Os Guinness on America’s 250th Anniversary

America and the fate of the West:

One wonders just how many Americans actually realise that next year is special. It will be of course the 250^th anniversary of America’s beginnings as an independent nation. While the American Revolution was still raging, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, formally separating the 13 colonies from Great Britain.

Some outside observers know more about it – and care more about it – than far too many Americans. Consider for example Os Guinness. I obviously think he is a very important writer and commentator: I own 25 of his books, which is pretty close to all that he has penned.

His brand-new volume is America Agonistes: America’s 250th and the Restoration of a Nation in Conflict with Itself and Its Past (Kildare, 2025). This book is actually the second in a quartet of books he is writing on the current crisis in American life. The first volume appeared last year: Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds (Kildare).

I wrote four articles on that key volume:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/10/os-guinness-on-israel-the-west-and-islamism/ 

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/14/os-guinness-on-the-threat-of-radical-marxism/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/19/os-guinness-on-the-sexual-revolution/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/26/guinness-on-choosing-freedom/

For those not in the know, the second word of his new book’s title is an old Greek word which has to do with someone or something engaged in a contest or a struggle. America is certainly at that place. Which way America ends up going is a moot point, but things are looking rather grim, unless some radical course direction is undertaken.

Guinness asks hard questions about the sustainability of the American experiment. That the nation has done so much good over the past few centuries cannot be denied, but whether it can last much longer is an open question. And unless there is some sort of return to its Christian and covenantal roots, it will not long last:

If America had become great primarily through economic and military means, then a successful restoration of the economy and the military might be enough to make America great again. But that is not how it happened….

 

Neither economic prosperity nor national security are ends in themselves. Unless they serve a higher human end, they will only generate animosity against themselves, as the troubling trend towards socialism shows currently. But if, as the history of America’s founding surely shows, the secret of America’s freedom and greatness was spiritual, moral, cultural, and constitutional in character too, then the crisis must be addressed accordingly. It requires a much deeper analysis, taking such essential elements into account. Unless that happens, America’s crisis will only be exacerbated. America will fight the crisis using weapons of power without principle, which will only transform the Republic into the very character of the enemy it fights. In setting out to fight what Americans see as monsters they will either risk failure or indeed become monsters in the process.

 

In truth, the success or failure of the movement to Make America Great Again will pivot on its success or failure in recognizing and restoring what made America great in the first place— the politics and culture of covenantal freedom that lies at the heart of the American Republic. The decisive issue for America today is the restoration of the American Republic and of citizenship, and the vision of freedom that this means. (p. 29)

Those who have followed Guinness know that he is a conservative evangelical, and he is more or less conservative when it comes to politics and the culture wars. But he is always willing to challenge both sides of politics, and his critiques of Obama, Biden, Harris and the Dems do not stand alone. He asks hard questions about Trump and MAGA as well.

When push comes to shove however, he does see the left as the main threat. But – and this is a big but – he rightly worries about the new alt-Right. He says this near the end of his book:

The menace of the Left is quite plainly the greater and more obvious danger to the Republic. But patriots should be alert to the extremism now re-emerging more strongly on the populist Right and the “Dark Right” – the irresponsible call to isolationism, the resuscitation of Hitler and other authoritarian leaders, the denigration of Churchill and those who struggled for liberty, and the horror and the evil of antisemitism and religiously rationalised hatred of the Jews and Israel. (p. 150)

I fully agree with that warning about where so much of so-called conservatism is now at today. Names like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes immediately spring to mind here. And far too many so-called Christians are lapping up the ugly and dangerous things they are saying. See this important video for more on this matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRJlL5mOF8

Os Guinness loves America, and like de Tocqueville before him, he writes not to condemn, but to see it prosper and endure. As I mentioned above, perhaps most Americans today know little or nothing about America’s past, whether 25 years ago, or 250 years ago. And they don’t seem to care either. This shocks Guinness:

For Americans to squander the glory of the freedom of the Republic through complacency and carelessness, or to abandon it in favor of some deceptive impostor, such as cultural Marxism, would be a folly and an ingratitude with no precedent. When I witness the ignorance and carelessness of many Americans over the genius of their founding, I, for one, am often lost for words. Restoring the Republic is the central American challenge for the present generation of Americans, and the year 2026, the semi-quincentennial of the revolution of 1776, offers a providential moment in which to make the attempt.

And he goes on to say this:

I am not American, though a foreign admirer as I said, but I would argue that what George Washington called America’s “great experiment in freedom” is in fact a distinctive vision of covenantal/constitutional politics that compares well with any rival form of politics. Deeply indebted to the covenantalism of the Hebrew Republic, which in its time was a radically new kind of society in the world, the American Republic gave rise to a politics and culture of freedom, responsibility, and collective solidarity that was unprecedented but demanding. The genius of covenantal politics certainly deserves far greater understanding and debate than it is given now – not least among Americans themselves. (p. 60)

Again, it is the restoration of America’s Christian foundation that is essential here. Guinness reminds us of what happens to nations that abandon the Judeo-Christian foundation that created the West and made it great. And it never turns out well:

Modernity’s first three super-ideologies, communism, fascism, and Nazism, were all products of the post-Christian West. They all stemmed from their explicitly atheist roots, and they are all a perfectly composed expression of advanced modernity. Each one claimed to owe its entire existence entirely to itself, with its own Enlightenment-style claims to elevated rationality, absolute certainty, complete universality, total uniformity, under amoral finality, and ironclad historical inevitability. Each one in its own way was a modern Tower of Babel, and each one was the architect of its own totalitarianism and its own final solutions.

 

Each ideology therefore decided what sort of life was worthy of life, and what was unworthy; and which ideas and beliefs were to be tolerated, and which were not….

 

Each ideology also suffered and eventually collapsed because of the overreaching conceit in its pretensions. Does any single human person, party, ideology, or political state have the capacity to pretend to understand and to determine what should be the role and function of everyone and everything under their control, as these ideologies claimed to prescribe in their totalitarian arrogance? The very attempt is humanly impossible. But the sheer impossibility carries a double set of costs for the unfortunates on whom the experiment was carried out, for historical inevitability is another name for materialistic determinism and therefore coercion and oppression. Historical inevitability allows its subjects no freedom, so there is one set of costs when the experiment is attempted, and yet another when it collapses, as collapse it must for. (p. 12)

That is the sad tale of much of modern life. The outlook then is not very good for America and other Western nations, unless the rampant secularism overtaking them is slowed, if not stopped, and a return to the undergirding of the West is again championed and followed.

Thus Guinness is pessimistic, yet optimistic. His optimism comes from a realistic assessment of the condition we are now in, and if we have the resolve to turn things around. He, and I, are hoping that we do. He closes his book by reminding Americans of the choice that lies before them. His final words are these:

May the 250th anniversary celebrations ring out the same message that the Liberty Bell rang out four days after The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).

 

So please God, may it be for America – and for the highest interests of humanity and the wider world in our time. “Let freedom ring!” (p. 183)

We can all pray toward that end. And as with his previous book, I will have more to say about his newest volume. Future articles will explore specific chapters in more detail, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I encourage you to get and read this book with its timely prophetic call.

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