Archives for : Progressivism

Shepherds for Sale – Megan Basham

Posted by :webmaster On : August 25, 2024
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Category: Archives, Culture Wars, Evangelical Church, Progressivism

Ms. Basham’s subtitle for her book presents the essence of the book’s contents: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.

Megan Basham is a published author and culture reporter for the The Daily Wire. She is a frequent contributor to the Morning Wire, one of the top ten news podcasts in the United States. She has written for WORLD magazine, the Spectator, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, National Review, and the Telegraph. Even before the book was released on July 30, 2024, the podcasts interviews and speaking engagements discussing the contents of the book stirred considerable of controversy and backlash from several evangelical church leaders and organizations about whom she wrote. However, the truth of the facts, narrative, and conclusions presented in the book are supported by extensive research and meticulous documentation (53 pages containing 640 endnotes in the 319 page book).

In her book Basham identifies well-funded forces outside of the church that set out to change American evangelical churches with regard to their biblical beliefs that stood in the way of achieving political change within American culture. Those power brokers include George Soros, members of the Obama administration, the founder of eBay, and a host of other wealthy and/or influential left-wing organizations and individuals. Through their secular, well-funded foundations, think tanks, non-profits, non-governmental organizations, as well as left-leaning federal government agencies and complicit national media, the progressive left deliberately devised campaigns to infiltrate and dramatically influence well-known individuals and organizations in the American evangelical church: nationally-recognized faith leaders, Christian media, universities, megachurches, nonprofit organizations, para-church organizations, and entire denominations and their subsidiaries.

Why is the left so determined to influence the American evangelical church and its associated organizations? The reason is found in a quote from Basham’s Introduction.

Around 32 percent of the U.S. electorate describe themselves as evangelical, and the vast majority of that group leans right. Among Americans who describe themselves as conservatives, Protestant evangelicals are the single largest religious group by 23 points…

Look at any issue that represents a key priority for progressives, and you will find that even when all other major demographics have signed on, Christians, and evangelicals in particular, represent the most formidable roadblock. Whether it’s the LGBTQ movement, climate changed, or illegal immigration, again and again, polling research shows that evangelicals still stand as a fortress in the way of the political left. Indeed, they often stand in the way of the political right as well, earning the ire of many GOP…[1]

In the early 2000s, foundations funded by secular billionaires began to speak earnestly, if not very openly, about how to take down this fortress.[2]

In 2010, one of those progressive left-leaning foundations issued a report targeting the roadblock they faced in advancing the agenda of the gay lobby. But rather than continuing to unsuccessfully oppose churches in their stance against homosexuality, they would need to undermine their biblical stance again homosexuality, and that change must be instigated by the leadership in the American evangelical church and affiliated organizations. The report stated, “LGBTI organizations need to appropriate Christian values for a progressive rights agenda.”[3] (emphasis added by Basham) Eventually, in addition to politically advancing the LGBTI agenda, the progressive infiltrators used these tactics in advancing climate change, illegal immigration, the #MeToo Movement to include #ChurchToo, Critical Race Theory, Covid-19 propaganda, and hijacking the Pro-life Movement and Christian media (e.g., Christianity Today).

Megan Basham’s book tracks and courageously reports the efforts and successes of the progressives in the infiltration of their non-biblical agenda into the hearts, minds, and pulpits of many evangelical leaders and pastors. In a section titled “Wolves, Cowards, Mercenaries, and Fools,” Basham writes:

The question is: Why have so many well-known evangelical institutions and leaders in recent years started promoting causes that no plain reading of Scripture would demand, like lobbying for fossil fuel regulations or dismantling white privilege, while issues that unequivocally call for Christian clarity find them silent and stymied? When the guy who created the Christian children’s program VeggieTales starts arguing that evangelicals should take a more “nuanced” position on abortion, and when successive presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Bible only “whispers” about sexual sins, something is badly off in mainstream evangelicalism.[4]

Basham identifies many others individuals and organizations who have been influenced by the progressive left’s agenda and have strayed from the biblical foundations in recent years. The following list contains only a fraction of the people and organizations identified by that Basham in her book:

Francis Chan, Francis Collins, J. D. Greear, Bill Hybels, Tim Keller, Max Lucado, Beth Moore, Russell Moore, Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, Evangelical Climate Initiative, Evangelical Environmental Network, Southern Baptist Convention, Ethics and Religious Liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, National Association of Evangelicals, Charisma magazine, Christianity Today.

