Is Our Government Rewriting History?

During the Capital Building tour, our elderly doyen rattled off a lot of facts about the sculpture and paintings in the beautiful rotunda. He “forgot” to mention two of the eight paintings displayed in front of us. He “forgot” to mention, ”Embarkation of the Pilgrims,” so I asked him about it. I asked him if the Bible was the book in the painting. He said yes and that he would “get back to it.” He never did.

Embarkation of the Pilgrims by Robert W. Weir

(The painting shows William Brewster, holding the Bible, and pastor John Robinson leading Governor Carver, William Bradford, Miles Standish, and their families in prayer.)

“We’ll come back to that…”

He quickly mentioned the other omitted one, “The Baptism of Pocahontas” by John Gadsby Chapman and moved on. The other six paintings were thoroughly described.
We later confronted the docent and asked him why he had omitted Christian references from the tour. He mumbled something about being in seminary, looked at the ground and walked away.
Washington Monument Next, we visited the Washington Monument. This was the 4th of July weekend. At the foot of the monument, we waited in a long, roped off line listening to Mexican (not American) music being played nearby.
The Park Rangers told us to divide up into groups of eight. They told us where to wait for the elevator. The stairs where you can see Bible verses carved into the stone blocks are not open to the public anymore. The rangers rattled off many facts about how tall and wide the monument was, what the stones were made of and why they were different colors, but nothing about George Washington, for whom the edifice was erected, and no mention of the Bible verses that we are not able to see anymore; the stone blocks that we cannot see say; “Holiness to the Lord” (Exodus 28), “Search the Scriptures” (John 5:39), “The memory of the just is blessed” (Proverbs 10:7) — and such invocations as, “May Heaven to this Union continue its Benefice.”

There were 3 things I wanted to learn. I got an email a year ago about the Latin phrase “Laus Deo” that was supposedly engraved on top of the Washington Monument. I wanted to know if that was true. I also wanted to know if it was true that George Washington’s Bible, a newspaper, some money of the time, and the Constitution were buried in the cornerstone of the monument. Nick, our paid bus tour guide had told us this information. I also wanted to see for myself if D.C. tour guides were purposefully erasing our Christian heritage, if history was being rewritten.