During a recent interview with The Christian Post about the importance of remembering the Christian heritage of the United States, author Eric Metaxas highlighted the story of 21-year-old patriot Nathan Hale, who was hanged by the British 250 years ago this week.
Speaking about Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, his most recent book commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence, Metaxas emphasized how crucial it is for Americans to know the heroic figures of the Revolution, whom he described as "tremendous American heroes who suffered and struggled for a sacred cause." "They called it a sacred cause.
This was not, 'Oh, we just want to break away from Great Britain.' No, they believed that these are God's ideas, and that we're able to bring them for the first time in history into the world in a new nation," he said.
'The last of the Romans': The forgotten story of the Declaration of Independence's last surviving signer Metaxas dismissed Ken Burns' recent PBS documentary The American Revolution as "kind of a bummer" because it offered scant coverage of both God and Hale in its retelling of history. Burns devoted exactly 10 seconds of his 12-hour miniseries to Hale's story and left out his famous last words, citing questions of their historicity.
"Nathan Hale was an astonishingly gifted, heroic young man, who was remembered by generations and generations of Americans as the man who said, as he's being hanged: 'My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.' It is so noble and beautiful, and he was a man of profound Christian faith," Metaxas said.
"It's shameful that not every single American who graduates from an American school doesn't know every one of these stories. They're beautiful stories;