teaching about “what Paul really meant,” do you notice the teacher skipping over plain statements? What biblical details are most often minimized when the goal is to protect modern sensibilities?

Jumpstarter 3 of 10
Back Questions Next