30 Minutes With Marvin Olasky

Editor's Note: In Genesis, God tells Adam to "work the land" and "name the animals." No one we know takes these early commandments more seriously than Marvin Olasky. From his home in Austin, TX, Olasky edits WORLD Magazine, the nation's leading Christian news weekly, and the fourth largest news weekly of any kind. He is also a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, and has written several books that have been influential in the training of journalists. His book "The Tragedy of American Compassion" helped define the welfare reform debate of the 1990s, and the ideas in his most recent book, "Compassionate Conservatism," helped define George W. Bush's run for the White House. Olasky was in Charlotte to serve as keynote speaker for The Charlotte World's first annual Salt & Light Awards.

Warren Smith: As we’re sitting here, a week after the election, the election is still in doubt. Among your many academic disciplines is history. People are saying it is an historic election. Is it really? If so, in what way?

Marvin Olasky: Well, it is because there haven’t been a lot of elections that have to go past the electoral college process, and this one will have to do just that. The closest comparison in American history is perhaps the 1876 election where the Democratic candidate apparently won 184 electoral votes, but 185 were needed to win. He had apparently taken the states of Florida, South Carolina, and another southern state. But through various chicanery, the Republicans were able to hold on to those states and claim 185 electoral votes,which was the majority needed. There were disputes about which electors were legitimate electors. Congress was divided. The House was a Democratic majority and the Senate a Republican majority. These battles kept going and going and going. In those days the president was inaugurated on March 4. The battles kept going up until the beginning of March.

An agreement was worked out to set up a 15-member board of election commissioners who were supposed to resolve this dispute. That board decided by a vote of 8-7 that Hayes, the Republican, should be the next president. The Democrats did not take this lying down at all. This was just a few years after the Civil War, and thoughts of that were still fresh, and there was talk about a new Civil War. There were reports of armed men headed toward Washington. The Democratic and Republican leaders got together and worked out a deal. Hayes became president, but the Democrats got some things they wanted. Since the Democratic base was in the south, Democrats wanted federal troops withdrawn. There were some pork barrel expenditures agreed to. Railroads and other stuff.

WS: So this is not totally unprecedented.

MO: Not exactly once a century. Once every 124 years, let’s say. And it worked out peacefully in the end, but in one sense the stakes weren’t so high. The federal government was so big as it is today. It didn’t work out so well for blacks in the south. Reconstruction would probably have come to an end anyway. There had been abuses. But the free slaves did need some protections, and they didn’t have it any more. So it wasn’t a happy deal.

WS: Irrespective of how this election turns out, has there been an erosion of constitutional authority, as some have alleged?

MO: Too early to tell, but I would say that it is a continuation of the erosion that has taken place over the past eight years. It used to be that dads would hold up their babies and their children at parades as the politicians rode by and would say "There’s an honorable person. When you grow up, you can be like that person." We haven’t been able to do that for the past eight years, especially for the past couple of years, as Bill Clinton’s activities have become more widely known. Whatever president comes in now, there will be about half of the population who may be saying that this is a person who stole the election.

WS: Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were high during the impeachment….

MO: His job performance approval ratings were high. His personal approval ratings were low.

WS: That unusual phenomenon caused some to say that politics has essentially become entertainment. And the role of the media have been to create drama and to generate entertainment value.

MO: Certainly it is the desire of folks in media, both to increase ratings and circulation, and also for their own interests, for things to remain close.

For example, I talk sometimes with Wayne Slater, who is a veteran reporter with the Dallas Morning News. He covered Bush’s campaign. A year ago Wayne predicted pretty accurately what would happen in the primaries. He said someone would come along and get a lot of attention because reporters want to report. They want a horse race. So we saw that with McCain getting press support.

Then, with both presidential nominations wrapped up in the middle of March, it became a rather boring time for reporters.

In fact, there are a lot of things that factor in to how the media report things. There is ideology, or worldview. Most media are overwhelmingly liberal. We know that. Surveys come out all the time that show that. But they also want it to be close, so sometimes they give a conservative candidate some better play for a while to keep it close. Again, it’s partly ratings, but it’s partly their own interests. It’s just more exciting if it’s a close race.

