By Sandy Szwarc
© Szwarc 2025
America began as a new country with a unprecedented potential to become extraordinary. Generations have been taught to think of America as undeserving of their love and allegiance. America has become redefined as something vulgar, hateful, racist, sexist and bigoted. But, this last election showed that real Americans do care about America, our families, our communities and neighbors, and our children and their futures. Americans want to rebuild our nation and restore what it meant to be a patriotic American.
To figure out just how to do that, though, we have to begin by understanding what we once had and how we got to this point.
What if we could see into the future and how our actions and teachings impact the lives of young people and affect society years from now? Would we change what we’re doing if we saw it was 
leading down a destructive path? The movie, Time Changer, tells that very story in a very compelling and unique way.1
Time Changer was a Christian Sci-Fi movie produced by Rich Christiano in 2002. In it, a Bible seminary scholar from 1890 is transported forward 110 years into the future, to the year 2000.
It feels like another world to him. Nothing is recognizable as the country he knew. He hadn’t been gradually desensitized to the moral decay and materialism of modern society, like generations of Americans today. Even the most ordinary things in today’s society that wouldn’t be given a second thought by most of us, are visibly shocking to him. His confusion steadily turns to upset and grief as he finds every aspect of the current culture has become dark and drifted far from God and Biblical teachings.
The movie follows along in his encounters while he tries to explain God’s Word but finds himself mocked and ridiculed.
He regrets the teachings in his own textbook that set this demise into motion and his role in it. As he is transported back home, he vows to undo the wrongs.
This movie is an amazing opportunity to see our Country today in fresh eyes. Even most Christians would be stunned to really realize how far America has strayed from its Christian foundations.
Looking back at the spirit of patriotism
Patriotism has suffered the same decay. To fully grasp that, we begin by stepping back and seeing what Americans used to be taught about patriotism and America’s history.
The Book of Patriotism, first published in 1900, was part of a popular and well-known Young Folks’ Library 20-volume book series.2 It was edited by the great literary figure, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, whose work on American childhood laid the groundwork for Mark Twain’s own work. It was written by a large respected editorial board made up of top university scholars in history, literature and theology of the time.
Imagine 396 pages for young people just on patriotism! It included extensive suggestions for more reading that would especially appeal to and inspire young people. This reader is filled with captivating stories of Americans and heroes, diaries of young boys and stories of little-known people during our country’s founding, poems, battles and conspiracies, world and American history, revolutions throughout world history, great American speeches, America’s historical documents, hymns and songs, our flag, and monuments. It includes lessons on the meaning of freedom, liberty, the Republic, ambitions of men, statute laws, traitors, despotism, and the character of great American Presidents and heroes.
This glimpse into children’s teachings a century ago is a shocking contrast to what is taught about patriotism and our country today. Here is a brief description of just three chapters.
Love of Country
The book begins with a chapter entitled “Love of Country” by George F. Hoar, an early American statesman. He wrote that patriotism − good citizenship − “is the virtue which includes all virtues.” Man glorifies God by being as perfect an example of manhood as possible, and the most God-fearing man is an exemplary patriot and citizen. He wrote:
“Wherever the national spirit is most vigorous, there the State and local forces will exist in fullest life. The sentiment of patriotism will be found strongest in happy homes where family
love abounds. The man who loves his household, and his kindred, and his town, and his State best, will love his country best. And the man who is full of the highest love for household, and kindred, and town, and State, and country, will himself become the highest and best example of a true manhood.
We would appreciate your donation.The love of country, then, is the highest form of the highest virtue.”
Christianity is the love of God and love of man, he wrote, but if we don’t love our brothers who we have seen, how can we love God who we haven’t seen? He said the love of country was the highest and purest form of human affection and is awakened in the souls of young people. Parents were the strongest influence on children who determine their child’s friends and the books they read, he wrote.
“By a little loving care you can make your boy’s heart, by the time he is ten or twelve years old, an armory of brave thoughts and desires, which will make him as invulnerable and unconquerable as Saint Michael with his shining sword….Heroism and patriotism are for the little girl also. I sometimes think that the heroism of women, with their patience and their love, which look for no reward of fame or glory…is higher and better than anything man can ever give to the country.”
“Fill the boy’s soul with the inspiring literature of patriotism. Teach him the noble story of his country. There are not many passages of shame, or disgrace, or failure…let him learn the catalogue of the brave deeds that have been done for the country, and the lives and deaths of our heroes.”
A monument built in his honor is inscribed with his quote of God and love of country:
“I believe in god, the living god, in the American people, a free and brave people, who do not bow the neck or bend the knee to any other, and who desire no other to bow the neck or bend the knee to them.
I believe that liberty, good government, free institutions, cannot be given by any one people to any other, but must be wrought out for each by itself, slowly, painfully, in the process of years or centuries, as the oak adds ring to ring.
I believe that, whatever clouds may darken the horizon, the world is growing better, that today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today.”
