"America's Golden Age

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appeared on Mark Levin’s Life, Liberty & Levin this past weekend to discuss his new book, America’s Golden Age. He argues that America stands at the threshold of a new era, with breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, and space exploration building on one another to transform how Americans live, work, and innovate

I first met then-Congressman Newt Gingrich in 1983, when Paul Weyrich asked me to drive to the Capitol to pick him up. A few months earlier, I heard Newt speak alongside several other congressmen and left thinking, “This man is going places.” In 1993 or 1994, I began praying for him by name—a practice I have continued seven days a week ever since.

Gingrich asks us to picture America in 2076, celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. What place will American Christendom occupy as the nation enters the final quarter of the 21st century? Will its Biblical witness shape the headwaters of culture—our homes, churches, schools, universities, entertainment, and media—or will it drift further into spiritual complacency and cultural irrelevance?

Newt illustrates technological progress by tracing the distance between the wheelbarrow, documented in China in the early centuries AD, and the automobile of the late 19th century.

Chinese tradition credits the strategist Zhuge Liang with developing the “wooden ox” around AD 231 to carry military supplies through mountainous terrain—a major logistical innovation. Although its precise design remains debated, the wheelbarrow’s advantage is plain: a wheel and a balanced load enabled one person to move more weight with less effort.

Consider the leap to Karl Benz’s gasoline-powered automobile of 1885. His three-wheeled Patent-Motorwagen carried its own mechanical power source, extending human mobility beyond muscle and animal strength. Henry Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908, and his adoption of the moving assembly line in 1913 helped revolutionize manufacturing and bring automobile ownership within reach of ordinary families.

The consequences reached far beyond convenience. Automobiles expanded access to jobs, markets, medical care, and education. Farmers reached more customers, businesses served distant communities, and families traveled farther. Distance became less of a barrier to opportunity.

During his appearance on Mark Levin’s Life, Liberty & Levin, Gingrich described another approaching transformation: breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, and space exploration building on one another to reshape American life.

In the former Speaker’s telling, America is moving from the Mechanical Age into the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Just as machines extended mankind’s physical reach, AI promises to expand our intellectual reach—helping us analyze information, accelerate discovery, and solve problems once beyond our grasp. The possibilities for medicine, education, commerce, and everyday life are enormous.

History offers perspective on how innovation can shape a nation’s influence. “Pax Britannica” commonly describes Britain’s predominance between Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. British power rested on the Royal Navy, an empire on which “the sun never set,” and the nation’s early leadership in the Industrial Revolution.

In February 1941, Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life, called for “The American Century” in a Life editorial urging the United States to embrace world leadership. The phrase became shorthand for America’s historic rise to global prominence in economic, technological, military, and cultural affairs.

A familiar, foreboding prediction extends that sequence: “The 19th century belonged to Britain, the 20th century belonged to America, and the 21st century will belong to China.” But history follows no predetermined timetable. Competition from China, Europe’s struggles with integration and Islamist extremism, and the threat of militant jihadism on American soil raise a broader question: Will Western nations awaken from their slumber and summon the conviction, courage, and resolve to preserve their freedoms?

Yet a prediction is no decree of Providence. The century’s course will depend on the foresight and choices of nations—and on the spiritual wisdom and moral character that guide their resolve and use of power. Technology can multiply our capabilities. It cannot supply the Biblical wisdom to govern them.

Early Americans understood that national strength had a spiritual foundation as well as a material one. Following the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the Continental Congress designated July 20 as a day of “public humiliation, fasting, and prayer,” calling the colonies to humble themselves before God and seek His mercy and aid.

Nearly 170 years later, as American troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, Americans gathered in churches across the country—many spontaneously—to pray for the young men whose lives were on the line. That evening, President Franklin D. Roosevelt led the nation in a six-and-a-half-minute prayer by radio.

Even a nation capable of producing the most formidable weapons of war humbled itself to plead for God’s mercy and protection. Victory in Normandy was not assured. Failure could have prolonged Nazi tyranny in Western Europe and exacted an even greater toll in human lives.

As the final quarter of the 21st century arrives, will our technological superiority have left America haughty and arrogant, trusting in human ingenuity while neglecting spiritual power and remaining content in apostasy? Or will we have learned our lesson and humbly reconnected with the Source of all wisdom and power?

The Puritans founded Harvard in 1636 to train ministers for generations they would never meet. Abraham Kuyper launched a newspaper, organized a political party, and founded the Free University of Amsterdam—and two decades later became prime minister of the Netherlands.

Neither was thinking about the next election. They were laying foundations for their grandchildren’s world. Today, too many of us measure success by the next Sunday or the next November. So we must ask: Who in American Christendom is thinking fifty years ahead—and if not us, who?

Please, God, raise up a Gideon or a Rahab with the courage to stand.

David Lane

American Renewal Project