WS: About that time, when it was close between McCain and Bush, WORLD did a major cover story on McCain that generated a great deal of controversy. Without re-hashing that whole episode, I would like to ask if there was anything about your coverage that you repent of?

MO: Basically, it was a good article. Sen. McCain had been getting an easy ride. Things that people needed to know about were not getting reported. I’m glad we did that. In The American Leadership Tradition I wrote that we need to know as much as we can about what makes our leaders tick. That includes what kind of husband they are. How they are in their personal relations. The type of stuff we know about local candidates, but often not about national candidates because all we know has been mediated by broadcast structures.

One thing I wish we hadn’t done. We went back too far. Some of the things about the break-up of Sen. McCain’s first marriage. I tend to have a 10-year statute of limitations, unless older behavior indicates an ongoing pattern of behavior.

WS: How do you make those kinds of decisions? By that I mean this. During that time you were an advisor to George W. Bush and you recused yourself from the editing of that story. Yet, because WORLD Magazine does attempt to report with a biblical worldview, you are not an indifferent spectator to the events you cover. How do you make reporting and editing decisions that do not erode your credibility with your readers?

MO: In that case, I recused myself from editing during the active primary season, where there is real competition. That wasn’t so much because there would be conflict in our coverage, but because there were a lot of fine candidates out there. I didn’t want our readers to think our coverage was going to be tilted toward one good candidate, when there were still other good candidates in the race.

WS: Keyes and Bauer were still in the race.

MO: Steve Forbes and others, too.

So I didn’t see the McCain story until it was in print. Still, I have huge confidence in Nick Eicher and Bob Jones and the other people. They did a terrific job.

But that was a peculiar situation. When the primary season was over, and I got back involved, I think two things were significant. Number one, as a non-profit organization, we were not endorsing any candidate, but anyone who had seen the positions that WORLD has taken over the years, and anyone who knew the positions that Bush was taking, would know that we would be supportive of Bush and we could not be supportive of anyone who thinks it is OK for an abortionist to puncture the skull of a mostly born baby. That is so horrendous that anyone who supports that position loses any right to be president, senator, or anything else. That’s such an indication of total depravity.

So that wasn’t hard.

At the same time, I had been advising Gov. Bush, especially in the early part of 1999 when he was putting some flesh on the bones of compassionate conservatism, and I really pulled away from that in the last half of the year, and this year I haven’t talked with him at all. I have friendly relations with people in the campaign, and every once in a while I shot an e-mail off to them when there was something I just could not resist. But in general I have tried to maintain a distance.

WS: On another story, the so-called "stealth bible" story of a few years ago, the gender-neutral New International Bible story. That was a sensational story that caused a sensation in the Christian community. Were you happy with that story, and with what happened downstream from that story?

MO: I have a sign up in my office at home that says: "Sensational facts, understated prose." That’s what we do 99% of the time. Every once in a while there is a time to shout. In chapter 33, I believe, of Ezekiel, it talks about the watchman on the wall. Every once in a while, we find ourselves in that position, when something comes up that is so troubling that we need to shout, that we need to be biblically sensational. If you read the Bible, you see lots of examples of sensational writing. In Judges, there is that horrendous situation where the Levites’ concubine is gang-raped and killed and cut up in 12 pieces and mailed to the 12 tribes. This is a grisly chapter, but God’s inspired writers put it there.

Yes, we know we’re not inspired. We’re fallen sinners. We’re thoroughly limited in our understanding. But one of the very clear things, it seems to me, is "Don’t misquote God." It’s fine for ministers to exegete a passage; it’s fine for commentators to explain it. But it’s very important that you don’t deliberately set out to take what God’s inspired writers wrote and turn it into something that is politically correct and intellectually fashionable. That was our concern.

We had dramatic writing. A dramatic cover. I’m very proud of what we did there. The story itself was in a sense a developing story. We had enough of a story to reveal what was going on. We learned more and there were new developments, so we wrote another story. And then, of course, there were attacks. We responded, explaining what we had done. The one thing that would have been better would have been to have all the information at first. But there are some stories where you have to go with what you’ve got, and when people see that you’re serious about proceeding, then people come forward and tell you more. If you didn’t have the first story, you couldn’t have gotten the second. It wasn’t one perfect story, but overall it was very good, and I’m glad that we are able to awaken the church.

