Christianity – The Pull Of The Land

Home For Christmas

December 23, 2025December 23, 2025 Richard Barnes

In past letters or posts I’ve referred to a family reunion that took place shortly before Christmas in 2006. For that occasion we compiled a video, of which we made DVDs along with soundtrack CDs to give to each of us to take home as a memento.

One of the selections is the Coplandesque “Short Trip Home”, composed by Edgar Myer and performed by a classical and bluegrass quartet: violin, bass, mandolin, and guitar. I know it doesn’t sound promising, but check the YouTube link below (if you are reading this on the blog) and decide for yourself after giving it a hearing.

My son and I picked this selection to play as the DVD displayed a 1972 family photo, which served as the basis for the reunion. We had the piece reprise towards the end. Our extended family has had a good balance of the country and the city, the folk and the highbrow. In our view the piece embraces that balance and is a fitting background to those of us in that picture throughout our lives.

Unfortunately the topic of home and Christmas has become so gooey as to have lost all meaningful significance. In other words, listening to Glenn Campbell’s rendition of Sammy Cahn’s “There’s No Place Like Home” misses the mark by a mile, in my opinion. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” is better, but not by much.

Each of these songs and others like them aim for sentiment, which has its place, of course. It’s not that I don’t like the songs; it’s simply that home means so much more to me and these songs don’t touch the outskirts of that meaning.

When I was a kid, I’d often hear my mother tell me to “remember whose you are”. By that she meant both God and family, or home. Regretfully, I did not always remember. However, that admonition left a mark on me. And it’s obvious that many of our parents said similar things to my cousins and other loved ones because they all seemed to have an idea of their duty to what has gone before.

About 12 years ago, looking for a grocery store in a foreign land, I drove by a large intersection, one corner of which had large plastic bags before which sat a woman with 4 or 5 small children, all begging. I had been warned not to stop when I saw such a sight, for it could be dangerous to do so; that if I wanted to give, there were other means available. I did pray for her and the children and gave elsewhere.

However that sight immediately hit me: why was I not born in such a place and in such circumstances? Indeed, why was I not born, say, in a tribe in 1420 in what we know as Mexico, easy prey to the cannibalistic Aztecs? When we pause for just a moment to think on such matters, if we are honest, we cannot but marvel at the Lord’s sovereign care for us and our duty to Him and to others. Properly understood, this ought to humble us and to inspire us to eternal gratitude.

My grandfather was born in Massachussets, my father, in Cuba. My mother was born in Venezuela as were her ancestors. But their heritage was Christian. The title of my blog is The Pull of The Land and most of my posts have to do with the land of my birth, Venezuela.

However, when I’ve traveled to Spain or to England, I have sensed the pull there also. Unmistakably. I very much enjoyed my visits to other lands and wish I could visit them again. However, if given the choice (besides Venezuela) I’d vote for Spain or England. The pull is that strong.

And if you pause to consider your own home and your own background, I daresay you also sense that pull. I believe the Lord puts that pull in us all. Once again, I agree with Whittaker Chambers: “No land has a pull on a man as the land of his childhood.”

In my view, the source of such a calling to one’s roots is simple gratitude.

Gratitude to the Lord for having given you your parents and those who went before; your culture and background; your experiences; and most of all your Christianity, which can only come through faith by God’s grace through Jesus Christ, the Second Person of The Trinity incarnated on that first Christmas a couple of millennia ago.

It’s all a gift. And home ought to bring forth that recognition and the accompanying gratitude. Even if your childhood was not a happy one, you can still be grateful. Reading Whittaker Chambers’s powerful autobiography, Witness, you readily see that his childhood was not a rosy one. Yet he was a grateful man.

Going back to that 1972 reunion, the DVD and CD closed with John Rutter’s arrangement of “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”. This hymn was sung at the conclusion of each worship service, every Sunday, year after year, at the Community Church where Aunt Sarah would take us whenever we were in Miami with her.

We are fully persuaded that the Lord has indeed been good to us. He, the only Constant in life and eternity, adds delight and joy to our lives as we seek to please Him.

We are well; grateful for decent health which enables us to continue to visit with one another throughout the year and hopeful we can continue doing so throughout next year as well.

And grateful to old friends, including our parents’ friends, who continue to challenge us to do good.

Our family wishes yours a Very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2026.

