Making America great again

In a sobering essay for U.S. News and World Report titled “1968, the Year That Changed America Forever,” Kenneth T. Walsh writes, “Month after unsettling month, it became increasingly clear that America was losing its moorings and no one knew where it would end.” The tumult of 1968 included President Lyndon B. Johnson deciding not to seek reelection, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy, and a significant setback in the unwinnable war in Vietnam. It was the year of John Lennon and the Beatles’ anthem “Revolution” and the sexual revolution. One historian wrote, “1968 was the year that shattered the fragile consensus that had shaped American society since the end of World War II.”

The turbulent 1960s and its antecedents in the progressive movements of the 1930s are the subject of a new book, Stumbling Toward Utopia: How the 1960s Turned Into a National Nightmare and How We Can Revive the American Dream by Tim Goeglein, vice president for external and government relations at Focus on the Family. At first glance, one might assume it’s yet another negative jeremiad against the culture. Goeglein does trace the roots of many of our modern maladies, such as identity politics, family dysfunction, polarization, and the expanding size of government, but his examination is nuanced, offering cheerful analysis and concrete solutions for American renewal.

The idea that America has experienced cultural decay is not a new one, as thinkers across the political spectrum wonder if America’s best days are behind her. By many measures—church attendance, education outcomes, mass shootings, family formation—America has regressed. Perhaps the most egregious development of that era—the legal regime of abortion—paved the way for the slaughter of tens of millions of unborn babies.

Yet even the most cynical observer could not miss the significant racial progress America has made since the 1960s, the technological and medical breakthroughs that have advanced human flourishing, and, at least in the 21st century, a new era of jurisprudence that has peeled away layers of legal antagonism against religion.

Progressivism has since marched its way through key institutions in American life, from education to religion to government. We are wise to reject this fundamental reordering of the American ideal. Conservatism, at its heart, seeks to preserve what is whole and healthy, the vital institutions necessary for human flourishing.

Yet we should also be encouraged that history is not as linear as partisans claim. It moves in fits and starts, and pockets of renewal are always possible. Even the 1960s and 1970s, full of tumult and unrest, also birthed the Jesus movement, which saw many find satisfaction and hope in Christianity. Consider how the Reagan Revolution revived the American spirit and defeated communism and the reforms of the 1990s that shrank the size of government. Today, we might find hope in faint echoes of spiritual revival on college campuses, the growing cultural resistance to transgender ideologies, and the bipartisan effort to encourage stable family life through the tax code.

In reading our history, Christians should reject both the thesis that the arc of history bends toward progressive utopia and the dour cynicism that sees the country permanently slouching toward Gomorrah. Cultural and spiritual renewal is always possible, especially when believers live intentional lives. For some, this means running for office. For others, it means renewing our key institutions. For most, it means living simple lives of faithfulness, including raising our families, attending church, and serving our local communities.

Renewing the nearly 250-year American experiment is a worthy project for believers. Citizenship such as ours is a rare stewardship we cannot neglect. As the exiles in Babylon were told to seek the welfare of the city, Christians, too, should care about the well-being of the country we love (Jeremiah 29:7). To do so requires a sober analysis of the roots of our most vexing social problems as well as a realism that understands the limits of what we can accomplish in a broken world. Even as we look beyond this world toward that city whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10).