WS: Were you disappointed in how the Christian community responded to that story? It raised issues of authority and accountability that are troubling for the evangelical church.

MO: I was disappointed in how Christianity Today and the Evangelical Press Association responded. But overall, I was very impressed with how people responded. Jerry Falwell called me and congratulated us and reprinted thousands of copies of the article. That raised the alarm. Lots of other people. Jim Dobson came forward and wrote a column for us and was instrumental in creating an agreement not to change the NIV. Academic life does not naturally produce profiles in courage, but some in academic life stood up boldly. Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary. So overall I was very pleased.

WS: These two stories bring up your metaphor of whitewater rapids as a way to describe various kinds of stories. Class I rapids being easy rapids. These are issues that are mentioned specifically in scripture. Class VI being unnavigable. Not only are they not mentioned, but they are very difficult if not impossible to definitively discern a biblical position. And in between are issues that Christians should grapple with, some of which have complex and difficult answers. I’ve heard you say that homosexuality is Class I because it is specifically mentioned in scripture, but that abortion is Class II. Can you help me understand that distinction?

MO: Abortion is Class II because you have to make one tiny logical step. Number one: Do not kill innocent human life. Number two: the unborn child is innocent human life. Number three: Therefore do not kill unborn children. There is a very small logical step from one to two. You could say that an unborn child is not human life, and many do. On what basis you could say that, especially these days, seems incomprehensible to me. Nonetheless, there is that tiny logical step that you must take. There is no direct prohibition of abortion.

WS: Are there issues that the evangelical church is not treating with the seriousness that they should and, on the other hand, are there issues that we are treating too dogmatically that are in fact more complicated that we like to think they are?

MO: When it comes to the issue "don’t misquote God." Yes, there are passages that are difficult to translate. But those passages are not the problem. The problem comes from those passages where we know what it says, we just don’t like what it says.

Sometimes, there is a distinction between the principle and the methodology. For example, caring for needy people is Class I. We’re told that over and over in the Bible. Exactly the way to carry this out in our society I would call Class III. I believe there very definitely is a biblical position on welfare. But it takes some study. I see a lot of people taking a Class III and turning it into a Class VI. Saying, well, the Bible doesn’t have anything to say to us there. To make it harder than it is. A humorist said it wasn’t the hard parts of the Bible that troubled him, it was the easy parts.

The Ten Commandments, for example. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Very, very clear. Very, very hard. Woodrow Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian minister who had an adulterous affair with an unhappy married woman and later said you shouldn’t commit adultery unless there is an unhappy woman you can comfort. It’s not the unclear stuff we have trouble with. It’s the clear stuff that we break and then look to justify.

WS: Another of your areas of study has been the history of American journalism. You have identified the rise of the revivalist preachers in the late 19th century as one of the contributing factors in the decline and increasing secularization of both journalism and of American culture. Many evangelicals consider Charles Finney, for example, a hero.

MO: There was a lot of good that came out of these revivals, but there were also a lot of problems. For example, it became common to think of newspapers as dens of iniquity. Christians should stay away from them. They did. It was as if they were saying "Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be journalists." Christians gave up in this whole area, with very tragic consequences.

This is just one area. There are other areas. For example, the emphasis of subjectivity and emotions.
WS: There were also issues of theology and eschatology bound up with the revivalists that were extra-biblical. That led to a kind of separatism and resignation.

MO: Yes. There’s that. I’m not firmly in any one camp there. There is a kind of pre-millenialism that in no harms the idea that Christians should be involved in journalism or other enterprises. But clearly there is a kind of pre-millenialism that teaches that anything we do is the equivalent of re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And all the stuff we do, such as putting out newspapers, doesn’t matter. I don’t think that’s the way God works. I think God calls us to be stewards, to take dominion over the world.

