A very dear friend of mine has a granddaughter who will be seven years old in a couple of weeks. I carefully selected her gift to be something age appropriate and that encourages girlhood from a Biblical perspective. I’ve written her a letter to include with her gift but I felt the need to share this letter with other young girls and their mothers.

Dear Sweet Hannah Grace,

Happy Birthday! Seven is such a wonderful time in a little girl’s life. You have already learned so many things but it’s just the beginning. There is a whole world full of wonders out there waiting for you to discover them.

For your birthday, this is my special prayer for you:
That you will always love God – He always loves you.
That you will love and respect your parents.
That you will love and protect your baby brother.

I know you may not understand all of this right now but one day you will. Do not be in a hurry to grow up. Ride horses, swim, sing silly songs at the top of your lungs, swing as high as you can on a swing, run, play, catch lightening bugs in jars on a summer night, spin around until you get dizzy, make daisy chains, share secrets with your friends and laugh until you get the hiccups. Hang onto the sweetness that every day of this precious time in your life holds.

I also want you to know that you are surrounded by family and friends who want only the best things in life for you and will always love you.

These activities might seem immature to some but they are the activities that filled my own summer days in the South when I was a little girl. I long to see my grandchildren experience these things for themselves.

Let’s stop encouraging our daughters (sons too, for that matter) to grow up too fast. Encourage them instead to do the things I wrote above to this sweet little girl. Help them to maintain their childlike innocence just as long as possible. For once innocence is lost, it can never be recovered.

The way we raise our sons and daughters, and the way we influence our grandsons and granddaughters is the key to making a better world. It always has been. The Southern gentleman has many duties and obligations, but none are more important than shaping and molding the next generation into Southern gentlemen and Southern ladies who understand where they came from and why it is so important that they pass those same values along to their next generation.

• Can someone be a Southern gentleman when they are not in or from The South?
• Is it appropriate for a non-Southerner to use and display the Confederate flag and other symbols of The South?

The answer to these and similar questions is a resounding “Yes”. The state of being a Southern gentleman is no longer restricted to those living below the Mason-Dixon Line, and perhaps it never was. A Southern gentleman who accepts a job transfer to Maine or New York or to Scotland or Italy is no less a Southern gentleman after his move than before. A man living in Massachusetts with solid Northern roots and not a single drop of Southern ancestral blood can decide to take on the mantle of the Southern gentleman and become a far greater Southern gentleman than a direct descendent of Robert E. Lee living deep in the heart of Dixie.

Being a Southern gentleman is a state of being. It is a lifestyle based on the ancient code of chivalry. It is a mindset of putting others first and having a truly humble spirit. It is a respect for others – and for oneself. It is respecting the dignity of all men, no matter what their station in life may be. It is a deep and abiding reverence and respect for women, coupled with the manners and etiquette that outwardly demonstrate that reverence. It is the understanding that we are not self-made men, but we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. It is a reverence for the God who created us, and who is the source of all of our many blessings.

Southern gentlemen can be found at every level of society from the janitor who cleans the toilets with the same pride in his workmanship as the finest craftsman, to the men occupying the highest positions of leadership in the land. It is not about money or occupation or social standing. It is about being a Southern gentleman.

Outwardly, the Southern gentleman can be identified as the man who always dresses well – not to impress, but out of respect for the dignity of those around him. He can be identified as the man who is at ease in a hut or in a palace – and always makes those around him feel at ease when they are near him. He has taken the time to learn the rules of social etiquette and practices them at all times, yet never points out the errors made by others. He understands the needs of women and accommodates those needs. The Bible speaks of women as “the weaker vessel”; the Southern gentleman discretely protects women and is prepared to actively defend them if no other options are available. He is quiet and soft-spoken. The Southern gentleman is seldom heard in a crowd unless he is speaking to you since his voice is kept soft and low so as to not call attention to himself; even when angry, his voice, like his demeanor, is kept under control. He never calls attention to his own success but points to the success of others. His leadership style is one of firmness and confidence such that others naturally look to him when leadership is needed.

Understand that no one possess all of these traits. Most of us are fortunate if we can successfully cultivate even a few of them. What sets a man apart as a Southern gentleman is that he understands the goals, knows that they are important, and strives with every fiber of his being to be a Southern gentleman. When he fails, he is determined to do better next time and never makes excuses.

Being a Southern gentleman is a journey. It is not a destination.

The Accolade, by Edmund Leighton

There are two ways to mess up etiquette. One is too ignore it altogether. The other is to over-think it and overdo it, and thus make it weird and awkward. So keep that in mind as you read these guidelines; the most important thing to remember is simply to be natural and to use common sense! It’s definitely not too complicated; these guidelines are simply designed to allow you to be smooth, instead of standing there havy-cavy, wondering what to do.

Opening doors for women requires their cooperation. If you get to the door before a woman, opening the door is simple. Just open the door and hold it for her. Things get awkward when you and your gal arrive at the door at the same time or she gets there before you. In these types of situations, opening doors becomes much like a dance. Each sex has a role they need to fill for the operation to successfully work. If your lady arrives at the door before you or at the same time as you, she should step slightly to one side so that you can open the door without knocking her on her tuckus. If she opens the door for herself, that’s not a problem. See below.

What the Southern ladies need to realize is that anyone working in a public school is on the government payroll, and they are being used to promote the humanistic agenda of the government;  an agenda that strives to rid the country of the  Biblical authority of parents. Once children have been physically, emotionally and spiritually detached from parental authority and teachings, the state can insert its own teachings. The government can do this by taking our children away from us for what I used to call “the twelve year sentence,”  to teach them in their institutions.

