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American Restoration: How Faith, Family, and Personal Sacrifice Can Heal Our Nation Kindle Edition
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America seems to be crumbling from within. Having abandoned the Judeo-Christian values that are the foundation of its culture, our nation, in the eyes of many, is going the way of the great civilizations of the past.
If our 250-year experiment in ordered liberty has really run its course, is it time to recognize the inevitable, pack up our families, and head for the hills, hunkering down through the dark days to come?
Or is there hope for an American restoration?
Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten, battle-hardened veterans of the culture wars, know as well as anyone that the decadence is undeniable. But they make the case that an American restoration is not only possible, but probable—if we act now.
The key is for Christians to engage with the culture, not flee from it, to be the salt and light that will renew it from within. That engagement must take place especially at the local level, where real spiritual and cultural transformation occurs. If America returns to its spiritual foundations, the tumultuous times we live in will be nothing more than a bumpy detour in our nation’s history. This book is a roadmap for the way back.
In this clear-eyed but hopeful guide to restoration, Goeglein and Osten explain how patriotic Americans, with God’s help, can renew fifteen critical components of our culture.
Government will not provide the solutions we desperately need. The solutions lie in our churches, our communities, and our homes. The light for our path is faith. As that light pierces the darkness, America will experience a reawakening, regeneration, and renewal.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRegnery Gateway
- Publication dateJuly 2, 2019
- File size2189 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“American Restoration is a clarion call to truly making America great again, by making America good again. It is a timely, prescient reminder that the Judeo-Christian morals upon which the nation was based remain the most solid foundation for our shining city on the hill—and that only a re-engagement with those moral foundations will allow us to build to new heights.” -- —Ben Shapiro, editor in chief, the Daily Wire
“There’s no question that the heart and soul of America are ailing. It’s easy to become discouraged and to believe that our country’s best days are behind it. In American Restoration, however, Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten paint a hopeful picture of the future that lies ahead if the people of this great nation will do the hard work necessary to restore freedom, family, and self-sacrifice to the center of America’s values.” -- —Jim Daly, president, Focus on the Family
“There’s no question that the heart and soul of America are ailing. It’s easy to become discouraged and to believe that our country’s best days are behind it. In American Restoration, however, Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten paint a hopeful picture of the future that lies ahead if the people of this great nation will do the hard work necessary to restore freedom, family, and self-sacrifice to the center of America’s values.” -- —Jim Daly, president, Focus on the Family
“Over two centuries ago, pundits both within and outside the United States praised the new nation as a shining beacon of hope for its own people and for the rest of the world. Yet today, public opinion polls, media commentary, and everyday conversations reveal the concern that our nation is losing its finest qualities and faces a bleak future. In American Restoration, Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten present a brilliant analysis of our current fight and provide a commonsense blueprint to recover and perpetuate the principles, ideals, and spiritual values that are the foundation of a beneficial culture. This highly readable book will inspire and enlighten a dedicated citizenry to seek and fulfill the promise that our Founders envisioned.” -- —Edwin Meese III, 75th United States Attorney General
“Over two centuries ago, pundits both within and outside the United States praised the new nation as a shining beacon of hope for its own people and for the rest of the world. Yet today, public opinion polls, media commentary, and everyday conversations reveal the concern that our nation is losing its finest qualities and faces a bleak future. In American Restoration, Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten present a brilliant analysis of our current fight and provide a commonsense blueprint to recover and perpetuate the principles, ideals, and spiritual values that are the foundation of a beneficial culture. This highly readable book will inspire and enlighten a dedicated citizenry to seek and fulfill the promise that our Founders envisioned.” -- —Edwin Meese III, 75th United States Attorney General
“When I speak about my book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty, people inevitably ask ‘What can I do?’ And ‘How can I help turn the cultural tide and “keep the republic”?’ Now I have a simple response. Read this excellent book, which has many of the answers to those vitally important questions.” -- —Eric Metaxas, New York Times #1 bestselling author of Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther
“When I speak about my book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty, people inevitably ask ‘What can I do?’ And ‘How can I help turn the cultural tide and “keep the republic”?’ Now I have a simple response. Read this excellent book, which has many of the answers to those vitally important questions.” -- —Eric Metaxas, New York Times #1 bestselling author of Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther
“As Christians, we are called to convey hope. And that is what my friends Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten do in American Restoration. They provide a blueprint that not only provides hope, but will help return America to the principles upon which it was founded, that all men have an unalienable right from their Creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The restoration of these God-given principles, as outlined in this book, will once again make America a shining city on a hill for the world to see.” -- —Alan Sears, founder, Alliance Defending Freedom
