Olasky Books: Sweet charity and centuries of sacrifice

Karl Zinsmeister’s Sweet Charity (Mountain Marsh Media, 2026) has the semi-misleading subtitle Why private giving is so important to America (and must not be wrecked by politics). Semi-, that is, because while Zinsmeister’s opening chapter makes a cultural and political argument, the bulk of this delightful book is a travelogue of community-bolstering charities in Philadelphia and Florida, some wonderful, some weird, all growing out of idiosyncratic philanthropic impulses.

Zinsmeister writes about programs that help the poor and provide education and also ones like the Lightner Museum in Florida (collections of toasters, saltshakers, decorations made of human hair, antique music machines like nickelodeons and calliopes) and the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia (pieces of Albert Einstein’s brain and the tumor removed from Grover Cleveland, but also a collection of pins, coins, game tokens, and other objects extracted from noses and throats).

By showing rather than over-telling, Zinsmeister makes his point that variety is the spice of good governance. Three-fourths of the money donated in America (about $600 million every year) comes from individuals, the bulk of it from small givers, more than 100 million humble Americans, at an annual rate of about $3,000 per household. Americans give far more than Europeans, and a big chunk goes to religious nonprofits and charities. When political wars and rumors of wars depress us, that degree of generosity not only buoys the nation but can buoy our spirits.

Readers who want to go deeper into the work of charity should go back ten years to Zinsmeister’s The Almanac of American Philanthropy, a 1,342-page book published by the Philanthropy Roundtable and rightly described as the authoritative reference on private giving in the U.S.

Jonathan Sheehan’s On the Altar: A History of Sacrifice from the Sacred to the Secular (Princeton, 2026) oddly connects to philanthropy, so stay with me, please. Sheehan’s immense scholarship shows that just about everyone in the ancient world offered sacrifices, and many around the Mediterranean—Carthaginians, Cretans, Romans, and others—sometimes offered human sacrifices. Little or big sacrifices were essential to placate the wrath of gods or demons.

Sheehan writes that once we believe in a deity or deities who need to be satisfied in some way, sacrifices develop “as a natural response to a fundamental human problem. In the logic of satisfaction, payment never guarantees remission.” He quotes Hugo Grotius, one of the seventeenth century’s great minds, noting that “Under the guidance of nature, these nations realized that the greater their gift to [gods], the more easily forgiveness could be obtained.”

Sheehan then asks, “But how much was enough? An onion? A goat? A child? All the children? Precisely because they could never be sure that their gift was sufficient, they were driven to ever-wilder excesses of bloodshed.” The sacrifices of sheep, goats, and oxen in ancient Israel, “introduced to wean the ancient Jews from their idols and bring them back to God,” were limiting devices. 

On the Altar is a secular book, but Sheehan fairly reports what Christians believe: “As a perfection of Jewish sacrifice, Christ’s death achieved what the death of a bull intended but could never accomplish, a full purification of sinful man.” Cultures growing out of Christianity emphasized walking in Christ’s steps, which included “the willingness to sacrifice, even to sacrifice one’s life.”

Sheehan doesn’t connect the dots as I do, so it’s my sense, not his, that the idea of sacrifice underlies heroism in movie westerns such as High Noon. Translated into financial terms, it also leads to the sacrifice of treasure and time that underlies some of the philanthropic efforts Zinsmeister reports. Self-sacrifice is also a prescription in Peter Smith’s Remember the Poor (Crown & Covenant, 2026): He concisely shows what God wants us to do, how to get started doing it, and how to persevere even when it’s hard.

Briefly noted

In Resisting Therapy Culture (IVP, 2026), Matthew Loftus critiques trendy “self-care” and “wellness” importunings, along with over-medicalization and under-appreciation for normal cycles of stress and rest. Freud, Fromm, Maslow, Rogers, and others rise and fall, but Christ is still the best doctor and compassion the best embrace.

Christopher Clark’s A Scandal in Königsberg (Penguin Press, 2026) is a well-written history tale about a two-century-old controversy similar to some current ones. The scene: Soon after the death of apostle-of-rationalism Immanuel Kant, two cultish pastors in Prussia face the early equivalent of a Twitter mob for purportedly encouraging behavior that causes the death of two women from sexual exhaustion.