Month: April 2021

Increasingly we live in a morally illiterate society. But how did we get here?

To review, we first rejected the church and its teachings, then the traditions of Western Civilization (both moral and philosophical), and finally the foundations of Enlightenment thought including reason and science (not to be confused with scientism).

It was decided that objective truth is false, thus the task of discerning reality was shifted to a newly fashioned, self-appointed clerisy who would disabuse America of its stuffy, outdated mores and replace them with new and improved ones.

Moreover, because the Enlightenment had failed in its quest to establish a moral basis for ethics apart from God, a new effort became necessary. Why? Because human beings are inherently moral, spiritual beings who require moral, spiritual authority.

Continue reading “The Church of Standard and Poor’s, Part III”

Having dispensed with Christianity and its moral precepts, followed in short order by the rejection of the Enlightenment’s insistence on reason and science, after, that is, the connection to the physical and spiritual worlds had been broken and the mind unmoored from tangible reality, the floodgates were opened to all sorts of speculative and experimental ideas and attitudes.

Foundational truths became, at best, quaint. What had seemed obvious was shown to be contrived and untrustworthy. ‘Reality’ consisted of arbitrary social constructs or mere convention. Time-honored insight into human nature and creation’s immutable laws no longer reflected eternal truth but transient, random arrangements intended mostly to benefit the powerful.

Thus began what Stephen Soukup, in The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, calls the “second stream” of American liberalism. The fate of the first, early progressivism, as we saw in Part I, had foundered on the altar of post-war skepticism.

Continue reading “The Church of Standard and Poor’s, Part II”

Nature abhors a vacuum. Thus, whenever human beings attempt to eliminate a set of moral precepts, there’s always another waiting in the wings.

I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb in suggesting that one of the defining, bedrock principles of early America was Judeo-Christian tradition. Of course, there were other streams of influence as well, not least British culture which served as the repository not only of Christianity but ancient Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, government, and law, each revised and refined over centuries by considered insight and lived experience. British culture embodied the best of Western Civilization.

One basic insight shared by Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome alike, undergirding the entire Western edifice, was the fact of flawed human nature.

Continue reading “The Church of Standard and Poor’s, Part I”

I hadn’t planned to discuss this topic, in part because I had another topic in mind but, more to the point, I’ve talked about it any number of times already.

I chose this subject because I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of any conversation about anything having to do with suffering, not just in Protestant circles but throughout the culture at large. It’s as if it’s a four-letter word. We simply will not talk about it.

Then again, suffering is as endemic to human existence as any other aspect of life. To avoid it seems unrealistic, if not absurd. As Christians, we ought to confront it head-on, knowing that God has a compassionate and redemptive response to the vagaries of every life.

Continue reading “Why Are Protestants So Afraid to Suffer?”