RENEWING AMERICAN COMPASSION: A Citizen's Guide

In a ringing call to churches, community leaders, and ordinary citizens, Marvin Olasky points the way to a reinvented War on Poverty and a renewal of faith-based charity. Only in recent decades have we relegated compassion to the government and lost touch with the poor. We can do much better. In Renewing American Compassion, Olasky reminds us that the original meaning of compassion is "suffering with"; from this definition, he constructs an entirely new framework for helping the needy. Olasky shows how dozens of charities and individuals have connected to, and uplifted, the needy. He offers specific guidelines for offering a helping hand, and describes how true compassion renews all of us. He advocates the restoration of family and community bonds, and a return to a moral code that emphasizes the value of hard work, self-sufficiency, and self-respect. Olasky recounts dozens of success stories, and a summary of history's lessons, to show that through faith, by "suffering with," each of us can join a renewed effort for personal, challenging, and spiritual charity. He tells the stories of Clean and Sober Streets in Washington; Teen Challenge in San Antonio; Step Thirteen in Denver; Children of the Night in Los Angeles; and many others. As Olasky writes, "We need to reject the notion of material redistributionists that change is as easy as passing a bill or writing a check. Every successful person in society can look back at the human and spiritual capital that has been invested in him....The good news is that radical transformations of individual lives do occur, and in abundance. Furthermore, we should realize that the amount of compassion in a society is not fixed. Some will have more time to give; some will have more dollars; but everyone can do something that will help and not hurt. Everyone can do something."

Dr. Marvin Olasky is a professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin, and a senior fellow at The Progress and Freedom Foundation. He is the author of nine books of history and cultural analysis, and the editor of World, a weekly Christian news-magazine.