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.
“The church” really is at the epicenter of the issue. Not so much how it preached, as how it walked. Gospel values never did fare very well on a “do as I say not as I do” model. Imagine the nerve of Jesus, asking you to actually BE his friend....
pastors surrender to IRS 501-C3 ... pathetic cowardice ...
Rather than invent an agenda to fit a problem....ask the question if anything really has changed over 200 years. Then go back and review newspapers of various eras. It was common place for assault, murder and robbery to occur from 1776 on. To think we were pure and clear at some point is a fraudulent way of thinking.
I finished a book from a guy’s journals of traveling around the eastern side of the US in the 1820s recently. He described in great detail the perils of murder and robbery between various urban areas of the time. No, folks didn’t really wait around for some marshal or judge to enact punishment. Murder was a comment event.
The film industry plays a MAJOR role in the moral decline. Joe McCarthy tried to clean out the Communists from Hollywood but was destroyed for his efforts.
Bush's FaultTM
Government successfully muzzled the churches by giving them tax breaks and threatening to take them away if they tried to insert themselves into the political process.
The Supreme Court made immorality the law of the land and continues to do so at every opportunity.
When Rhett Butler said, Frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!
The more people say this, the more they convince me it's true.
The “Moral Majority” rallied to the cause when our morals appeared ready to head down the crapper in the 1970’s.
Those men have since passed on, and nobody has stepped up to take their place.
I’ve seen reaction about that, and yet as currently implemented it covers politician advocacy, not issue advocacy. There already are a lot of tax-frees who do issue advocacy (notoriously, PP itself).
And it can do nothing about advising congregants to be honest rather than hypocritical.
I’d be leery about blaming that. It is not the magic chain cutter that will set the church free.
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.
I would argue that the decline actually began well before that, with the pietism movement that took the same position, only from the church's point of view. That's about my only complaint with this otherwise excellent article.
“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.”
The absence of right and wrong is not so much that no one is ‘wrong’ (itself a very attractive goal for Progressives and other ‘children’) but rather that everyone is ‘RIGHT’, and all the time... since no one at any given time can point to an absolute and unqualified ‘wrong’.
It’s the world we all dreamed it ought to be... WHEN WE WERE FIVE YEARS OLD, before we grew up.
The Beatles.
Some old lady told me this 35 years ago.
I had to laugh.
pastors surrender to IRS 501-C3 ... pathetic cowardice ...
—
You’ve got a point.
In 1964, they said, “Elvis!”
Any “ism” is a suspect thing, be it pietism, Arminianism, Calvinism (ouch!), etc.
This is what man presumes to pony up to God for His approval.
Now there may be things in the mix that God can take to His glory and bless. But He isn’t going to pass His glory to founders of an “ism.”
LOL...my dad agreed.
THere are a number of ways that people can be “involved with politics.” Voting just one of them, and even then many don’t bother with primaries, which is a large throwing away of possible influence on its own. Then there is the matter of awareness and prayers and protests and publicity, etc.
The 501C3 puts an official damper on campaigning for particular politicians, and yet. It’s hard to blame that too much. PP is such an organization and they somehow manage to do their wickedness just fine. They know how to play issue advocacy like a Stradivarius.
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