Current is grateful for P&R Publishing’s permission to serialize Marvin Olasky’s memoir, Pivot Points: Adventures on the Road to Christian Contentment.
Act Three
The Busiest Years: 1989-2001
Chapter 10: Research, Writing, Editing, Uniting?
In 1989, it’s nearly fifteen years since the Vietnam War ended, but the other issue that animated me in my Marxist days, how to help the poor, is still very much with us. The left-wing solutions to which I once pledged allegiance continue to fail. What are the Christian alternatives?
I read in the Bible hundreds of references to helping the poor, such as this one in 1 John 3:17: “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” I wonder how nineteenth-century American Christians, who on average read the Bible more frequently than we do today, reacted to that admonition. Judging from some quick research in the University of Texas library, little happened in American poverty-fighting until the federal government became active in the 1930s.
That seems unlikely. When the Heritage Foundation invites me to propose a project worthy of a year-long fellowship that will underwrite an Olasky family move to Washington, DC, for a year, I submit my plan to write a book about Christian charities before the New Deal. My hypothesis is that historians who focus on government programs have missed that history.
Heritage is enthusiastic. Susan and our children are excited. UT gives me a leave of absence. So, starting in September, I walk the mile from our rental house to the Silver Spring, Maryland, Metro stop. Then it’s a fifteen-minute ride to Union Station and a short walk to the Heritage office or to a gorgeous Library of Congress reading room, where I fill out slips of paper requesting books to be brought to me.
It’s luxurious research. A pneumatic system whooshes away the slips. Staffers retrieve books from the massive stacks. Books appear almost magically on my desk. Tidy, efficient—but the system is only as good as my ability to request the right books by the right call numbers. How do I request materials if I don’t even know they exist?
I apply for and receive a pass that allows me to wander the loaded bookstacks, literally blowing dust off books and records that have languished in anonymity for decades. Only then do I understand the breadth of the nineteenth-century war on poverty. Those records, along with old newspaper accounts, show Christian charities helping to change lives. The documents show how homeless people might come to a mission looking for food
and shelter, “three hots and a cot.” Millions over the decades receive that and more: physical and spiritual sustenance.
Not all my learning comes from Library of Congress records. On wintry mornings near Capitol Hill, men and women wrapped in blankets huddle near heating grates. I wonder what kind of help shelters and clinics offer them, so in March 1990, as the crocuses and daffodils begin to bloom, I take off my wedding ring and stop showering. I wear two dirty sweaters, put electrical tape on my glasses, and shuffle through inner-city DC.
Two days of walking and wandering yield ample offers of food, clothing, medicine, and a cot—even physical therapy at a local pool. Only at a massive shelter run by the Center for Creative Non-Violence does anyone ask about my background. When I mutter, “I wrote speeches for DuPont’s president,” my welcomer must think I’m crazy. But he rolls with it and says I can write a speech about awful Republican policies.
Except for that offer, no one asks me to do anything—not even to remove a tray after eating. At the Zaccheus Community Kitchen, provider of excellent free breakfasts in the basement of the First Congregational Church at Tenth and G Sts. NW, a young volunteer keeps putting food down in front of me and asking if I want more. Finally, I gruffly mumble, “Could I have a . . . Bible?” She tries to figure out what I’ve requested: “Do you want a bagel? A bag?” When I respond, “A Bible,” she says, politely but firmly, “I’m sorry, we don’t have any Bibles.”
Library experience, along with some street-level reporting, leads me to propose “conservative compassion”—not a centralized, massive distribution of funds but challenging help offered in one-to-one relationships. My book will be titled The Tragedy of American Compassion, a story of how past American poverty-fighters strove for a middle road that would avoid both social Darwinism (survival of the fittest) and social universalism (everyone gets handouts regardless of behavior).
It’s a tragedy because American history shows us how to fight poverty in a way that helps millions—but from the 1960s on, in our attempt to achieve complete success and further not just compassion but a Great Society, we seduce some into thinking they can droop without consequences. I develop another goal alongside my journalistic one: to help reform poverty-fighting by pushing it toward a compassionate conservatism that is deeply realistic about fallen human nature, yet optimistic about man’s God-given capacity to change.
For a time it looks like a major New York publisher will put out my book, but the corporation eventually says no: The Tragedy of American Compassion describes the centrality of churches in past poverty-fighting, so it’s “too religious.” In 1992 a small company publishes Tragedy with almost no marketing money behind it. The book seems to be a tree falling in a forest with no one in earshot.
