Dan Strubl

EDITOR’S NOTE: Following are excerpts of Montreat College President Dan Struble’s welcome and introduction to guest speaker Newt Gingrich’s address Oct. 17 at the college.
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By DAN STRUBLE

Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, welcome to Montreat, the home of Montreat College, Montreat Conference Center, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

For over 100 years, Montreat has been equipping men and women to serve Jesus Christ. Montreat College strives to be faithful to this tradition by living our mission: Christ-centered, student-focused, service-driven.

All we do, in the classroom, on the playing fields, in the dorms, and in co-curricular life is centered upon Jesus Christ.

Thank you for joining us tonight for the first lecture in Montreat College’s “Faith and . . .” series. Tonight we will learn about the role of “Faith in the Founding of America....”

We Americans are known for living in the present. Most live for today with little recognition of how great events, ideas, and faith have shaped our civilization and the people we have become.

We live in an age when faith is derided as myth, where faith is culturally contingent at best, where faith is considered the source of prejudice, where faith is the fuel of fanaticism. Faith, in the popular narrative is a mark of the childhood of the human race, a phase we are presently outgrowing — if not quite fast enough for the proponents of this view.

A more faithful look at history, however, identifies the Judeo-Christian faith as the source of the cherished values of the right ... and of the left. That we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights defined this great nation of which we are a part.

Human rights, human dignity, and equal standing before the law have little meaning apart from the Christian gospel.

Christian charity transformed a cruel, pagan, ancient world into the modern west. The straining of Christian people toward the kingdom of God led many of the faithful to the shores of a new world. Presbyterian polity informed the American system of government. Our most cherished values and institutions stand on the rock that is Jesus Christ, not on the shifting sands of relativism.

Our speaker tonight, the Hon. Newt Gingrich, brings to us a wealth of knowledge of the intersection of faith and our governing institutions. He earned a Ph.D. in modern European history, and has a long history of engagement in American politics, including his service as speaker of the house, second in succession to the presidency behind the vice president.
His recent book “Rediscovering God in America” documents the fingerprints of faith that are everywhere evident in Washington, D.C. I am sure his talk tonight will be eye-opening even to those who think themselves well acquainted with this aspect of our history.

Dr. Gingrich has written many other books as well, several in collaboration with Montreat College professor Dr. Bill Forstchen. Their newest book, “To Try Men’s Souls,” is an historical fictional account of the events leading to Washington’s crossing of the Delaware on Christmas, 1776. This and other books are available in the lobby. In one of them, Dan Struble dies a fiery death — I wonder if they are trying to tell me something.

Please join me in welcoming Newt Gingrich