In this assignment, I'm asking you to help Jerome with his essay. Jerome is a 13-year-old student at a Christian school and he has been told to write an essay on the general topic of the Christian roots of the United State of America. But Jerome doesn't think that his nation has any Christian roots. So, he is going to argue the opposite, which is acceptable — if he can get his logic right.
As the writing coach for the eighth grade, you have read the first draft of his essay, a portion of which is reproduced in blue below. In an encouraging way, I want you to point out the logical fallacies contained in Jerome's essays. Use the names from the presentations in our Assignment #4. Explain to him what his fallacies are and how he might correct them.
You can complete your assignment by creating a written transcript of how you think your discussion with him might flow. Email that transcript to me in an email to bboydston@piu.edu or share it with me as a Google Doc. OR you can create a video of yourself explaining the fallacies to him and how he might make the needed improvements. Post your video on YouTube with a private link and then send me the link for viewing. Do not submit both a written transcript and a video. Do one or the other. I will let you determine how long your transcript or video needs to be. Do make sure that you clearly name the fallacies (so I know you understand what they are). Use your most charitable teacher voice.
If you have questions please send me an email with the word URGENT on the subject line.
This assignment, which is worth 70 points.
JEROME'S ESSAY
I know that I'm supposed to write about the Christian roots of America. But I can't do that because America wasn't started by Christian people but by explorers and settlers who slaughtered millions of native people. And then when they took over the land they brought in millions of slaves from Africa just so they could get rich. Even Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan preacher who lead the "First Great Awakening" and who was the president of Princeton University, owned slaves. We even had to read one of his sermons in our literature class — Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. That's how famous he was.
Reverend Edwards owned lots of slaves — including a 14-year-old girl named Venus. That was a perv thing to do. (He was just like our third president Thomas Jefferson who used to regularly rape one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and made her pregnant six times! Jefferson wasn't Christian at all. He made up his own Bible to remove all Jesus' miracles.) And when some other ministers tried to free the slaves Edwards started attacking them. That's not a very Christian thing to do.
After Jonathan Edwards, there were lots of Baptists who came along. The biggest denomination in America, the Southern Baptist Church, was started in 1845 by Baptists who wanted to keep slavery when all the other Baptists wanted to end it. If it were allowed today most Southern Baptists would still own slaves.
Thus the evidence is clear from the racist way that all these early Americans acted that they didn't know anything about Christ. So, they certainly were not Christians. How could they start a Christian nation?
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