“As Christians, we are called to convey hope. And that is what my friends Tim Goeglein and Craig Osten do in American Restoration. They provide a blueprint that not only provides hope, but will help return America to the principles upon which it was founded, that all men have an unalienable right from their Creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The restoration of these God-given principles, as outlined in this book, will once again make America a shining city on a hill for the world to see.” -- —Alan Sears, founder, Alliance Defending Freedom
“In American Restoration, Tim and Craig expertly outline some of the most pressing issues of this century and provide a roadmap based on our founding principles to repair the very fabric of this nation.” -- —Kay Coles James, president, the Heritage Foundation
“In American Restoration, Tim and Craig expertly outline some of the most pressing issues of this century and provide a roadmap based on our founding principles to repair the very fabric of this nation.” -- —Kay Coles James, president, the Heritage Foundation
“This book is like a blueprint for those who love their neighbors and wish to see a nation in which that which is true, good, and beautiful is able to flourish. It’s full of wisdom from the past and hope for the future.” -- —John Stonestreet, president, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview
“This book is like a blueprint for those who love their neighbors and wish to see a nation in which that which is true, good, and beautiful is able to flourish. It’s full of wisdom from the past and hope for the future.” -- —John Stonestreet, president, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview
About the Author
CRAIG OSTEN has collaborated with several best-selling authors on more than a dozen books. A former political reporter and an ardent student of history, Osten graduated from the University of California, Davis, and did graduate work at California State University, Sacramento, and Fuller Theological Seminary.
Product details
- ASIN : B07Q2437ZR
- Publisher : Regnery Gateway (July 2, 2019)
- Publication date : July 2, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 2189 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 250 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,822,098 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,690 in Social Issues & Christianity
- #3,023 in Popular Culture
- #4,876 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
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I am very pleased. Also a very good read.
“As of 2014, more than seventy percent of all African American children are now born out of wedlock-triple the percentage Moynihan reported in the mid-1960s when the Great Society was launched to solve the problem (hopefully) of fatherless children in African American homes,” write Goeglein and Osten.
“In 2014, more than half of Hispanic children were born out of wedlock, as well as one-third of all American babies born to Caucasian mothers,” they continue. “As recently as 1970, only 15 percent of all American babies were born outside of marriage. The combined rate of all racial groups is now a whopping 40 percent.” And this despite $22 trillion spent over fifty years on Great Society programs.
As a mountain of social science data shows, single-parent families, usually without a father and husband, are an economic and social calamity for children especially boys. A University of Pennsylvania study found that young men who grow up fatherless are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families (Harper and McLanahan 2004).
For these authors the cause of our problem is fundamentally cultural and religious, inextricably tied to a “propulsive postmodernism” and a demiurge for “self-fulfillment” without tether to Judeo-Christian morality or even the Cardinal Virtues discerned by the ancient writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine or Aquinas. In truth, these sources of the Western tradition are denigrated by the bien pensant, the current elites, the Brahmins presiding over our universities, the media and much of corporate America today. As the Catholic writer and social critic Mary Eberstadt has opined, “Politics did not create these problems. The sexual revolution did. That’s why politics will not solve them, either.”
Goeglein and Osten proceed to outline the origin and extent of the rot in American culture in several tight, well-developed chapters treating culture, family, the judiciary, religious liberty, education, medical ethics, and a variety of moral virtues required of a free and democratic people.
Their philosophy is grounded in the Christian idea that men and women are made in the image of God-imago Dei. This informs their view of the need for civility and the recovery of the concept of the gentleman regarding whom John Henry Newman said, “It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.”
Another great gentleman, George Washington who, in his first inaugural address, stated that “religion and morality” are the “finest props of the duties of men and citizens,” adding that they are the pillars supporting “the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity.”
“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect the national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle,” proclaimed the first president.
While realistic regarding the forces arrayed against a moral restoration in America, they do not subscribe to the more extre,e forms of the “Benedict Option” which seem to counsel a complete withdrawal from the public square into an exclusively private zone, disengaged from politics, culture and social matters not exclusively en famille so to speak. The authors do concur with the proponents of this idea that one must deepen oneself spiritually and morally in faith and humility. But that should not lead one to flee the slings and arrows of a hostile culture. Engagemen,t grounded in a religious worldview, is the correct posture. Says Goeglein and Osten, “we must not despair.”
Citing the work of David Brooks and James and Deborah Fallows on the vibrancy of positive, local restorative action in communities across America, these authors state boldly that “we must continue to be faithful. The key to America’s restoration is to be found in remaining engaged in our neighborhoods, in our communities, and in our nation—doing so faithfully and knowing God is in control.” They urge Americans to take up the charge offered by the great English philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke:
“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.”
