Marvin Olasky

Austin

Chairman, Zenger House and Columnist at Freelance

Executive Editor for News and Global, Christianity Today. Chairman, Zenger House. Affiliations with Acton and Discovery Institutes. PCA elder. Red Sox fan.

Articles

Three kinds of secularism, three critiques of centralism

6 days ago | discovery.org | Marvin Olasky

Thomas Howard’s Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History (Yale University Press, 2025) brilliantly flips the meme summarized by Christopher Hitchens in the title of his 2007 book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I debated Hitchens that year and offered examples of Christian compassion that should have pushed him off absolutism, but he was adamant: “Everything.”Howard, though, shows how extreme secularism poisons societies.
When a Revolution Is Revolting

1 week ago | christianitytoday.com | Marvin Olasky

Responsible, achievable, biblically inspired policy is not just morally better than extremist political tactics. It's also a strategic advantage. The advantage of being both a historian and an old guy is that I've studied many violent revolutions and experienced a political one up close, the "Republican revolution" of 1994. Both kinds are relevant to the current immigration debate and the choice before MAGA Christians now.
Why Work Works

1 week ago | fixhomelessness.org | Marvin Olasky

Bob Coté, the homeless man turned homeless shelter pioneer whom I wrote about last month, used to say, “Work works.” By that he meant not only that work brings in money but also that it brings purpose and community. Paul the apostle also spoke about helping others: Do something useful with your hands, he wrote in Ephesians 4:28.
Homeless Does Not Mean Helpless

2 weeks ago | fixhomelessness.org | Marvin Olasky

Sticking a homeless person into an apartment without requiring anything from him is a bad idea not only because idle hands often turn to drugs, alcohol, or other mischief. It’s also a bad idea because not requiring work that a person can do is treating him as sub-human. Here it’s important to understand the biblical concept of labor, both before and after the traumatic events in the Garden of Eden.
Good Friday Reminds Us to Suffer With the Homeless

3 weeks ago | fixhomelessness.org | Marvin Olasky

Today is Good Friday. Nearly two thousand years ago it seemed a very bad Friday. Jesus, as the Apostles Creed puts it, “was crucified, died, and was buried.” God turned bad into good, as He regularly does. Romans 5:8 in the New Testament declares, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”Christians are supposed to get used to bad/good Fridays.
East of Eden and Easter

1 month ago | discovery.org | Marvin Olasky

Eight days from now comes the most controversial day of the year. Easter bunnies and eggs (if you can afford the latter) mask the debate, but Gary Habermas jumps into it in On the Resurrection: Refutations (B&H Academic, 2024). Unlike other books that merely assert what the Gospels say, Habermas painstakingly undermines one by one the arguments that Jesus was not resurrected.
Warm-Hearted, Tough-Minded Compassion: An Interview with Bob Coté

1 month ago | fixhomelessness.org | Marvin Olasky

Next month I’ll lay out my upcoming book on homelessness, but the book will only make sense if you understand the process of Step 13 and Springs Rescue Mission that I’ve laid out in this first quarter of the year — so here’s part of an interview I did with Bob Coté 16 years ago. Olasky: Does the step-by-step process to moving upstairs and getting a better room really work? Coté: They want to get up there.
Rooting for Front Porch Journalism

1 month ago | frontporchrepublic.com | Marvin Olasky

Zenger House has announced its twelve 2025 awards for ground-level reporting. The winning stories are all excellent, but none emerged primarily from the ground-level reporting of local journalists. I chair Zenger House and am one of the five judges of the prizes, now in their fourth year.
Zenger Prizes: Honoring Good Reporting on Helping the Homeless

1 month ago | fixhomelessness.org | Marvin Olasky

Three years ago, I began writing my Human Lives column about homelessness on the Discovery Institute website. I’ll be concluding that series at the end of next month, but I’d like Discovery Institute supporters to know about some prizes announced today that will hearten those concerned about journalism, homelessness, or both. Over the years, The New York Times editorially has supported neither Intelligent Design nor the intelligent design of programs to help homeless individuals.
Uncovering Good Reporting amid Troubled Times for Journalists

1 month ago | christianitytoday.com | Marvin Olasky

Zenger Prize winners showcase the courage and empathy needed for sound truth-telling. A 2019 novel by Jason Liegois, The Holy Fool: A Journalist's Revolt, equates reporters with the holy fools of Russian literature, those who spoke truths that normal people could not or would not say.