A captain is always supposed to know the condition of his vessel. Christians, in taking dominion, should know the state of the world.




			Marvin Olasky
	Taking Dominion Editor's Note: In Genesis, God tells Adam to "work the land" and "name the animals." No one we know takes these early commandments more seriously than Marvin Olasky. From his home in Austin, TX, Olasky edits WORLD Magazine, the nation's leading Christian news weekly, and the fourth largest news weekly of any kind. He is also a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, and has written several books that have been influential in the training of journalists. His book "The Tragedy of American Compassion" helped define the welfare reform debate of the 1990s, and the ideas in his most recent book, "Compassionate Conservatism," helped define George W. Bush's run for the White House. Olasky was in Charlotte to serve as keynote speaker for The Charlotte World's first annual Salt & Light Awards. Warren Smith: As we’re sitting here, a week after the election, the election is still in doubt. Among your many academic disciplines is history. People are saying it is an historic election. Is it really? If so, in what way? Marvin Olasky: Well, it is because there haven’t been a lot of elections that have to go past the electoral college process, and this one will have to do just that. The closest comparison in American history is perhaps the 1876 election where the Democratic candidate apparently won 184 electoral votes, but 185 were needed to win. He had apparently taken the states of Florida, South Carolina, and another southern state. But through various chicanery, the Republicans were able to hold on to those states and claim 185 electoral votes,which was the majority needed. There were disputes about which electors were legitimate electors. Congress was divided. The House was a Democratic majority and the Senate a Republican majority. These battles kept going and going and going. In those days the president was inaugurated on March 4. The battles kept going up until the beginning of March. An agreement was worked out to set up a 15-member board of election commissioners who were supposed to resolve this dispute. That board decided by a vote of 8-7 that Hayes, the Republican, should be the next president. The Democrats did not take this lying down at all. This was just a few years after the Civil War, and thoughts of that were still fresh, and there was talk about a new Civil War. There were reports of armed men headed toward Washington. The Democratic and Republican leaders got together and worked out a deal. Hayes became president, but the Democrats got some things they wanted. Since the Democratic base was in the south, Democrats wanted federal troops withdrawn. There were some pork barrel expenditures agreed to. Railroads and other stuff. WS: So this is not totally unprecedented. MO: Not exactly once a century. Once every 124 years, let’s say. And it worked out peacefully in the end, but in one sense the stakes weren’t so high. The federal government was so big as it is today. It didn’t work out so well for blacks in the south. Reconstruction would probably have come to an end anyway. There had been abuses. But the free slaves did need some protections, and they didn’t have it any more. So it wasn’t a happy deal. WS: Irrespective of how this election turns out, has there been an erosion of constitutional authority, as some have alleged? MO: Too early to tell, but I would say that it is a continuation of the erosion that has taken place over the past eight years. It used to be that dads would hold up their babies and their children at parades as the politicians rode by and would say "There’s an honorable person. When you grow up, you can be like that person." We haven’t been able to do that for the past eight years, especially for the past couple of years, as Bill Clinton’s activities have become more widely known. Whatever president comes in now, there will be about half of the population who may be saying that this is a person who stole the election. WS: Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were high during the impeachment…. MO: His job performance approval ratings were high. His personal approval ratings were low. WS: That unusual phenomenon caused some to say that politics has essentially become entertainment. And the role of the media have been to create drama and to generate entertainment value. MO: Certainly it is the desire of folks in media, both to increase ratings and circulation, and also for their own interests, for things to remain close. For example, I talk sometimes with Wayne Slater, who is a veteran reporter with the Dallas Morning News. He covered Bush’s campaign. A year ago Wayne predicted pretty accurately what would happen in the primaries. He said someone would come along and get a lot of attention because reporters want to report. They want a horse race. So we saw that with McCain getting press support. Then, with both presidential nominations wrapped up in the middle of March, it became a rather boring time for reporters. In fact, there are a lot of things that factor in to how the media report things. There is ideology, or worldview. Most media are overwhelmingly liberal. We know that. Surveys come out all the time that show that. But they also want it to be close, so sometimes they give a conservative candidate some better play for a while