In July 1926, President Calvin Coolidge delivered a speech near the Liberty Bell to mark the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. At the heart of his oration was a striking claim: The Declaration is a “great spiritual document,” composed of principles such as equality, liberty, popular sovereignty and the rights of man, hashed out in church meeting halls over generations, whose origins lay in “the unseen world” of American religiosity. Unless anchored by these deep “things of the spirit,” he warned, “all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp.”
Twenty-first century America is starving for the spiritual depth and moral direction that Coolidge identified. Too many Americans, especially the young, feel adrift. This is visible in high rates of loneliness, depression, anxiety, suicide and drug overdoses. It is further manifested in the rising tide of mistrust and the poison of political hatred, descending to violence. The young man who is accused of killing Charlie Kirk in Utah last month spent much of his life in the addictive cocoon of online gaming and message boards.
Spencer Cox is Governor of Utah.
Ian Marcus Corbin is a Senior Fellow at Capita, and directs the Public Culture Project at Harvard.