Family get-together, December, 1972

Short Trip Home

The four siblings with our Cousin Janis, March, 2025, after Cousin Vivian’s burial

With the grandchildren, summer, 2025

Fourth and Fifth of July: Declarations of Independence

July 4, 2025July 4, 2025 Richard Barnes

(First posted on July 4, 2020)

Those who grew up in El Pao will remember celebrating both the Fourth and the Fifth of July, reflecting yet another similarity between the two countries. The American and Venezuelan holidays afforded an opportunity for executives to declare and affirm ongoing genuine friendship and a collaborative spirit between both peoples while we children looked forward to a long “recess” as well as having our fathers home for a more extended time than usual, and also learning a bit more to understand and appreciate our liberties.

I was fortunate to have had a father and mother who, as best they knew how, taught us appreciation and gratitude for America and also for Venezuela.

Venezuela history was a required subject in school. And a most frustrating one it was for me. For the life of me, I could not understand what the early 19th century fighting was about. My teachers seemed to tell stories assuming we students possessed presupposed knowledge as to why the revolutionaries rose against Madrid. But I had no such knowledge. My father had told me about the North American colonies and how they had a history of self-government and liberties and how England had begun taking those liberties away, even to the point of stationing mercenary troops in private homes where they abused and in some cases even defiled the mothers and daughters.

Furthermore, the English parliament had decreed the assignment of Church of England bishops to the colonies: a last straw. I could see why folks would resist and seek to stop that, even if it meant overthrowing the rule of the English king.

Although my mother and father taught me to respect and honor Venezuela, my teachers told no stories about Spain’s abuses against Venezuela. We heard much about abstract concepts of liberty and fraternity and equality. However, all stratospheric disquisitions about intangible concepts did not satisfy me as to why the Criollos rose against Madrid initially, let alone explain the eventual extermination of over one-third of their number. The entire country churned with violence and at the end had been practically depopulated. It was clear to me that the savagery and atrocities occurred not prior to, but during the Revolution. I do remember hearing a teacher quote the words uttered by Simón Bolivar as he approached death in the late 1820’s, “I have plowed in the sea….” And, “…those countries will infallibly fall into chaos and dictatorships….”

But why cast off Spanish rule for intangible concepts only to install tangibly cruel “chaos and dictatorships”?

To read the July 4, 1776 and the July 5, 1811 declarations of independence back to back is an instructive exercise which might help explain why.

The Venezuelan is over 800 words longer and reflects allusions to French revolutionary thinking that is absent from the American. Consistent with the American, it also alludes to the Christian religion which sounds discordant if one has a basic understanding of Rousseau and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The Venezuelan opens by alluding to a former declaration (April 19, 1810) which was adopted as a result of Spain’s occupation by France. It goes on to complain about three centuries of suppressed rights and that recent political events in Europe had served to offer an opportunity to restore those rights. They then, following the 1776 Declaration, proceed to justify their actions.

The United States [American] declaration does not complain about 150 years of colonial rule. Rather it expresses concern that, when abuses make it necessary to dissolve long-standing political bands, that such action must be taken carefully and with strong justification. It expresses the need and the willingness to “suffer, while evils are sufferable” before abolishing government and relations to “which they are accustomed.”

I know this is simplistic, and historians will disagree, but to the layman, the 1811 comes across as willful, the 1776, as reluctant.

The longest body in each is the justification. The Venezuelan uses 1,156 words, beginning with another allusion to 300 years of Spanish rule and affirming that a people has a right to govern themselves. Then the author expresses a willingness to overlook those 300 years by “placing a veil” over them (“corriendo un velo sobre los trescientos años“) and proceeds to recent European events which had dissolved the Spanish nation. It goes at length criticizing the Spanish monarchy for its abandonment of her throne in favor of the French and how this state of affairs had left Venezuela without legal recourse (“dejándola sin el amparo y garantía de las leyes“).

It asserts, furthermore, that the vast territories of the Americas with far more population than Spain itself cannot be governed from afar, etc. Here, the author presumes to speak for all the Spanish Americas. The layman is justified in wondering if this misdirection is inserted to remove attention from special pleading in the document that does not wholly stand up.

This section is not easy to follow today without some knowledge of the events current in 1811.

This was not a unanimous declaration; three provinces did not join, presaging the terrible bloodletting which was to follow.

