Saturday, August 19, 2023

Recovering America Means Recovering Virture

 Eric Metaxas' most recent book is A Letter to the American Church" but I haven't read it and it isn't out in audio form through Srvices for the blind yet so all I know about it is what I'vw heard in various interviews.  But I did discover that he has noather book from about a decade ago that is out in audio form and I've listened to it once and am going through it a second time, "If You Can Keep It' which isof course about the American founding, which you may recobgnize from the title as Benjamin Frankloin's answer to the query what sort of government the Constitutional convention had given us.  A republic, he said, if you can keep it.

Since Metaxas' latest book is about how can san save america, specifically what the churchews can and should be soing to save America, I would guess that it covers some of the same metrial that's in this earlier book.   That is, I would expect it to focus to a large extent on the natur=e of America, how we are different from other nations and why it is important, and what it would take to recover this different sorft of nation based on the nature of those difer3ences.

I knew that John Adams had said that our consisution is meant for a moral and religious people, that it is wholly i8nadequate for the governmnent of anyh other, and that thourhg has urbled up in my mind from time to time, laregely without a solid understanding of what he had in mind although I've always found it to be a very intriguing thought.  Well, Metasas makes much of the idea of that moral requriement for our different sort of goverment and points out that Adams was far from the only one to say so.  Washington was another but there were others behisdies him who also said it.  I don't remember if Franklin said the same thing but his remark about whether we can keep it or not suggests something similar.  

Since heraing this earlier bgook about the founding I've had a much stronger sense of the importance of this idea.


Oh good grief.  I have a pretty lengthy essay in mind for this topic but now I'm so tired I can't follow through.  Happens so much lately.  Drat.  I hope I'll be up to coming back to tis soon.--___