Since the 1990s, I’ve read everything I could get my hands on written by Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of WORLD magazine (though a dozen other monikers could be used to describe him as well).
But when a man writes as much as Mr. Olasky, invariably some books (he has 20+) have been overlooked, even by a fan.
So like a kid on Christmas morning, I’ve been taking joy in a 1995 volume Mr. Olasky wrote that I only recently acquired. Titled, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue: Political and Cultural Wars in Eighteenth-Century America, Mr. Olasky argues that morality and freedom are connected—and that they were certainly connected in the mind and lives (however imperfectly) of our nation’s founders during the time of the American Revolution.
Here is a brief excerpt from near the end of the book:
“Christians who are Americans are double citizens; when the two citizenships come into conflict, our heavenly citizenship is the trump, first and last. But happy the time when the two citizenships can be in harmony.
There was a time when this was often the case. [James] Burgh, in 1774, contrasted the viciousness of English society with ’the sobriety, and temperate way of living, practiced by the Dissenters retired to America” [the citizens in the American colonies]. He praised “their thrift and regular manner of living,’ and noted that American society ’if not entirely virtuous, has a show of virtue; and, if this were only an appearance, it is yet better for a people … than the open profession and practice of lewdness, which is always attended with national decay and poverty.’
In other words, even as we acknowledge that virtue is never without hypocrisy, the attempt at virtue is better for society than the open embrace of vice. Olasky continues:
“What happens when we let it all hang out? As James Burgh wrote in 1774, ’It is of great consequence to a kingdom, that religion and morals be considered as worthy the attention of persons of high rank.’ That is because,
’the welfare of all countries in the world depends upon the morals of their people … when their manners are depraved, they will decline insensibly, and at least come to utter destruction. When a country is grown vicious, industry decays, the people become effeminate and unfit for labor. To maintain luxury, the great ones must oppress the meanest; and to avoid this oppression, the meaner sort are often compelled to seditious tumults or open rebellion.’
“Now we rarely comprehend the connections. May we do so again, and may a linking of governmental reform and personal virtue come again. Those who desire small government and those who yearn for holy government must hang together, or we will all hang separately.”
If you skip the fancy coffee one day this week you’ll have the few dollars needed to buy a used, hardback copy of this informative and thought-provoking book. Mr. Olasky tells U.S. history, and he does so in a way that will make you understand why it all even matters for today.
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