For its justification, the American declaration uses 824 words (332 less than the Venezuelan), to list the abuses and their attempts to humbly address these legally only to have their attempts rebuffed. They make no allusions to 150 years of oppression or of unhappiness with their colonial status. They address only relatively recent abuses, including violence against life and property, mercenaries on their way to fight against them, war waged against them, threats to their religious liberty (the Quebec allusion), and much more. These are listed almost in bullet point format, but without the bullets, and are easy to understand, even 244 years later. It reads as if the document were a declaration of the right to self defense.

This was a unanimous declaration signed by representatives of each of the thirteen colonies.

In their conclusion, the Venezuelans, yet again, allude to centuries of oppression and their natural right to govern themselves. They assert they have a right to establish a government according to the general will (“voluntad general“) of her people.

It is hard to miss the influence of French revolutionary thinking in the Venezuelan document, despite allusions to a Supreme Being (“Ser Supremo”) and to Jesus Christ (“Jesucristo”). Its reference to the “General Will” is Rousseauean and is also found in the atheistic French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

They also state they will defend their religion.

The layman can’t help but be impressed by the schizophrenic nature of this document which contained appeals to atheistic revolutionary thinking then in vogue, while recognizing that the “regular folk” were still very religious and needed to hear allusions to religious fidelity.

The American conclusion appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world and in the name and authority of the people in the colonies they declared independence.

I know that professors delight in pointing out that Thomas Jefferson was the “author” of the American declaration and that he was not a Christian, etc.

However, one does not read the Virginia Fairfax Resolves (1774), or the Virginia Declaration of Rights (May, 1776), both of whose primary author was George Mason, a Christian, nor does one read clergyman, John Wise, who in 1710 wrote, “Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man,” and “The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth…” and “Democracy is Christ’s government in church and state.” Jefferson drew from a rich, deep Christian well. According to President Calvin Coolidge, Jefferson himself “acknowledged that his ‘best ideas of democracy’ had been secured at church meetings.”

The American declaration was followed by seven more years of war whose official end was the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and a constitution, still in effect, whose final ratification was in 1790. The Venezuelan declaration was followed by nineteen years of wars (plural) characterized by unspeakable cruelties and tortures, including a proclamation of “war to the death” by Simón Bolivar. By their end in 1830, one third of Venezuela’s population had perished. These wars were followed by more wars and rebellions which continued to the end of the century. She’s had at least 27 constitutions.

In sum, the American hearkened to her Christian heritage and history; the Venezuelan, to French revolutionary atheism, most starkly demonstrated by yet another revolution, the Russian, in 1917. Both the American and the Venezuelan shed blood. But the latter, like the French, shed it more abundantly.

I love the United States of America and its history. I love her Christian heritage and her pioneers. She is a wonderfully great country with a people who will always pull at my heart. I also love Venezuela and the warmth and genuine friendship of her people. I am grateful the Good Lord has exposed me to both and shown me that, in Christ, our best days are yet ahead.

Declaration of Independence – Text of the Declaration of Independence | Britannica

Text of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence

Acta de la Declaración de Independencia de Venezuela – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

Towards the bottom of article linked above, the reader will find the text of the July 5, 1811 Venezuela Declaration of Independence. It is in Spanish.

Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence | Teaching American History

Highly recommended to all, not just Americans

Chávez Rode the Cult of Bolivar

February 10, 2022February 10, 2022 Richard Barnes

“Nowhere was this cult more apparent and abundant than in the armed forces who were taught to consider themselves the heirs of the Libertador.” (Bolivar’s Endiosamiento)

If you were to visit the tombs of past Venezuelan dictators, all anti-Communist men, kneel and put your ear to the ground. You will hear their spinning.

Their hagiography of Bolivar was used by men such as Douglas Bravo to enable the infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces with men committed to the Bolivar mystique, under which they indoctrinated and recruited men who would readily obey orders to impose a Communist dictatorship.

Douglas Bravo understood the veneration that Venezuelans had for Bolivar. He used the image of Bolivar as a lure. He knew that the meaning of “Bolivarianism”, as preached and indoctrinated by infiltrators like Chávez, meant, to the minds of the soldiers, nationalism and anti-imperialism. And, importantly, the anti-imperialism was focused on the United States and the United States alone.

