What is Right With America
Lesson Overview
What Is Right With America with Dr. David Noebel
This standalone message is given by Dr. David Noebel, founder of Summit Ministries and author of Understanding the Times. In contrast to talks that catalog what is wrong with the country, this one is deliberately positive: an answer to the question of how the United States became so prosperous and free, and a call to gratitude and to passing a good inheritance to the next generation. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video, keeping in mind that the political and cultural asides reflect his conservative viewpoint around 2011.
We Are Generational People
Noebel opens with Acts 13:36, that David “served his generation” by God’s will and then died. His theme is that we are generational people who pass our values, beliefs, and teaching to those who come after us, and that a civilization built over centuries can be lost quickly if a generation fails to hand it on. He urges the older believers in his audience not to “retire” from that task but to invest in their children, grandchildren, and the education of the young. This generational responsibility frames the whole talk.
He also sets a tone of perspective, citing Erwin Lutzer’s book When a Nation Forgets God to the effect that, for all our troubles, Christians in America still enjoy remarkable freedoms (to broadcast the gospel, witness, and gather) that believers across two thousand years of church history often lacked.
The Question
Noebel organizes his answer around a question he credits to the political analyst Michael Barone: how did a country of fewer than four million people along the Atlantic coast become a continental nation of hundreds of millions, the most prosperous and inventive in the world, and the dominant power, in little more than two centuries? The rest of the talk is his list of answers.
Reason One: The Founding Was Right
Noebel argues the American founding rested on sound principles, beginning with the Pilgrims. His central illustration is from William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation: the early colony was bound by its financial backers into a common-property arrangement and nearly starved, until Bradford assigned private plots to families and the colony began to thrive. Noebel draws from this a lesson that private property, grounded in a realistic view of human nature, works better than utopian communal schemes, and notes that the United States has had private property since the Pilgrims.
He connects this to a biblical and classical view of human nature as fallen, citing Aristotle and James Madison (“if men were angels, no government would be necessary”) on why government is needed. He also cites George Washington’s Farewell Address, that religion and morality are “indispensable supports” of political prosperity, arguing Washington did not regard America as a merely secular state. Noebel’s readings of the founders lean on the popularizer David Barton, whose historical claims are disputed by many professional historians; students should treat this founding-was-Christian material as a contested interpretation rather than settled history.
Reason Two: Americans Are the Most Generous People on Earth
Noebel’s second and most developed point is American charity. He cites a surprising quotation from the secular philosopher John Dewey, no friend of Christianity, crediting churchgoing, evangelical Christians as the “backbone” of philanthropy and social reform. He then points to research on giving, including the study by Arthur Brooks in Who Really Cares, arguing that religious people and political conservatives give more of their time, money, and even blood than secular and more liberal counterparts, and that the least charitable states by these measures were in the (more secular) Northeast while the most charitable were poorer, more religious states in the South.
These findings come from specific studies and are Noebel’s framing of them; research on charitable giving is real but debated, and how much is explained by religion, region, wealth, or the treatment of different kinds of giving is contested. Students should take the general point (that faith communities are a major engine of charity) as well supported, while treating the sharper partisan comparisons as one reading of the data.
He extends the generosity theme internationally, arguing the United States is typically first to send aid after famines and disasters and has used its power to rescue others (including Muslims in the Balkans and Kuwait) without annexing them, and he notes that people “vote with their feet” by migrating toward the United States rather than away from it.
Reason Three: Freedom and Opportunity
Noebel lists the freedoms Americans enjoy (to believe or not, worship or not, assemble, speak, print, travel, vote, and even leave the country) as nearly unprecedented in human history. He drives home the memorable line that “to complain is easy, to build is difficult, and to preserve is the most difficult of all.”
He argues America has extended opportunity widely, pointing to high enrollment of women and minorities in higher education and to the prominence of Black Americans across many fields, using this to push back against the claim that the country is irredeemably racist. He also praises the way many ethnic and religious groups that are at war elsewhere live and work peaceably side by side in America. These are his responses to what he calls “critical theory,” the academic approach he opposes; his characterizations here are part of a live political debate, and the questions of American racism and opportunity are ones on which people, including Christians, hold a range of views. Presented as celebration, these points are his argument in that debate.
Reason Four: Voluntary Associations
Drawing on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Noebel highlights the vast network of voluntary, non-governmental associations (churches, Sunday schools, missions, clubs, foundations, service organizations, and the like) as the backbone of the nation and evidence that Americans still embrace self-governance and sacrifice rather than leaving everything to the state. He cites Tocqueville’s famous observation that Christianity retained unusual influence over Americans, and the often-quoted (though not certainly Tocqueville’s) line that “America is great because America is good.”
Reason Five: A Force Against Tyranny and for Justice
Noebel argues the United States did more than the rest of the world combined to defeat the twentieth century’s great tyrannies, fascism, Nazism, and communism. His signature illustration: after World War II, America stood alone with millions of men under arms and the atomic bomb, and instead of conquering the world, disarmed, rebuilt Germany and Japan, and protected them for decades, which he says no dominant power in history had done.
He draws on Bill Bennett to argue America has brought more freedom, equality, prosperity, and justice to more people than any nation in history, and adds a theological reflection: that the human longing for justice, when the great communist mass murders have never faced earthly reckoning, is itself a pointer to a God who will finally judge. He notes the death tolls under Mao and the Soviets as among history’s worst, an assessment mainstream historians share.
The Conclusion: How Did This Happen?
Noebel closes by rejecting the idea that America’s success was mere chance. He credits its Christian foundations, noting that the first colleges were founded by Christians, and pointing to John Witherspoon, who mentored hundreds of men at Princeton (then the College of New Jersey), many of whom became ministers and many others statesmen who helped produce the Declaration and Constitution.
He draws a sharp distinction between America and the U.S. government, saying one can love the country and its people while criticizing the government, and that being grateful for America is not the same as endorsing everything the state does. He ends with a line he attributes to Sir Walter Scott about the person whose heart never says “this is my own, my native land,” and a call to gratitude.
Key Terms
Generational responsibility: the duty, drawn from Acts 13:36, to pass sound values and faith to the next generation.
Of Plymouth Plantation: William Bradford’s history, which Noebel uses to illustrate the failure of common-property economics and the success of private property.
Voluntary associations: the non-governmental civic and religious organizations Tocqueville saw as central to American life.
Charitable-giving research: studies (such as Arthur Brooks’s) that Noebel cites on who gives time and money.
America versus the government: Noebel’s distinction between loving one’s country and endorsing the state’s actions.
Verses to Know
Acts 13:36, David served his generation by the will of God. Psalm 33:12, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Romans 13:1-7, the God-given role of government (implied in his view of human nature and authority).
Takeaway
Noebel argues that America’s freedom and prosperity were not accidents but the fruit of sound founding principles, a realistic biblical view of human nature, extraordinary charity, a wealth of voluntary associations, and a Christian moral foundation, and that the right response is gratitude and a determination to preserve and pass on that inheritance to the next generation.