Book Review of Let Us Begin for University Bookman 2/18/25
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Let Us Begin: New Book on the Life and Power of St. Francis
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The New Deal. The Great Society. No Child Left Behind. Build Back Better. The slogan promises a program, and the program will deliver salvation. The program, of course, in whatever age and offered by whichever party, comes from the government, which bills itself as the means of societal transformation—of salvation from present evils on the way to a happy, problem-free future. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, must vote for the better program so we can allow the government to initiate the way of salvation. Vote for the wrong party, the fearmongers threaten, and then our country will be damned forever.
The Founding Fathers would not have understood this thinking. They envisioned America as the land of self-government, which requires individual citizens to develop virtues for humane living within their own communities. In his inaugural address, President John Adams stressed a need not for government-inspired initiatives but for “knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies.” These qualities lead to political prosperity, as President George Washington prudently observed in his farewell address, and “religion and morality are indispensable supports” for them.
If twenty-first-century America, as divided and rancorous as she has been in generations, is to find authentic peace and prosperity, her citizens must look inside their hearts rather than out at the government for a path to renewal. Self-reform is the only way to build society back better, and the Christian religion has long served as its greatest catalyst. In Let Us Begin, Thomas Griffin offers us a model for reform: the way of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was so suffused with love for Jesus Christ that he was able to renew his world. Renewal today, which Griffin describes as a repair mission, “begins with individual conversion just as it did in the age of Saint Francis.”
Read the Full Article HERE
Thomas Griffin is the chairperson of the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island where he lives with his wife and two sons. He has a masters degree in theology and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine. He is the author of Let Us Begin: Saint Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World.
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