America and Patriotism
In the chapter, “America and Patriotism,” Archbishop Ireland eloquently wrote: “Next to God is country, and next to religion is patriotism.”
Countries are of divine appointment, he reminded his audience. God’s sovereignty over nations appears throughout scripture and civil governments are part of God’s Dominion Covenant with man, first established in Genesis.
“The Lord is the God of nations because He is the God of men,” wrote Ireland. “I believe in the providence of God over countries as I believe in His wisdom and His love, and my patriotism to my country rises within my soul invested with the halo of my religion to my God.”
“The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme value,” he wrote, adding:
“The value of patriotism to a people is above gold and precious stones, above commerce and industry, above citadels and warships. Patriotism is the vital spark of national honor, it is the fount of the nation’s prosperity, the shield of the nation’s safety.”
Most passionately, he wrote: “America is the country of human dignity and human liberty.” America has no masters, kings or rulers who govern at their own will. “Ours is the government of the people by the people for the people. The government is our own organized will. There is no State above or apart from the people. Rights begin with and go upward from the people.”
“One Republic is liberty’s native home — America.”
Privilege and Duties of Patriotism
The chapter “The Privilege and Duties of Patriotism” was taken from an Address by minister Thomas Starr King before the California Summer Light Guard on November 18, 1862. He described American patriotism as “love of country” that is foremost a privilege:
“The home, the flag, the cross, —these are the representatives or symbols of the noblest and most sacred affections or treasures of feeling in human nature.”
The souls of original patriots throughout history shine as stars as men of greatness, he wrote. “The Bible is opened for us, to stimulate and increase our love of country. Patriotism is sanctioned and commended and illustrated there by thrilling examples: by the great patriot-prophet Moses… by Joshua… by the great statesman Samuel… by David… by the long line of the fire-tongued prophets, whose hearts burned for their country’s redemption.”
During our country’s Civil War, the passion of patriotism was high. He wrote “that we are capable of the emotion of patriotism, that we can feel a nation’s life in our veins, rejoice in a nation’s glory, suffer for a nation’s momentary shame, throb with a nation’s hope.”
The radiance of America’s country, enjoyed by one people held together by the Constitution and a shared vision, moved him to write:
“No such soil, so varied by climate, by products, by mineral riches, by forest and lake, by wild heights and buttresses, and by opulent plains, — yet all bound into unity of configuration and bordered by both warm and icy seas,—no such domain was ever given to one people.”
“[T]o resist oppression upon one member, the rally of every State around [George] Washington and his holy sword, and again the nobler rally around him when he signed the Constitution, and after that the organization of the farthest west with north and south into one polity and communion; when this was finished, the tremendous energy of free life under the stimulus and with the aid of advancing science, in increasing wealth, subduing the wilds to the bonds of use, multiplying fertile fields, and busy schools, and noble workshops, and churches hallowed by free-will offerings of prayers, and happy homes, and domes dedicated to the laws of States that rise by magic…
[A]nd then if the promise of the future to the children of our millions under our common law and with continental peace could be caught in one vast spectral exhibition, the wealth in store, the power, the privilege, the freedom, the learning, the expansive and varied and mighty unity in fellowship …you would exclaim with exultation, ‘I, too, am an American!’”
Believing strongly that patriotism was “the greatest privilege of your life” along with the Divine Love [of Christ], he wrote, “you would devote yourselves out of inspiration and joy to the obligations of patriotism, that this land so spread, so adorned, so colonized, so blessed, should be kept forever against all the assaults of traitors, one in polity, in spirit, and in aim!”
Patriotism came with responsibilities and duties for all Americans. The duty of every patriot is to strive with enthusiastic love to guard against every disease that would cripple the country that God has designed, he wrote, “that he may prevent the lineaments of vice and brutality from degrading the face which God would have radiant with truth, genius, and purity.”
These examples clearly show that love of God and Country were undyingly bound, and passionately held by Americans for well over a century during the building of our country – a creation that made it possible for the American dream to become a reality. So, the first goal of anyone wanting to cripple the country that God designed, is to remove God and faith from the land.
They began by removing God from schools and re-teaching children about a different America. Part Three will look at the evolution of school classrooms in America.
References:
-
-
- The movie, Time Changer, is available free on Tubi: https://tubitv.com/movies/445085/time-changer
- The Book of Patriotism is available free at: https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/bookofpatriotism0000thom/bookofpatriotism0000thom.pdf or a printed copy is available from Classic Reprints on Amazon
-
Excerpt from Book of Patriotism
The love of country, then, is the highest form of the highest virtue. The youth, of whose soul this supreme emotion has taken full control, has attained what is highest in character. His will is controlled by a law higher than his own desire. His affection is set on an object other than himself. We are apt to sum up Christianity as the love of God and the love of man. But the love of God and the love of man are the same thing. We cannot love God as an abstraction. If a. Man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen.
Hardcover=$36.27 (Earn 37 pts)
Paperback=$25.57 (Earn 26 pts)
Forgotten_Books
