Invaluable insights from Os Guinness on America’s founding:
With next year being the 250th anniversary of America’s founding as an independent republic, the noted Christian commentator Os Guinness has embarked upon a quartet of books to commemorate this and discuss the fate of America and the West.
Two volumes have already been penned, and two more remain. His most recent book is America Agonistes: America’s 250th and the Restoration of a Nation in Conflict with Itself and Its Past (Kildare, 2025). I have written one article on this book already: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/11/04/os-guinness-on-americas-250th-anniversary/
This will be another piece on that book. But I should mention that the first book he wrote on this appeared last year: Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds (Kildare). I wrote four articles on that book. This is one of them: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/10/os-guinness-on-israel-the-west-and-islamism/
In that first volume Guinness examined four major waves that are crashing over the US and the West:
The Red Wave: Radical Marxism
The Rainbow Wave: The Sexual Revolution
The Black Wave: Radical Islamism
The Gold Wave: Corrupt Elitism
In the article I linked to just above I looked at the Black Wave and the fate of Israel in all this. In his new book he again devotes an entire chapter to Israel. Chapter 5 is titled “The Gift of the Jews.” He looks at how their covenantal type of government became an important template for America and some other freedom-seeking nations and movements.
It is worth quoting from here. He begins by speaking of the ugly antisemitism that so prominently comes out of the “Red-Green Alliance” which entails radical Marxism and radical Islamism. Says Guinness:
Too few people recognize the looming darkness these forces represent, individually and together. But even fewer appreciate how these attacks on the Jews are not only evil, but foolish beyond belief. For the simple truth is that Jewish ideas are ineradicable in the story of the American and Western freedom and indispensable in the future of the world. As outlined in the previous chapter, the story of the founding of the Hebrew republic was decisive in the founding of the American republic – it was the heart of the first of the “two foundings,” and the heart of the second of the “two ancestries.” When this is understood, it becomes clear that Jewish ideas hold out an unrivalled promise for the peace and prosperity of the future, and thus for human flourishing.
For better or worse, the Bible is the book that made the West, and the Christian faith is the faith that, more than any other, made Western civilization. Yet what is the Bible but a book that is the only sacred text shared by two faiths, Judaism and the Christian faith? (pp. 69-70)
He looks further at this important biblical notion of covenant, and especially the historic Exodus out of Egypt. He goes on to say this:
Exodus is the master story of Western freedom, and in a broken world the message of Exodus is the catalyst for new possibility and hope. Exodus is the most powerful story of a human journey in all history, far outweighing the significance of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Iliad, and all the modern tales. Exodus is the explosive introduction to the most momentous ideas ever to have stretched the human heart and mind….
After Exodus, all bullies, oppressors, tyrants, and dictators have been put on notice. No status quo can now rest unquestioned and unquestioning. Nothing that is broken, unjust, wrong, and evil need stay that way. A light has broken into the darkness of history’s prison cells. There is now both an answer and a counter to the menace of the bare, oppressive power of the broad sword, the knout, the jackboot, and the secret police. Politics comes front and centre in Exodus, but a politics that is never politicized and made more than it should be. The God of Sinai cares about justice, oppression, and the downtrodden. God, who is free, cause humans to be free, and to know how to live together freely before him. “Let my people go!” Moses cried to the Pharaoh, and the world has never been the same. (pp. 71-72)
America Agonistes: America’s 250th and the Restoration of a Nation in Conflict with Itself and Its Pastby Guinness, Os (Author)
Guinness examines in more detail the significance of the Exodus and the vital Sinai Covenant for ancient Israel, and reminds forgetful Americans (and westerners) just how important these concept and motifs were to the early founders of America. He writes:
Exodus covenantal politics and Exodus freedom themes were strong and prominent in England’s Puritan revolution and in early American history (and later also, of course, in the Abolition movement in the nineteenth century, the Civil Rights movement in the twentieth, and numerous other movements around the world.)…
Americans should not need reminding that the Mayflower Compact in 1620 was a covenant that took its place in this long, rich succession of covenants. So too was John Winthrop’s vision set out on the Arbella, which is why Cotton Mather later described Winthrop as the Nehemias Americanus, the “American Nehemiah.” Significantly, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson proposed incidents from Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea as the Great Seal for the United States, with Franklin going beyond the text of the Bible and adding his own inscription: “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”
John Adams described the first written state constitution, drafted for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as a covenant. Adams’ later tribute is a stunning acknowledgement of this massive debt to the Torah and the Jews. “The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.” “Since the Exodus,” Heinrich Heine added in the nineteenth century, “freedom has always spoken with the Jewish accent.” “Look at every movement for liberty in the modern world,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out recently, “and you will find somewhere in its inception, either Jews or Jewish ideas.” (pp. 73-74)
Let me pause at this point and note that most Americans have indeed forgotten all about their own past history. A piece I penned a few weeks ago explains further the importance of Winthrop, the Puritans, and the “City set on a Hill”: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/10/21/winthrop-and-a-city-on-a-hill/
Guinness spends some more time and some more detail looking at the Mosaic covenant. He says there are three main aspects of it that deserve special emphasis, which I will only offer here in outline form:
First, the Sinai covenant was a matter of freely chosen consent, emphasizing both freedom and responsibility….
Second, the Sinai covenant was a matter of a morally binding promise and pledge….
Third, the Sinai covenant was a matter of reciprocal responsibility of everyone for everyone. The Covenant is not only an agreement between God and every single Israelite, but between every single Israelite and every other Israelite…. (pp. 74, 77, 79)
He concludes this discussion this way:
In sum, the Sinai covenant was a monumental exercise in freedom and responsibility, with the means for creating a good society and with the purpose of modelling and witnessing to the wider world an ordered way of freedom and justice. As such, covenantal politics stands as a striking counter to other notions of politics and government. First, and most obviously, covenantal politics was a counter to the authoritarian oppression of ancient Egypt and later to the collectivism of modern forms of socialism, communism, and totalitarianism in the world today. (p. 81)
Near the end of the chapter, Guinness reminds us of the importance of all this for today – especially for today:
The call by globalists and elites to a universal, unconditional, and indiscriminate love of humankind is therefore misplaced. Contrary to the statements of certain super-billionaires, America is more like a family than a business enterprise or an economic zone. Praise for a borderless “internationalism” and a smearing of all patriotism as a bad form of “nationalism” (“white nationalism” “Christian nationalism”) is therefore both wrong and unrealistic. Genuine patriotism is particular and positive. It is not toxic, and it is crucial for identity and freedom. (p. 85)
Yes quite right. As America approaches its 250th birthday celebration, these sorts of considerations must take centre stage. At present, America seems on the verge of another civil war. Returning to, learning from, and affirming the greatness and genius of the founding of this great nation is the need of the hour.
Books like this greatly help point us in that direction. Stay tuned for more discussions and quotes from this vital volume.
