The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim’s Journey on the Great Wagon Road by James Dodson. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster. 416 pages. 2025
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James Dodson is one of my favorite authors, having read several of his books about golf. This is not a subject that I would normally have been interested in, but he is such a good author, I decided to listen to the audiobook version, which was reads by the author. And, I’m very glad that I did.
Dodson tells us that the Great Wagon Road is probably the least known historic road in America. The Great Wagon Road, which his father (“Opti”), first mentioned to Dodson in 1966, was the primary road of frontier America. It was a mass migration route that stretched more than eight hundred miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. This was the road that Dodson’s German ancestors traveled. The author takes us in “the Pearl”, his 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate station wagon, along with his faithful dog Mulligan, on this nearly five-year (COVID interrupted) journey that began in 2017. He crosses six contiguous states and some of the most historic and hallowed landscapes of eastern America, touching many of the nation’s most sacred battlefields and burying grounds.
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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review and a review of Go Forward in Love: A Year of Daily Readings from Timothy Keller
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst
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Dodson tells us about many historical figures that we are familiar with – William Penn, Ben Franklin, Daniel Boone, Robert E. Lee, George Washington, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, the Moravians, Patsy Cline and many more. He also tells us about his visits with the interesting people he meets along the way, including MAGA Hat Man, Dwight the Auctioneer, Liberty Man, a historical narrative artist Rocco, cousin Steve, and Steamy. As he stops at historic inns, diners and pubs, you feel like you are right there taking the journey with him, as he visits Philadelphia, Lancaster, Columbia, York, Gettysburg, Winchester, Belle Grove, Old Salem, Roanoke, with its wretched racial past, attends several historic churches, and more.
We read about the Paxton Boys, who massacred 20 unarmed Conestoga Indians in Lancaster County in 1763, the burning of the Columbian bridge in 1863, and the battle at Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle in U.S. history.
We read about the author’s love of Baseball Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, his mother, girlfriend Kristen who was murdered, Pioneer Paul, the joy of a good pipe, and his trying to find the true path of the road.
If you enjoy learning about American history, or just want to join the author on his eight-hundred-mile journey, you might want to check out this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Tim Keller was the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, co-founder of The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer City to City, and the author of twenty-four books. He died at the age of 72 in May 2023 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. This book is comprised of short daily readings from his books. I used it as a part of my devotional readings in 2025, and would recommend it to you.
Here are 20 quotes I found helpful from the book:
- Sin is not simply doing bad things; it is putting good things in the place of God.
- Remember this—if you don’t live for Jesus you will live for something else.
- Religion operates on the principle “I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.” But the operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through what Christ has done—therefore I obey.”
- God’s love and forgiveness can pardon and restore any and every kind of sin or wrongdoing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done.
- If you marry someone expecting them to be like a god, it is only inevitable that they will disappoint you. It’s not that you should try to love your spouse less, but rather that you should know and love God more.
- The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
- If we look to some created thing to give us the meaning, hope, and happiness that only God himself can give, it will eventually fail to deliver and break our hearts.
- One of the main ways we move from abstract knowledge about God to a personal encounter with him as a living reality is through the furnace of affliction.
- Someday, when Jesus returns and ushers in a renewed creation, love will totally triumph over hate and life will totally triumph over death.
- If anything matters more to you than God, you are placing yourself and your heart into something external. Only if you make God matter the most—which means only if you glorify him and give him the glory—will you have a safe life.
- On the cross Jesus got what we deserved: The sin, guilt, and brokenness of the world fell upon him. He loved us so much he took divine justice on himself so that we could be passed over, forever.
- Not everyone is your brother or sister in the faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor.
- If you are a Christian, and you refrain from committing adultery or using profanity or missing church, but you don’t do the hard work of thinking through how to do justice in every area of life—you are failing to live justly and righteously.
- As ascended Lord he is spreading the gospel and building up his church by working in the hearts of people while he guides all the events of history toward a glorious end.
- God’s salvation does not come in response to a changed life. A changed life comes in response to the salvation, offered as a free gift.
- A servant puts someone else’s needs ahead of his or her own. That is how all believers should live with each other.
- Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.
- You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life.
- If you make any work the purpose of your life—even if that work is church ministry—you create an idol that rivals God.
- Work of all kinds, whether with the hands or the mind, evidences our dignity as human beings—because it reflects the image of God the Creator in us.
- My Book Reviews. Enjoy more than 570 of my book reviews on Goodreads.
- Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy has published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you have read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.”
- Do You Have to Choose Between Science and God? Tim Challies reviews the new book Science and God: Do You Have to Choose? by John Lennox and Katy Morgan. He writes “I am confident that this little book, ideal for those in high school or college, will help foster both curiosity about the world and confidence in God.”
Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst
Synthesizing Keller’s work topic by topic, each chapter of this book highlights a key aspect of the Christian life—covering his views on prayer, suffering, friendship, vocation, intimacy with God, and more. Written by pastor Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life draws from Keller’s nearly 50 years of sermons, conference messages, and books to share practical theological insight that will galvanize leaders and laypeople alike.
As we read through this book, we now look at Chapter 6: Do Justice, Love Mercy Embodying the Compassion of the King. Here are a few helpful quotes from the chapter:
- A life poured out in deeds of justice and mercy, especially for the poor, is an inevitable sign of saving faith.
- The gospel of Jesus Christ contains incomparable power to dignify those the world ignores.
- The gospel produces genuine concern for the poor, and deeds of justice can open the door for the gospel message.
- Keller defines justice, most basically, as “giving people their due.”
- The starting point for any conversation about biblical justice must be the righteous character of God, and the infinite dignity inherent to all who bear his image (Gen. 1:26–27).
- We are to show special concern for the poor because that’s what our God does.
- God identifies with impoverished image bearers such that the way we treat them is often, in a sense, how we are treating Him.
- God’s word is clear: Showing practical concern for poor believers doesn’t grant you spiritual life. But it may prove your faith isn’t a corpse.
- We may not like to hear it, but according to Scripture, to be ungenerous is to be unjust.
- Failing to be generous to the poor offends the God in whose image we are all made.
- Everything we possess is a gift from a generous God who calls us to deploy his gifts, with sacrificial love, for the good of others.
- Doing justice, then, must never be simply relegated to practicing charity. Instead, it means giving image bearers of God—especially those who can’t defend themselves—their astonishing biblical due.
- According to the Bible, then, acts of mercy and justice are expressions of love.