Occasionally, someone will tell me that we “just need to get the textbooks changed over to something  that favours the South.”  Ladies, changing the textbooks will not change the system enough to make a difference in the beliefs of your children. Working within that system usually takes such a long time, that by the time you get the school bureaucracy to abandon a textbook, several semesters of your child’s life, or even several years, have been taken up. This is time used to indoctrinate your child in a system that does not favour the Christian teachings of the family.

Case in point: I found in a stack of books from a prominent, so-called conservative Christian college, a psychology textbook called, “Core Values.”  Curious, I looked through it. I was appalled at the many factual errors and anti-biblical teachings in this textbook, and emailed the psychology department of that school.   The collection of emails I saved from that discourse would astonish you. Many of these people were members of the Lord’s church, teaching in that college. They tried to explain to me, as though I were an ignorant mother, that sometimes we have to allow our children to read bad things, to test their faith and see if they can stand up to false teaching.  I saw absolutely nothing in their curriculum that challenged the students to do that. I only saw the test questions, which  were reviews of the chapters of this vile textbook, a textbook which had cost each student over $60.00.   Some of the professors wrote that I just needed to “relax” and not to be so legalistic or judgmental.  They would not answer my questions and they would not admit that so many portions of this book were absolutely vile.

By persistence, my family and I were able to get the textbook removed. However, although we began at the beginning of a term, it was not removed until end of the college year. So, in the meantime, all those students were indoctrinated or spiritually influenced by that textbook.  Some professors told me that it was the student’s job to complain about the books, and not the members of the church, or the parents. My observation was that no young person attended the college with any intention of making waves within the school. They just wanted to pass their courses and get out of there. The college expected students to find error, instead of taking responsibility to teach against error. I went through the textbook and wrote in coloured pen a scripture to refute just about every thing in this book. That way, if it got thrown in the trash and someone picked it up, or if it was re-sold in a student garage sale, someone would be at least equipped to refute its false teachings.

I have cited a personal experience with a prominent Christian college in the South, but Southern mothers should not make the mistake of thinking that grade schools and high schools are any less dangerous to the minds of our children and to the beliefs of the Southerns.  Even if all the courses and books were in favor of your religion and your family customs, there is still the problem that the children are taken away from the care of the parents during the most productive time of the day. I have heard mothers say, “I know it is a bad school, but I just pray for my children, and then teach them what is right when they come home, after school.”  Don’t you know that the school has taken the best part of their minds during the most teachable time of the day?  If you are sending your children to public school, you are getting the left-overs of your children’s lives.

In the story of Mary and Martha, in Luke chapter 10, verse 42,  Jesus said,  “Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” The “better part” of your child is the spirit. Parents are commanded to train and teach their own children. It is easy to remember the two most prominent scriptures on that subject, just by noting the number 6:-  Dueteronomy 6:6-8 in the Old Testament, (which we used to call “the Old Bible”) and Ephesians 6: 1-10 in the New Testament.  Both passages give parents the duty and responsibility of teaching their own children.  You simply cannot raise up a generation to understand and value the Christian way of life, if they are somewhere else, in the care of someone else, learning the ways of someone else, during the most alert times of the day.

The question is often asked, “How can we help the South to rise again? Where are our Southern folk, ready to take a stand; ready to guide the South back to the old paths, where the good way is?”  The answer is:  they are in their cribs, talking baby talk, waiting for Southern mothers to teach them the right ways.  That will never be accomplished until we get our children out of the public schools. Even if public schools were to suddenly become “good,” they are not safe places for our children. We need to shelter them and teach them ourselves, so that they will grow in the right direction. Farming them out to someone else will not make a great nation.

Read the following quote from “A Nation at Risk,” published in 1983:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Southerners are over-looking the very place in which their problem lies. There is a foreign nation in our midst, a forgotten nation, that is undermining our history, and controlling the outcome of the next generation.  Each year, the public school graduates thousands of new voters, who have been taught a false view of history and a false view of government. They will become the lawyers and the judges, change agents of the government, who make it intolerable for Christians to practice their faith.  The public schools are the enemy within.

In the 1980’s, it was the mothers that revived the idea of teaching your own children at home. It will be the mothers of the South who will change the south, because their power is in the teaching of kindness on their tongues. The kind teaching will result in the restoration of Southern chivalry and hospitality. It will make the young women sweet and pure and the young men strong and noble; qualities that are essential in building strong families. The public schools cannot fill that order.

There is nothing in the Bible that commands us to have our children educated, but there is plenty of scriptural evidence that we must train them and teach them in the right ways. We cannot express constant dismay and frustration at the lack of interest in restoring the South, if we allow the federal government to take our children for 12 years and take Christian adults and use them as change agents in their system. Southern women have the babies and the children. These women have power over the future of the nation, if they only knew it. The problem is, some people just do not see how something as great as changing or restoring a culture can take place by doing something as simple as teaching children. The government certainly understands this, but the home does not!

The government is not  physically dragging  children from their homes,  into the public schools. The federal government has power over us when we voluntarily get up in the morning and take our children to school.If our children do not take up our spiritual battle, we cannot blame the schools, because we committed our children to those institutions from an early age.  We are do-it-your-self-ers. It is astonishing to see how fervently we say “no” to government intervention in industry and business. Schooling our children is a private and personal matter, that the government has no business in. If  the South is to rise again, it will have to admit it has been disarmed. The children, whom the Bible describes as arrows in the hand of a warrior, must be retrieved from the public schools. They are the future. They can be trained and taught to take a stand for the things the South originally stood for.

For more information on the roots and goals of the government schools, go here.

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