to keep it close. Again, it’s partly ratings, but it’s partly their own interests. It’s just more exciting if it’s a close race. WS: About that time, when it was close between McCain and Bush, WORLD did a major cover story on McCain that generated a great deal of controversy. Without re-hashing that whole episode, I would like to ask if there was anything about your coverage that you repent of? MO: Basically, it was a good article. Sen. McCain had been getting an easy ride. Things that people needed to know about were not getting reported. I’m glad we did that. In The American Leadership Tradition I wrote that we need to know as much as we can about what makes our leaders tick. That includes what kind of husband they are. How they are in their personal relations. The type of stuff we know about local candidates, but often not about national candidates because all we know has been mediated by broadcast structures. One thing I wish we hadn’t done. We went back too far. Some of the things about the break-up of Sen. McCain’s first marriage. I tend to have a 10-year statute of limitations, unless older behavior indicates an ongoing pattern of behavior. WS: How do you make those kinds of decisions? By that I mean this. During that time you were an advisor to George W. Bush and you recused yourself from the editing of that story. Yet, because WORLD Magazine does attempt to report with a biblical worldview, you are not an indifferent spectator to the events you cover. How do you make reporting and editing decisions that do not erode your credibility with your readers? MO: In that case, I recused myself from editing during the active primary season, where there is real competition. That wasn’t so much because there would be conflict in our coverage, but because there were a lot of fine candidates out there. I didn’t want our readers to think our coverage was going to be tilted toward one good candidate, when there were still other good candidates in the race. WS: Keyes and Bauer were still in the race. MO: Steve Forbes and others, too. So I didn’t see the McCain story until it was in print. Still, I have huge confidence in Nick Eicher and Bob Jones and the other people. They did a terrific job. But that was a peculiar situation. When the primary season was over, and I got back involved, I think two things were significant. Number one, as a non-profit organization, we were not endorsing any candidate, but anyone who had seen the positions that WORLD has taken over the years, and anyone who knew the positions that Bush was taking, would know that we would be supportive of Bush and we could not be supportive of anyone who thinks it is OK for an abortionist to puncture the skull of a mostly born baby. That is so horrendous that anyone who supports that position loses any right to be president, senator, or anything else. That’s such an indication of total depravity. So that wasn’t hard. At the same time, I had been advising Gov. Bush, especially in the early part of 1999 when he was putting some flesh on the bones of compassionate conservatism, and I really pulled away from that in the last half of the year, and this year I haven’t talked with him at all. I have friendly relations with people in the campaign, and every once in a while I shot an e-mail off to them when there was something I just could not resist. But in general I have tried to maintain a distance. WS: On another story, the so-called "stealth bible" story of a few years ago, the gender-neutral New International Bible story. That was a sensational story that caused a sensation in the Christian community. Were you happy with that story, and with what happened downstream from that story? MO: I have a sign up in my office at home that says: "Sensational facts, understated prose." That’s what we do 99% of the time. Every once in a while there is a time to shout. In chapter 33, I believe, of Ezekiel, it talks about the watchman on the wall. Every once in a while, we find ourselves in that position, when something comes up that is so troubling that we need to shout, that we need to be biblically sensational. If you read the Bible, you see lots of examples of sensational writing. In Judges, there is that horrendous situation where the Levites’ concubine is gang-raped and killed and cut up in 12 pieces and mailed to the 12 tribes. This is a grisly chapter, but God’s inspired writers put it there. Yes, we know we’re not inspired. We’re fallen sinners. We’re thoroughly limited in our understanding. But one of the very clear things, it seems to me, is "Don’t misquote God." It’s fine for ministers to exegete a passage; it’s fine for commentators to explain it. But it’s very important that you don’t deliberately set out to take what God’s inspired writers wrote and turn it into something that is politically correct and intellectually fashionable. That was our concern. We had dramatic writing. A dramatic cover. I’m very proud of what we did there. The story itself was in a sense a developing story. We had enough of a story to reveal what was going on. We learned more and there were new developments, so we wrote another story. And then, of course, there were attacks. We responded, explaining what we had done. The one thing that would have been better would have been to have all the information at first. But there are some stories where you have to go with what you’ve got, and when people see that you’re serious