Why Nothing New Press?
“That which has been is what will be; that which is done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun.”
The Nothing New Press company name was taken from this verse in Ecclesiastes. What has already happened in history, is what will happen today, in the present day, and in the future. Learning history, therefore, teaches foresight, wisdom, judgment, and statesmanship, and is one of the vital subjects of a basic education.
But there is more to it than that. In modern education, traditional history as an academic subject has been discarded for something newer: social studies (whatever that is). If I were to take a stab at defining social studies, it would be the study of societies outside of the context of their history, interactions with other societies, decisions, and choices. Its focus also tends to be on other societies and not our own.
We have made a conscious decision to embrace traditional history, and “nothing” as “new” as social studies will be found here. We have also chosen to use “nothing new” to present that history, but are reprinting and expanding for today’s homeschoolers the wonderful materials from the late 19th and early 20th century, when the value of traditional history and a biblical worldview were still acknowledged and pursued.
About the Author
“No matter what is going on around us, walk with God and all will be well.”
Hi! My name is Christine Miller. I was raised in a traditional middle-class American home. I am a product of public education, but since I was a girl interested in science at the time the United States was in the space race with the then USSR (1960s), I was fortunate enough to be placed in the gifted and talented track early on. I spent summers at my beloved grandparents’ home, pouring over their collection of World’s Greatest Literature, borrowing the Shakespeare volume again and again until it became the most worn volume in the set. Other favorites were Ivanhoe and The Last Days of Pompeii.
I was born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit at the height of the Jesus Movement in the 70s, which only intensified a life-long passion for God’s Word sown in my childhood at Lutheran Sunday School. I graduated in the top 5% of my class with honors and went on to university, where I majored in chemistry, although I found all branches of science fascinating. My husband David and I have been married 36 years, and have three children, whom I homeschooled, and ten grandchildren.
My husband and I have served in various capacities in church in our lives: in choir, youth group, on evangelism and missions teams, as janitors, nursery workers and coordinators, children’s church directors, church secretary, administrative assistant to the pastor, and in women’s ministry.
Soon after I began homeschooling, I discovered classical education, and wrote Classical Christian Homeschooling, the first practical how-to guide melding classical education with a “living books” hands-on approach to homeschooling on the internet, to help other moms like myself. My search for an interesting and accurate history curriculum led me to H. A. Guerber’s 19th century narrative histories, which my children loved. They loved them so much, that when they had the occasional sick day from school, they still begged to at least do history! In order to reprint these books for homeschoolers today, and to offer other original homeschooling resources, we began Nothing New Press.
After my parents passed away, I discovered while researching the family tree that my ancestry is of the cohanim — of the Israelite tribe of Levi, something neither my parents nor grandparents knew, I am convinced. Prior to this discovery, I had been growing in the awareness of the Hebraic roots of my faith. It has been an adventure melding my Jewish roots with my Christian faith. Today, when people ask me what I am, I just laugh and say, “I’m a God believer, and a Bible believer, from Genesis to Revelation.” This is my statement of faith.
My husband and I recently left Colorado where we raised our children, and relocated to Florida to be with my husband’s family. Shortly after this move I was hit in a terrible traffic accident and suffered a debilitating injury. My recovery has taken time and effort, but I have progressed enough so that I am once again writing. I post daily at A Little Perspective, the permanent online home of all my previous blogs and websites. In 2012, The Homeschool Post published my family’s inspiring story in The Myth of the Perfect Homeschooling Family.
I also update my Stop Common Core, Homeschooling, Homeschool News, Why We Homeschool, and History boards on Pinterest regularly.
The Ancient Paths
It is out of the conviction that the ancient paths are of paramount importance to the education of our children that Nothing New Press was begun. What do we mean when we say our curriculum honors the ancient paths? We are using the term in the same way as the prophet Jeremiah:
The admonition of the Lord to His nation was to ask for the old, or ancient, paths; the old or ancient way of walking. However, we find that they did not:
“Because My people have forgotten Me,
They have burned incense to worthless idols.
And they have caused themselves to stumble in their ways,
From the ancient paths,
To walk in pathways and not on a highway,
To make their land desolate and a perpetual hissing;
Everyone who passes by it will be astonished
And shake his head.” Jeremiah 18:15-16
I realized one day while reading in Jeremiah that in the United States of America, we are a people who are in danger of forgetting God. We as a people have burned incense to worthless idols. Aren’t we a country where the creature is worshiped instead of the Creator? (Rom 1:20-23.) I was at the Denver Museum of Natural History with my family some years back, and there was a traveling display there at that time of an artist’s paintings of fossils of all kinds. But one painting struck me in particular: it was of a fish fossil, and underneath it were hands raised in adoration. The caption was: Fish Worship. I am not making this up.
(I have found the artist, and this currently available print is similar, but not exactly the same as the one I saw. The one I saw was of a fossil skeleton, not the live fish. The caption under the picture was “Fish Worship” without the additional “Is it wrong?” line.)
I realized then that evolution is a religion, the anti-God religion of death, and an enemy of the everlasting gospel. As a people, we have removed every trace of God and His word from our society and public life, and in so doing, have caused ourselves to stumble in our ways, to leave the ancient paths laid out for us by God. Our family is trying to rediscover God’s ways and walk in the highway of the ancient paths once again. Won’t you join us?
