Posted on 05/28/2011 12:28:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
While the majority of Americans believe that the country’s morality is poor and lacking, the gap between those looking for the moral high ground and those who believe we are already morally good is closing.
A Thursday Gallup poll shows the number of Americans who believe the overall state of moral values in the U.S. is poor has dropped seven percentage points to 38 percent. Meanwhile, the number of those who believe the country's morality is excellent or good has risen eight percentage points to 23 percent.
Fewer Americans also believe the country's moral values are getting worse. Sixty-nine percent, down from 76 percent in 2010, say the state of moral values is worsening, while 22 percent, up from 14 percent, believe it’s getting better.
But just by looking at the media, it’s not apparent why more Americans have a positive outlook on U.S. morality today.
"If you look at our popular entertainment, you have a situation where Americans are essentially bombarded immoral or amoral messages," said Matt Philbin, the Culture and Media Institute's managing editor and editorial director.
From movies to animated series and feel-good shows such as "Glee," Americans are constantly met with inappropriate, ungodly, unpatriotic and sexual themes, he pointed out.
If Americans continue to accept and adopt the values portrayed in pop culture (what Philbin calls "Rihanna and Lady Gaga television"), then “you'll see a decline in modesty, in probity, in a lot of things we have always valued in our culture,” he said.
Richard Land, president of Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, shares the same concern. "The media is a detrimental influence," he remarked. "You would never know by watching American television that 61 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives."
For Philbin, one message in particular that the media is continuously throwing at Americans is that of affirming homosexuality and gay marriage.
A poll released by Gallup last week found that for the first time since 1996, more than half of Americans say marriage for gays and lesbians should be legal.
Philbin clarifies the data as the result of Americans being brow-beaten through various forms of media and being constantly sent a message that says "you're wrong, now change your view."
"I think frankly Americans are just tired of getting beat up over their resistance to it," he explained. "I think that at a certain point cultural fatigue sets in and you get tired of being told that you're backward, being told you're puritan troglodyte (a caveman) and a homophobe who hates people. So you shrug and say, 'yea, I'm for it' and go about your business."
Civilization, he lamented, is headed in a direction that devalues the family unit.
"If a family is just a group of people cohabitating or pooling resources, and ceases to be the very basis and building block of society, I think you're in a sort of moral quicksand where things lose meaning," Philbin cautioned.
According to the Gallup poll, Republicans make up the majority of those who hold a negative view of America's current state of morality. Moral issues that have concerned the GOP include national attacks on the Defense of Marriage Act and the nation's debt.
Land said these moral issues are rooted in the home. When morals are not instilled in children through the proper influence of a wedded father and mother, the consequences become evident in society.
"You can't separate economic issues from moral issues," said Land.
Still, fewer Independents and Democrats believe the country is in a moral decline.
Land said of these two groups, "If they're not concerned with the morals of America, then they’re part of the problem, not part of the solution."
The Southern Baptist is concerned that America has become "a nation of liars" full of people who fail to fulfill their obligation to their marriages as spouses or parents in order to satisfy their own selfish desires.
That dishonest streak, said Land, is becoming more evident in the nation's financial practices.
"The reason Wall Street failed is because of dishonest people," noted Land. "There's no system that can [succeed if it] doesn't have the basis of honesty and honor."
While the state of moral values appears to be disintegrating, Philbin believes the U.S. moral fabric is not yet in a total moral decline. Where is the evidence?
"People are still marrying, they’re still having children, they’re still concerned about what their children see," he commented.
Land’s outlook on the state of morality in the U.S. was less optimistic.
"We're seriously broken and it's getting worse and we're reaching a crisis point where we're either going to have to restore traditional American values ... or we going to see our society denigrate."
I was really disappointed when he went on Family Guy. What a disgusting show.
He wasn’t the honored guest, he was the paid entertainment. He was “the band.”
Christian Talk Radio criticizes homosexuality and pop culture’s “normalization” of perversion.
Look up Jay Sekulow. He has a radio show and heads the American Center for Law and Justice.
On some FR threads, you would receive demands for pictures.
Beloved:
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
but do it with gentleness and reverence,
keeping your conscience clear,
so that, when you are maligned,
those who defame your good conduct in Christ
may themselves be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.
For Christ also suffered for sins once,
the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,
that he might lead you to God.
Put to death in the flesh,
he was brought to life in the Spirit.
Placemark. Gotta ping tomorrow.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows him.
But you know him, because he remains with you,
and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
I’m getting uncomfortable with immortality.
In other words, Is the Spirit of Truth is one's conscience as it is matured and nurtured by the Holy Spirit?
Both your parts are quite true, and well said
Social clubs, yes, and singing songs about Jesus is my boyfriend.
I suspect that these happy-talk spiritual social clubs will eventually falter because of competition with so many purely secular “clubs” like Sunday morning soccer games for the kids.
Nowadays, alas, good churches are like the Marines — only a few good men (and women) are attending. But, of course, without the homosexuals in the foxhole :-)
I’ve never seen Family Guy, but thanks for the heads-up. Sorry that Rush went on it. Why can’t he do something high-profile with Focus on the Family (James Dobson) or Liberty University or even the conservative Catholic bishops? Maybe he does, behind the scenes, but I’ve never heard of anything.
Instead he hangs out with Elton John, Family Guy (as you said), the National Football League, and does an animal-rights commercial. All secular, or worse.
Yes, Elton John was paid, but he was certainly an honored guest as well. How could he not have been? They couldn’t be rude to him. He is now reportedly buddies with Limbaugh.
Elton, this man of decadence, who loathes conservative Christians, was the honored guest at a sacred event of holy matrimony.
Why not a Christian singer, like Pat Boone, or Lee Greenwood (I’m Proud to be an American!), or someone like that?
Sorry to say it is because he doesn't need to. He knows that the “conservative Christian” will continue to listen to him since he is the loudest “conservative” voice on the radio. This goes back to the idea of the Sunday morning social clubs. The majority of those attending church on Sunday are not well versed in the Scriptures and as such have no foundation for living a Godly life. I would even venture to say that most are thinking that we will get out of the mess we are in as a country by voting the right way...they are still not at the point of turning to God as the one true answer.
You’re right. The socially conservative Christian has no alternative. Certainly not Sean Hannity, best friends with Rudy “The Dress” Giuliani.
As your links to the show reveal, he’s brilliant when he talks about social issues. He just doesn’t choose to talk about them very often, except for shots at feminazis (I think he’s toned that expression these days). I pine for the days that he did “caller abortions” with a handheld vacuum cleaner.
I’d love to see a study on how much air time he spends on social issues like homosexual marriage, abortion and general spiritual decay, foul language and sexually suggestive matter on television. Probably not nearly as much as issues as he really gets excited about — the economy/socialism and the manifold flaws of Obama.
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Some favorite quotes:
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites--in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;--in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;--in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
-- Edmund Burke
"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous."
-- George Washington (letter to Steptoe Washington, 5 December 1790)
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in which all religions agree." --Thomas Jefferson
Of all the dispositions and habits which least to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pilliars of human happiness.
-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)
"[W]hen People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams
"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams
Apropos of the Burke quote, the standard now seems to be just the opposite: appetite is king, and any person (or worse, institution) who would curtail it for such “outdated” concepts as morality and self-control must in fact be the enemy of liberty.
Oops, didn’t mean to quote the Libertarian Party platform.
So Rush advises the caller and everyone to ignore the pushers of the homosexual agenda.
Great.
That has gotten us exaclty where we are now.
Rush is totally rotten on social issues.
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