Other developments, though, give me little time to mourn over that disappointment. Another year of research at the Library of Congress, this time funded by Americans United for Life, leads to a book on the history of abortion. I also chair a quarterly meeting of what becomes known as Life Forum, where the heads of pro-life organizations assemble in Washington to debate and occasionally coordinate their work.
My ambitious goal is to help the pro-life movement avoid playing into the stereotype that it’s full of fire-breathers who don’t care about women. In one meeting Guy Condon, who through most of the 1990s is president of the pregnancy help group Care Net, shows how pro-lifers can “love them both”—
pregnant moms and unborn babies. He’s followed by Randy Terry, head of Operation Rescue, who roars, “GOD WILL WIPE OUT THIS COUNTRY. . . . GOD WILL AVENGE INNOCENT BLOOD.”
At dinner with Terry in 1990, at the height of his notoriety, I tell him, “You seem to see yourself as a John Brown.” I expect him to deny it, but he offers an enthusiastic Yes! “So you want to start a civil war?” Yes! Terry and his allies say anyone willing to make exceptions for the 2 percent of unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape and incest is pro-abortion. Given public opinion, I’m for “all or something” rather than “all or nothing,” but trying to bring peace among warring factions is above my skill set.
Meanwhile, entrepreneur Joel Belz and his brother Nat struggle to put out World, an audaciously titled weekly news magazine from a Christian perspective. Joel reads Prodigal Press and asks me in 1990 to join World’s board of directors. I do, and learn that World, with a circulation of about twelve thousand, is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two board members in 1992 propose shutting down the magazine. Others say no but ask, after hearing my ideas about journalism, that I pull an editing oar. That means spending summers in Asheville, North Carolina, with my whole family in 1993 and 1994. Given Austin summer heat, no one objects.
During the school year, technology allows me to work from Austin. We install a dedicated fax line in our bedroom and connect to it a thermal paper fax machine. I look at the major stories, which roll out of the machine on shiny paper at a glacial pace, and fax back edited pages.
For two years, Joel Belz remains the editor, but he runs children’s newspapers and a book club along with the magazine and writes for it a weekly column. He has a young assistant editor and only one full-time World reporter, who’s now of retirement age. He repeatedly asks me to pivot into full editorship, with authority over the entire publication. He will remain as publisher, with authority over the business aspects. He agrees that we will have a wall of separation between the editorial and business sides, so journalists don’t feel pressure to please advertisers or donors.
In 1994, I agree to take over, because it’s one thing to teach about the problems of journalism and another to try doing better, week after week. I know from teaching journalism history that many Christian publications have failed because they were solemn and preachy. Sometimes they paired that with happy talk, practicing public relations rather than journalism. World needs to avoid those mistakes, but we’ll unavoidably end up stepping on toes. Sometimes that will be deliberate, but sometimes, since I myself didn’t grow up in evangelical circles, we’ll receive credit for courage after offending out of ignorance.
Joel Belz, recognizing that Christian journalism needs reforming, accepts the risk. A headline in the December 10, 1994, issue displays his sigh of relief: “Our experienced editor-at-large becomes editor at last.” I have time because Texas taxpayers are kind enough to pay me a full-time salary for two days a week of teaching, meeting students, and grading papers. Joel settles in as World’s publisher. His one full-time reporter retires. We try out freelancers and build a staff of journalists who will be both accurate and lively.
I’m looking for what sounds like an oxymoron—serious fun. One example: Instead of a stuffy opinionater about the heavy bureaucracy of the Department of Agriculture, I have a Washington reporter trot from one federal office to another asking, “Do you know where to find the National School Lunch Program?” He ends up in Virginia, and we show the department’s size.
To point out the hypocrisy of those who oppose school choice but send their own children to DC’s toniest private schools, the reporter rides around Washington with a Ghanian cabbie whose own children attend public schools. We report the driver’s reaction to expensive education edifices.
We’ll also scrutinize Christian groups, but in 1995 and 1996 I don’t have the enormous amount of time that’s needed to monitor investigations. That’s because, unknown to me, word of mouth in 1993 and 1994 is gaining The Tragedy of American Compassion a small following in New York, Washington, and Austin.
One of the Texas fans of the book is Karl Rove, the key political advisor of gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush. Rove brings us together for an hour of conversation. One of the Washington fans is Congressional leader Newt Gingrich, who is calling for a revolution.
