Making America Really Great

In a speech to the National Catholic Education Association earlier this spring, David Coleman, president of the College Board, didn’t talk about acing tests; he talked about enlarging our souls. We do that, he said, citing C. S. Lewis, when we read with reverence. The best prep for success is an integrated life.

He spoke to the group of religious educators about the importance of getting out of the way and surrendering to the text when reading. He talked about how impoverishing it is that the Bible is not universally read in schools, it being a common ground for so many religious believers and a foundational element of civilization for much of our history. He’s not looking to evangelize but rather to help teachers be more productive in education and give students the grounding for flourishing in life.

To that end, Coleman — a Jew who observes the Sabbath — talks, too, about productive solitude — about daring to really concentrate on something. He wants students to dive into their vocation as students. Education is about learning to live well.

He worries about the frenzy of activity we tend to insist on from our children’s earliest days. Most applications for college admission, he notes, have a dozen boxes for students to list their extracurricular activities. “To me, that’s like a system of terror. Why not at most three to five boxes? If you want to do other things, God bless you. But you don’t need to do them for the sake of getting into college. We need to think seriously about making more time for adolescence, more time for faith, more time for having fun.”

“Nothing scares me more,” he says, than parents telling him, as they do all the time, “‘My child is so busy.’

“Isn’t that sad?” he asks.

I listened to Coleman shortly after making the mistake of turning on primetime ABC one evening, looking for a moment of rest during a busy travel schedule. Suddenly I found myself watching Kerry Washington bludgeon the former vice president of the United States to death with a chair. Blood splattered like a metaphor for the bloody mess our souls are in when we entertain ourselves with such poison. Isn’t there enough violence and darkness and death in the world as it is, without shows like Scandal to amplify the disaster? This is not something we ought to be surrendering to. Scenes like that one don’t inspire — they drug wounded hearts.

Coleman’s call for more adolescence comes in a culture that seems to be in a state of perpetual adolescence, but a kind of stunted one that never gets time to breathe and mature.

Coleman’s call for more adolescence comes in a culture that seems to be in a state of perpetual adolescence, but a kind of stunted one that never gets time to breathe and mature. His is a countercultural message that could do something to treat our ills. He talks about the importance of “toning it down” so kids aren’t so busy every moment of the day. Admire moments of rest. They allow for “gratitude and grace.”

For Coleman, religious education is not only about worship but also about human dignity. “Those who seem to be in the more secular side of this world need to think again about the productive relationship of religious education,” he said.

And then there is the question of religious freedom. Seamus Hasson makes a complementary point in his new book Believers, Thinkers, and Founders. He writes about the importance of having a philosophical commitment to religious liberty. “What if it is possible to ground our rights, as the Declaration does, firmly in our ‘Creator,’ while scrupulously defending the rights of dissenters, and without sliding down the slippery slope toward theocracy?” He continues: “What if it is possible for the government to acknowledge the existence of a God who is the source of our rights — and mean it — without doing so religiously? What if, at least sometimes, the existence of God is a philosophical conclusion and not a religious dogma at all?”

That doesn’t mean diluting religious faith. It means having the freedom not to believe, while protecting the right to believe, seeing it as prior to government, something government doesn’t grant and therefore cannot take away. This view leaves room for real faith, which can make for miracles in the lives of those who feel most alone, given a hand by those who serve neighbor and stranger, fueled by faith.

In Hasson’s reading of it, what does indeed make America something great is the difference between good stewardship and slouching toward tyranny.

Underscoring how important this is, Hasson searingly warns: “If the tragedies of the last century have taught us anything, it is not to be so smug.”

There is a smugness in our culture of distraction. There is even a terror in the frenzy of busyness American schoolchildren are often conscripted into. This takes on a whole new urgency when we consider the terrorism in the world today and the gratitude that people who have encountered it and survived exhibit for their very lives.

Coleman encourages us: Understand that human dignity is priceless. Interact with things of infinite power and worth.

“We sometimes forget that the best of worldly success is a highly soulful craft itself,” Coleman says. Life shouldn’t be about material gain or high test scores, nor should we be living on autopilot, plagued by anxiety or indifference — too distracted for grace and gratitude. Instead, we should simply be present to creation, including one another. Be animated by something larger than yourself. This, Coleman reminds us, is where true greatness lies.

Politics and law right now may seem like just more noise in a culture of busyness. But the enduring things are what will make the difference. Rather than bludgeon ourselves with more activity and with frenetic and even violent distractions, consider a declaration of independence and renewal in foundational things — gifts that nourish, and that cultivate dignity and fruitfulness.