Posted on 06/03/2015 8:35:46 AM PDT by rhema
A recent Gallup poll, "Moral Acceptability: Changes Over Time," shows Americans made a startling move to the left over the past 15 years. A blanket blaming of the church is the easy answer, but today, where black and white has faded into varying shades of gray, we are better served going back to where it began because we didn't get where we are today overnight.
America's moral decline began with Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt [FDR]. Their arrogant defiance and blatant hostility toward the U.S. Constitution inspired them to lead an insurrection from the Oval Office, effectively convincing good people that government dependence is a morally acceptable alternative to dependence on God, family, community and self.
Progressive godfather FDR did what progressives do best, hijacking the crisis at hand, the Great Depression, and molding the U.S. government into a pseudo-god. Although both New Deals failed on multiple levels, some of the programs and subsidies permanently persuaded people that an interventionist government is good. That was not enough. Progressives understood the "God-factor" must be removed to accomplish their goal of secularization, wherein religion loses cultural and social significance. In 1947, the Supreme Court, largely packed with FDR appointees, decided the First Amendment instituted a "wall of separation" between church and state in Everson v. Board of Education. In so doing, they were able to separate morality and ethics from government and daily life.
Hence, the immoral mess we see today.
A recent Pew survey found that in 1990, 86 percent of Americans identified as Christians and today, just 70 percent. Interestingly, mainline Protestant denominations such as Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopalian, who have consciously dimmed their own bulbs in recent years to remain relevant to the demands of pop culture, dropped from 50 percent in 1958 to 14 percent in 2015. As mosques are being raised at record levels in towns and cities across America and Europe, churches are increasingly vacated.
Today, more often than not, Jesus' command for Christians to be "light" in a dark world is translated "let's keep it subdued, so no one needs to squint." In fashion photography, soft light works because it helps to conceal the unvarnished reality. In sharp contrast, pure light reveals an honest picture, flaws and all. Interestingly, when Jesus revealed himself to the Christian persecutor, Saul, he appeared in light so harsh and offensively bright, Saul was temporarily blinded. Saul's blindness slowed him down long enough to see the contrast between truth and lies, right and wrong, leading to a conversion so complete, his name was changed from Saul to Paul.
Some would rather spread buttercream icing over cow manure than call this moral decline for what it is. Vanderbilt University Professor of Law and Political Science Edward L. Rubin says America's nosedive into the moral abyss is nothing to fret because we are just shifting to a "new morality" based on a "concept of self-fulfillment." Rubin suggests this fluffed-up version of hedonism is making people uncomfortable because they are feeling rapidly "pulled between two moralities." Paul/Saul wrote about the same struggle in Romans 7, reminding true believers to hold fast to "God's law," not giving in to the new morality he called "sin."
The only way progressivism wins is without the presence of absolute truth. Without it, morality is defined by ever-changing social whims; what's wrong today is right tomorrow. Truth is, it's impossible to define morality without a plumb line or divine standard. Wandering outside already-established boundaries since the beginning of time gets us where we are today. History demonstrates it. Polls prove it. Empty pews show it. Progressives love it.
I agree...we can point at the Church or churches but it was the people you me and them who allowed the moral rot to spread.
Dis we demand that teachers indoctrinating our children for the last 40 years be fired for their heresies? No. Did WE maintain the moral home environments that would enable our children to be moral themselves?
No.
subjectivism:
whim worship + self actualization = anything goes
It's not just the left.
...who all belong to the Democrat Party!
Sad, but so true.
....my theory; as soon as we had antibiotics we started to quickly change our moral behavior. Things that were previously a death sentence now became a quickly treatable problem.
Then came the ‘60s, then their children. Now it’s all made worse with these people running the media and forcing horrible messages onto our current children.
At some point, there will be “an event” that will make us all realize the path we’ve been on.
Ravi Zachariah spoke of what happens to a nation when people trust government over God for their needs. He retold this story.
During those final days of the collapsing Marxist experiment in the Soviet Union, Soviet novelist Chingiz Aitmatov retold the following story, which has been paraphrased here.
On one occasion, so it was narrated, Stalin called for a live chicken and proceeded to use it to make an unforgettable point before some of his henchmen. Forcefully clutching the chicken in one hand, with the other he began to systematically pluck out its feathers. As the chicken struggled in vain to escape, he continued with the painful denuding until the bird was completely stripped. “Now you watch,” Stalin said as he placed the chicken on the floor and walked away with some bread crumbs in his hand. Incredibly, the fear-crazed chicken hobbled toward him and clung to the legs of his trousers. Stalin threw a handful of grain to the bird, and it began to follow him around the room, he turned to his dumbfounded colleagues and said quietly, “This is the way to rule the people. Did you see how that chicken followed me for food, even though I had caused it such torture? People are like that chicken. If you inflict inordinate pain on them they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.”
Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publ., Dallas: 1994), pp. 26-27
Lots of good and valid answers in the article and among the replies.
Me? I blame Lyndon Baines Johnson. The WORST American president ever.
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Joe McCarthy had little to do with battling Communists in Hollywood but Ronald Reagan certainly did:
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/reagan.htm
And with that, you confirm that YOU are part of the problem.
I agree. Television has bee normalizing homosexuality, polygamy, and adultery for the past two decades. Throw in shacking up and partial nudity as normal and the picture is complete.
Libertarians on FR want drugs sold to minors? Have any proof?
There are many good reasons listed here, perhaps it is not one thing but many. Prohibition was a time when morality and law were joined together in an unholy union. Though no alcohol was sold it still left a bad taste in many mouths.
There is one other thing that hasn’t been brought up, what about Dewey, Huxley and others who gutted our educational system with progressive ism. Look see reading(why Johnny still can’t read) and the total abandonment of western CIV in our high schools. A nation who forgets it’s past, abandons it’s children to the government and fails to learn or teach itself to read has committed suicide in the slowest and most painful fashion possible.
An old man once told me ever since we landed on the moon things have gone downhill.
Well you get the same thing by lamenting taboo structures too much.
Virtue structures are based around giving positive glory to God for things.
Unlike in the dystopian book _1984_, the TV can’t make you watch it.
There’s more. Much more.
Well, tangentially here, there was a time when people were more cognizant of what is theologically called original sin.
Was it neglect? Was it unloving parents who couldn't back up strict discipline with love, respect and understanding?
Having 4 children of my own I don't want them to rebel the way the Boomers did.
Guys like Jerry Falwell were endlessly savaged in the media for the stands they were taking. In his case they dragged his mother through the mud as well. But he was willing to endure the slings and arrows for the cause.
I am looking out there for another member of the clergy willing to lead in such a high-profile way, and finding none.
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