"Philanthropic humility is necessary if a giver is to do more good than harm, but it is not sufficient - philanthropic prudence is also needed." -- Marvin Olasky
Marvin Olasky (born June 12, 1950) is Provost of The King's College in New York City, editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine, and a former professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books, including The Tragedy of American Compassion.
"A job should employ God-given talents in a way that glorifies Him.""And yet, those who speak loudly and call anyone who disagrees with them a wimp often do a disservice to the cause they are promoting.""Baseball needs to put the steroids era behind it by having and enforcing tough rules against all kinds of artificial advantages, so that spring can return.""But to understand what it means to be strong and courageous, Christians should look to the person of Christ.""Epidemics historically have tended to kill the very young and the very old, but AIDS is different: Those ages 20 to 40 are most affected, which means that so far over 12 million African children have been orphaned because of AIDS.""Fifteen years ago, while I was temporarily chairing meetings of pro-life leaders, I pleaded with the angry males to say no to interviews, and instead let beautiful pro-life women become the face for the movement.""I don't know the right number of immigrants to let in.""I grew up Jewish, became an atheist and a Marxist, and 28 years ago, at age 26, became a Christian.""I still favor alternatives to governmental race-based preferences.""It starts this way: The worth of a job is not defined by what it allows you to do when you're not working.""Many American Muslims are peaceful and define jihad primarily as an internal struggle to improve.""Materialist philosophies that treat human beings as machines or animals possess the high ground in our culture - academia, the most powerful media and many of our courts.""More people need to understand the games secular liberals play. Here's one rule-of-thumb: No matter how bad a story sounds - particularly if it sounds bad - recognize the pattern of defamation.""Most organizations should be pro-active, but philanthropists concerned with poverty should deliberately be reactive, learning from the efforts of ordinary folks who tired of looking the other way as their communities fell apart.""Now that it's officially summer, here's my advice to parents who want to continue teaching their kids during the next two months and learn something themselves: visit Civil War battlefields.""On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.""Passover and Easter are the only Jewish and Christian holidays that move in sync, like the ice skating pairs we saw during the winter Olympics.""Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.""That should be our test regarding immigrants. Those who come to America to tear it down or live off of others should not be welcomed.""The data, however, do indicate that Christians who see Jews through a 17th-century lens, believing that most are thoroughly religious, are thoroughly wrong.""The holy land was supposed to be spotless, a serious equivalent of Disneyland in which not a single candy wrapper is to stay on the ground for more than a few minutes.""Those who believe in the importance of serving others should lead the way by fighting against the temptation we all have, and maybe especially as we age, to close in upon ourselves.""Those who give of themselves rarely regret it.""Today, unless women gain jobs and athletic scholarships commensurate with their percentage of the population, feminists scream discrimination."
Olasky was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a Russian-Jewish family and graduated from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. in American Studies. In 1976 he earned his Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan. He became an atheist in adolescence and a Marxist in college, ultimately joining the Communist Party USA in 1972. While working on his doctoral dissertation, Olasky became a Christian after reading the New Testament and a number of Christian authors.
Olasky taught journalism at the University of Texas at Austin beginning in 1983 and was appointed a professor in 1993. He remained at UT until 2007, when he became provost of The King's College in New York City.
In 1992, Olasky became an editor of WORLD, a Christian biweekly. That same year he published The Tragedy of American Compassion, which two years later Newt Gingrich distributed to incoming Republican representatives of the 104th Congress. In 1995, Olasky became an occasional advisor to Texas gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush. Bush made faith-based programs a major component of his 2000 presidential campaign, and Olasky's academic work helped form the basis for Bush's "compassionate conservatism."
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Olasky edited the 16-book Turning Point Christian Worldview series funded by Howard Ahmanson, Jr.'s Fieldstead Institute, which champions and funds the cause of "total integration of Biblical law into our lives." Ahmanson has funded four of Olasky's books, and Michelle Goldberg, author of the book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, places Olasky in a crucial role in the Christian reconstructionism and dominionism movements, saying "I’m not sure whether he actually identifies himself as a Christian reconstructionist, but he’s very close to Christian reconstructionism."
Olasky argues in his 1996 book Telling the Truth that God created the world, knows more about it than anyone else, and explains its nature in the Bible, so "biblical objectivity" accurately depicts the world as it is, whereas conventional journalistic objectivity is really a balancing of subjectivities.
In a 1999 profile of Olasky for the New York Times Magazine, David Grann wrote that "Olasky had divorced his first wife -- an act that contrasted markedly with his later Christian writings about family values. . . Olasky had -- until a family member accidentally mentioned it to me -- carefully hidden his divorce from the press."Olasky later contested this in a letter to the editor: "I've been married since 1976, and in the early 1970's had a brief marriage followed by divorce. Grann's statement that 'Olasky had . . . carefully hidden his divorce from the press' is not true."
During Bush's first presidential campaign, Olasky claimed that the 2000 John McCain candidacy was reminiscent of the pagan religion of Zeus. Olasky later claimed that he was observing McCain's emphasis on the classical virtues, such as courage, while the "compassionate conservative" Bush emphasized biblical virtues such as mercy.
In her 2004 book Bushwomen, Laura Flanders writes, "Olasky is not a fan of high-achieving women. Women joining the workforce have had 'dire consequences for society,' he told a Christian magazine in 1998. Can women be leaders? 'God does not forbid women to be leaders in society ... but there's a certain shame attached to it,' he said."
