Marvin Olasky

Marvin Olasky

Marvin Olasky (born June 12, 1950) is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, a leading conservative columnist (Creators syndicate), and the editor-in-chief of World magazine.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts into a Russian Jewish family, Olasky became an atheist at 14, shortly after being bar mitzvahed. In college, he discovered Communism and became a Communist in the early 1970s, after graduating from Yale University in 1971 with a B.A. degree in American Studies. By 1976, however, Olasky had become a born-again Christian, after questioning his atheism while reading Lenin and then the New Testament in Russian. Also in 1976, Olasky graduated with a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan.

In the 1970s Howard Ahmanson, Jr. was instrumental in starting the career of Olasky, and Olasky remains a member of the Ahmanson's Fieldstead Institute, which champions and funds the cause "total integration of Biblical law into our lives".The strength of their conviction Peter Larsen. The Orange County Register, August 10 2004Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence Part 3 No Longer Without Sheep Frederick Clarkson. Political Research Associates, March/June 1994. Ahmanson funded four of Olasky's 30 books, and Ahmanson paid Olasky throughout a seven-year period (1987-1994) to edit the 16-book series Turning Point: A Christian Worldview. Michelle Goldberg, author of the book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, places Olasky in a crucial role to Christian reconstructionism and dominionism, saying "I'm not sure whether he actually identifies himself as a Christian reconstructionist, but he's very close to Christian reconstructionism." She also notes that the phrase now associated with Republicans, "compassionate conservatism," came from the title of Olasky's book, and that Olasky was an advisor on Bush's first Presidential campaign, influencing not only the thinking of Bush, but the thinking of the Republican Party.BuzzFlash interview: Michelle Goldberg Christian nationalism inside America's mega-churches WorkingForChange, June 2 2006. According to the Institute for Democracy Studies, a think tank that monitors anti-democratic movements in America, Olasky was tutored by the Christian reconstructionist author George Grant.IDS Insights Institute for Democracy Studies. (pg. 6) (PDF file)

Olasky began working as a speechwriter and public affairs coordinator for DuPont in 1978, and in 1983, he began teaching journalism at the University of Texas, becoming a full professor in 1993. His initial writings gave him to opportunity to win funding from the Bradley Foundation in 1989, allowing Olasky to begin his most famous work, The Tragedy of American Compassion, which was first published in 1992. Coldly received at first, the book soon gained the endorsement of William Bennett and Newt Gingrich, who gave a copy to every incoming Republican freshman representative in the 1994 Congress. Critics said the book was short on research and excessively reliant on anecdotal evidence; supporters said it was a key work defining "compassionate conservatism" as it relates to welfare and social policy. In it, Olasky argues that care for the poor must be the responsibility of private individuals and organizations, particularly the Christian church, instead of government programs like welfare. He suggests that government programs are ineffective because they are disconnected from the poor, while private charity has the power to change lives because it allows for a personal connection between the giver and the recipient.

In 1995, Olasky became an occasional advisor to then Texas gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush, who put some of Olasky's policy suggestions into action during his term as governor by encouraging the use of religious charities to solve social problems. Christian ministries were called in by the state government to help in a variety of ways, most notably with the rehabilitation of drug and alcohol abusers and the counseling of prisoners. Their disputable success led Bush to make faith-based programs a major component of his 2000 presidential campaign, and in 2001, Olasky saw the national implementation of his ideas when President Bush created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. During Bush's campaign, Olasky attained brief mass-media notoriety when he was understood by many to have claimed that the 2000 John McCain candidacy was equivalent to a pagan religion of Zeus.{{cite web