These writers are nothing if not hopeful, sometimes maddeningly so. But hope is a theological virtue not grounded in reason but faith. They urge us to live that virtue and become “salt and light” in a country well worth the effort.
G. Tracy Mehan, III, is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University.
A new book, “American Restoration: How Faith, Family, and Personal Sacrifice Can Heal Our Nation,” by Timothy Goeglein and Craig Osten is just such a blessing, and it comes at an opportune time, having just celebrated our nation’s founding.
A History Channel TV series—also coincidentally called “American Restoration”—tells stories of antique-restoration experts from across the country “as they not only restore pieces of America’s history, but create new and awe-inspiring works from vintage items.”
In much the same way as these antique hunters apply their craft to uncover the underlying beauty of pieces from our cultural past, Goeglein and Osten reintroduce readers to the treasures—some all but buried—of self-governance, civil society, and personal virtue that our Founders left us, presenting these treasures in their original brilliance with a bright finish for tomorrow’s retelling.
The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>
While the authors don’t completely avoid “back in the good old days” sentimentality, they do openly acknowledge and lament the sins of our country’s history, many that linger still today.
This balance allows two deeply patriotic men, who rightly see our country as a force for good, to urge readers to look ahead, rather than behind, and to re-embrace the ideas that have sustained history’s longest-surviving experiment in liberty without being shackled to a sanitized retelling of our past.
Each succinct chapter offers a panoramic flyover of some of the crucial cultural, political, and spiritual issues facing our country.
Most of the warnings are familiar—about dwindling respect for religious freedom, free speech, and the sanctity of life, along with a crumbling education system and an unraveling of America’s Judeo-Christian consensus—but are foundational in understanding what problems the authors mean to help us solve and how.
The strength that sets “American Restoration” apart from other offerings in the genre is its simple and practical advice. Instead of a garment-rending rehearsal of all that ails us, the authors instead elegantly and accessibly identify big problems and guide the reader to “own” their part in the American restoration.
Recalling former House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill’s famous maxim that “all politics are local,” the authors insist that all politics are really, really local.
While they do believe that massive structural, spiritual, and cultural change is needed, Goeglein and Osten appeal to the reader to start from the inside, to inculcate virtue and character in the home with one’s own family, to love and fellowship with one’s neighbors, and to perform acts of service and mercy in one’s community.
Instead of a revolution that razes existing institutions from the top down, the authors envision a restoration that raises future generations to make change for good from the bottom up.
The authors offer numerous examples of Americans who have transformed their esteem for our republic into actions intended to “keep it”—some quietly in their communities in small ways and some at great personal and professional risk on the national stage.
The authors themselves take some risks, as their proposed remedies are truly countercultural.
They warn that radical individualism and demands for the customization of everything will not create a nation of contented citizens who have gotten exactly what they want. They argue that this continued trend fosters greater division and feeds contempt for those outside the “tribe.”
To say in a most narcissistic age that self-fulfillment is not the ultimate end, but rather a toxic pursuit, may be a new and dangerous idea for a generation brought up on the idea that its every thirst must be slaked—and now.
Goeglein and Osten urge readers to look inside themselves not to inquire of their appetites, but to subordinate them in favor of seeking good for their neighbors. We should restore virtue. We should even raise our boys to be gentlemen.
“Virtuous people are those who have learned to put the needs of others above their own, while moderating their behavior in a manner that keeps them from making poor moral choices that would not only negatively impact them, but would impact society as a whole,” they write.
Virtuous people, the authors say, are the key to inaugurating the restoration of community, cohered by the “little platoons” represented by strong families.
And this is where the authors say that Christians should play a leading role.
Regular attendees of biblically orthodox churches have not abandoned the model of family life that nurtures virtue.
Additionally, churches represent some of the last remaining strong community-centric institutions. So, churches and their members have a special responsibility to reintroduce these blessings to a hurting world that desperately needs such a witness.
In the final analysis, “American Restoration” is so hopeful because the authors’ “it starts with you” advice for cumulative cultural change at the most local level is so doable.
And if enough Americans in their homes, churches, communities, and civic organizations make it their mission to reignite the spirit that made our nation that “shining city on the hill,” Goeglein and Osten are optimistic that we will indeed see an American restoration.
There is one clarification to be made...at the beginning of Chapter 10...Orestes Brownson's statement, I believe, is an adaptation of J F Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address statement, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.". It turns out that JFK's old headmaster, George St John at Choate College in Connecticut, penned this statement in 1937.
A big "Thumbs up!" for this writing.





