In the meticulously researched book, “Politicizing the Bible,” research historians Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker dig deep into the Middle Ages and Renaissance to show that Christendom’s long term apostasy began with the appropriation, deconstruction and paganization of scripture by politically motivated interpreters. Among them were early Popes, Machiavelli, Marsilio of Padua, Henry VIII, Thomas Hobbes, and Descartes and Spinoza, who sought an empire of science.
“If we and our posterity…live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments…we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country…. But if we…neglect religious instruction and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.” Daniel Webster, Address to the New York Historical Society, 1852