As “Bolivarianism” continued to be inculcated in the Armed Forces, it denied it had anything to do with Marxist theory and that it was only a description of the Libertador‘s dream of a united South America, free of the clutches of the dreaded yanquis, and focused on the prosperity and freedoms of the Venezuelan peoples.

So, Bravo and his acolytes acted like offended damsels whenever anyone asserted that their preaching sounded Marxist or Communist. Their usual riposte was that they were nationalists, meaning that they rejected all internationalism — which, of course, meant that they rejected Communist internationalism.

Which of course was a lie.

As a child, I would hear — remember, this was a time of children-can-be-seen-but-not-heard — adults express concerns about university student diatribes against the United States while loudly professing their love for Venezuela. To these adults, something sounded off key in the protestations. It was all-too-clear that the supposed love for Venezuela was drowned by their hatred towards the United States.

Why the hatred?

When asked one on one, the rioters would deny they hated Americans; however, at the mitínes (rallies), the hatred was palpable. Why?

The facile answers taught by American college professors and other usual suspects, did not hold water: Monroe Doctrine backlash, imperialist America, uninvited American missionary activities, Ugly American tourists, and more.

When I was about 13 or 14 a childhood friend visited the United States for the first time, accompanying her family on a long-expected vacation. On her return, she reported to us how she purposefully dropped trash in American parks and “I was not arrested, and no policeman saw me”.

What causes someone to hate another country so much that upon her first visit to said country — a country she had never travelled to before — she would throw trash and brag about getting away with it?

“Monroe Doctrine” backlash doesn’t cut it.

After the riots and violent attacks on Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife in 1958 (see Nixon), the United States National Security Council’s minutes recorded comments by John Foster Dulles:

“Secretary Dulles went on to say that there was one more very important factor in the Latin American problem which the United States faced. This was the collapse of religion generally in Latin America. We all believe in this country that religion, with its emphasis on the rights and freedoms of the individual under God, is the very core of our democratic system and that it is also the greatest bulwark against atheistic communism. Unhappily … organized religion had practically no influence on the mass of the people as opposed to the aristocracy. Admittedly, said Secretary Dulles, he did not know what we could do about correcting this very grave situation, but it was certainly at the heart of our problem in Latin America.“

I doubt anyone can imagine a member of today’s National Security Council, or any major college faculty lounge or school board, expressing thoughts remotely similar to those of Secretary Dulles. Even back in the 50s it was becoming somewhat rare albeit not surprising.

And that, in my opinion, helps explain the hatred.

The United States has long been identified with Christianity. Such identification is offensive, even to many Christians today. It may have been abused by some, but it cannot be honestly denied. From Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century and his marvel at the faithful church attendance of Americans and their reliance on their faith, themselves, and volunteer organizations, as opposed to reliance on the State, to an executive from Argentina, whom I had the privilege of entertaining when he visited Texas in the mid 90s, and hearing him express wonderment at seeing “so many churches! Practically one on every corner!”, the Christian influence on the United States is undeniable.

This is not to say that such Christianity has been watered down if not fully apostatized, but it is to say that our history has been greatly impacted by such, and such influence is readily discernible should one decide to look at primary sources — Mayflower Compact, Bradford’s journal, the constitutions of the 13 colonies, sermons from America’s founding era, letters and speeches by America’s founders, missionary activity, and more.

The maniacal, bitter hatred that Communism has against Christianity is real. This is blatantly reflected in The Communist Manifesto which frontally, unabashedly, and bitterly attacks the Christian faith: “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.“

And so, Douglas Bravo infiltrated the Venezuelan armed forces with Communists (others did the same with the universities) but ordered them to never mention Communism, only “nationalism and hatred of the yanquis“. The hatred of the yanquis was said to be because of their imperialism, but upon closer examination it was a proxy for Christianity.

(The identification of the United States with Christianity does not at all mean that my position is that America is a “Christian nation” or that we are the chosen people. Those are straw men about which too much ink has been needlessly spilled while we continue down our road of denying our history and embracing those who genuinely hate us and mean us ill.)

The rise of Chávez was not an overnight thing. Other Communist infiltrators in key positions enabled him to be promoted despite pedestrian academic achievements and even betrayals resulting in deaths of Venezuelan soldiers. The rise was long term, methodical, and successful.

We will be writing more about this.