about proceeding, then people come forward and tell you more. If you didn’t have the first story, you couldn’t have gotten the second. It wasn’t one perfect story, but overall it was very good, and I’m glad that we are able to awaken the church. WS: Were you disappointed in how the Christian community responded to that story? It raised issues of authority and accountability that are troubling for the evangelical church. MO: I was disappointed in how Christianity Today and the Evangelical Press Association responded. But overall, I was very impressed with how people responded. Jerry Falwell called me and congratulated us and reprinted thousands of copies of the article. That raised the alarm. Lots of other people. Jim Dobson came forward and wrote a column for us and was instrumental in creating an agreement not to change the NIV. Academic life does not naturally produce profiles in courage, but some in academic life stood up boldly. Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary. So overall I was very pleased. WS: These two stories bring up your metaphor of whitewater rapids as a way to describe various kinds of stories. Class I rapids being easy rapids. These are issues that are mentioned specifically in scripture. Class VI being unnavigable. Not only are they not mentioned, but they are very difficult if not impossible to definitively discern a biblical position. And in between are issues that Christians should grapple with, some of which have complex and difficult answers. I’ve heard you say that homosexuality is Class I because it is specifically mentioned in scripture, but that abortion is Class II. Can you help me understand that distinction? MO: Abortion is Class II because you have to make one tiny logical step. Number one: Do not kill innocent human life. Number two: the unborn child is innocent human life. Number three: Therefore do not kill unborn children. There is a very small logical step from one to two. You could say that an unborn child is not human life, and many do. On what basis you could say that, especially these days, seems incomprehensible to me. Nonetheless, there is that tiny logical step that you must take. There is no direct prohibition of abortion. WS: Are there issues that the evangelical church is not treating with the seriousness that they should and, on the other hand, are there issues that we are treating too dogmatically that are in fact more complicated that we like to think they are? MO: When it comes to the issue "don’t misquote God." Yes, there are passages that are difficult to translate. But those passages are not the problem. The problem comes from those passages where we know what it says, we just don’t like what it says. Sometimes, there is a distinction between the principle and the methodology. For example, caring for needy people is Class I. We’re told that over and over in the Bible. Exactly the way to carry this out in our society I would call Class III. I believe there very definitely is a biblical position on welfare. But it takes some study. I see a lot of people taking a Class III and turning it into a Class VI. Saying, well, the Bible doesn’t have anything to say to us there. To make it harder than it is. A humorist said it wasn’t the hard parts of the Bible that troubled him, it was the easy parts. The Ten Commandments, for example. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Very, very clear. Very, very hard. Woodrow Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian minister who had an adulterous affair with an unhappy married woman and later said you shouldn’t commit adultery unless there is an unhappy woman you can comfort. It’s not the unclear stuff we have trouble with. It’s the clear stuff that we break and then look to justify. WS: Another of your areas of study has been the history of American journalism. You have identified the rise of the revivalist preachers in the late 19th century as one of the contributing factors in the decline and increasing secularization of both journalism and of American culture. Many evangelicals consider Charles Finney, for example, a hero. MO: There was a lot of good that came out of these revivals, but there were also a lot of problems. For example, it became common to think of newspapers as dens of iniquity. Christians should stay away from them. They did. It was as if they were saying "Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be journalists." Christians gave up in this whole area, with very tragic consequences. This is just one area. There are other areas. For example, the emphasis of subjectivity and emotions. WS: There were also issues of theology and eschatology bound up with the revivalists that were extra-biblical. That led to a kind of separatism and resignation. MO: Yes. There’s that. I’m not firmly in any one camp there. There is a kind of pre-millenialism that in no harms the idea that Christians should be involved in journalism or other enterprises. But clearly there is a kind of pre-millenialism that teaches that anything we do is the equivalent of re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And all the stuff we do, such as putting out newspapers, doesn’t matter. I don’t think that’s the way God works. I think God calls us to be stewards, to take dominion over the world. A captain is always supposed to know the condition of his vessel. Christians, in taking dominion, should know the state of the world.