Be the People by Carol Swain

I must make a few admissions before embarking on my review.

If you were to ask someone at random to tell you what a Conservative Christian looked like, I would be willing to say that they would paint a picture of an upper middle class middle aged white male. I must also admit that this was pretty close to my own assumption.

I requested the book Be the People by Carol Swain based entirely on a brief synopsis provided by Thomas Nelson. I knew absolutely nothing of her other than her name on the front cover.

Upon receiving the book, I opened the back cover to find that the photograph of this lovely Black lady totally set any assumptions I formerly held, out the proverbial window.

Her personal story of triumph in itself would be well worth the purchase of this volume, but within its pages are much more than her story. Within this book is our story, and she pulls no punches in her depiction of where we began, what put our Country in the state it is in, and what very well could be our future.

Her thorough assessment of our founding Fathers and how they assembled this Nation is as honest and fresh a telling as I have seen. She takes an intelligent and probing look at every side of the story of the Christian influence and spiritual background of the formers of our way of life. It is expansive, but I found myself reading through it without being able to put it down.

There are issues in this book that gave me trouble. Being a Father of four, her section on abortion was without question one of the hardest things I have ever read in my entire life. As difficult as it was, I read it. Ms. Swain pulls no punches on the tough issues because, quite honestly, if we are to turn this country around, we must look into the issues that have brought us here. She sees the big picture and challenges her readers to do the same.

The book concludes with the Ten Commandments, The Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, and The Constitution of The United States of America. As I said, she covers it all, and leaves us with the documents that form who we are.

I would like to thank Thomas Nelson for providing this book for my review. And I would like to thank Carol Swain for blowing up my stereotypes, and offering me a sometimes difficult, but ultimately necessary look at the state of our great nation.