In 1984, theologian Francis Schaeffer published The Great Evangelical Disaster, in which he wrote of his concern that evangelical groups were accommodating and surrendering themselves and their churches to the spirit of the age. He wrote:

Here the gospel has been reduced to a program for transforming social structures. This is the Marxist line. It does not mean that those who take this position are Communists. But it does mean they have a complete confusion of the kingdom of God with basic socialistic concepts. In back of this stands the Enlightenment idea of the perfectibility of man if only the cultural and economic chains are removed.

But think further what this means theologically. What has happened to the fall and sin? Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) seem to be saying that changing economic structures is the means of salvation for modern man since only this deals with the basic “cause of the disease.” Ironically their program is not radical enough! The basic problem is that of the fall and sin and heart of man. The basic problem is much deeper than social structures, and by not recognizing this, ESA ends up with an understanding of salvation which is very different from what the Scriptures teach.[5]

Written forty-one years ago, Schaeffer’s prescient warning has been ignored by the majority in 21st century American evangelicalism which is surrendering to the Great Apostasy described by the Apostle Paul. This great falling away was prophesied to be fulfilled at the end of the last days just before the catching away of the church by the Lord. Every sign of the times now points to the fact that the world is nearing the end of the last days of the Church age which is to be concluded by the rapture or catching away of the Church, both living and dead.

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.[ (emphasis added) [2 Thessalonians 2:1-3. NIV]

The “rebellion” (Gk apostasia), which literally means “departure,” “falling away” or “abandonment,” must come before the rapture of the church occurs and before the antichrist is subsequently revealed. The rebellion that occurs within the church will have two dimensions:

• Theological apostasy – People turning from and rejecting part or all of the true and original teachings of Christ and the apostles as recorded in the New Testament.

• Moral apostasy – People who have abandoned true faith in Christ may still claim to believe the right things and to accept the Bible’s teaching, yet they reject God’s moral law and standards. By doing so they corrupt and embrace the deception.[6]

The facts, narrative, and conclusions presented in Shepherds for Sale – How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda is abundant and undeniable evidence of the great theological and moral apostasy within a large majority of the leadership of the American evangelical church, many of whom have become wolves, cowards, mercenaries, and fools.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:
[1] Megan Basham, Shepherds for Sale – How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, (New York: Broadside Books, 2024), p. xviii.
[2] Ibid., p. xix.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., p. xxi.
[5] Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, (Arcadia, California: Focus on the Family, 1984),
[6] Donald C. Stamps, Commentary and Articles, Fire Bible: Global Study Edition, New International Version, Ed. Donald C.Stamps, (Springfield, Missouri: Life Publishers International, 2009), pp. 2322-2323.

The failure of Western liberal ideology

Posted by :webmaster On : January 20, 2017
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Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars, Humanism, Progressivism

Nothing has exposed the falsity of the reigning humanist-progressivist worldview and its tenets of tolerance, multiculturalism, and diversity in Western civilization as has the massive flood of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to Europe. The same is occurring to a lesser extent along America’s porous southern border. Floods are destructive, but a steady flow of unpolluted water is crucial to sustain a beautiful and bountiful land. Is the analogy of the hydrology of water and the occurrence, flow, movement, and distribution of immigrants into a country not accurate?

One is not anti-immigrant to want an orderly, lawfully conducted immigration process that respects the existing citizens of a nation whether they were natural born or properly immigrated and assimilated. Progressivist policies that fail to stem the continuing surge of large numbers of illegal immigrants were one of the greatest flashpoints of conflict in the campaigns of the two aspirants for the presidency in 2016. These progressivist policies undermine American society because they reflect a failure to understand the true meaning and importance of culture.

There is a ceaseless struggle between a culture’s will to survive and the agitant of modernist pluralism. Pluralism, rightly defined, is “a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization.”[1] [emphasis added] But modern progressive definitions of pluralism have attempted to displace the general synthesis of values in America, that is, its central cultural vision. Humanistic forms of pluralism attempt to supersede and thereby shatter the confines of a common civilization through imposition of perverse definitions of tolerance, multiculturalism, and diversity in all spheres of American life.

Progressivist tolerance

Progressivism’s idea of tolerance is a consequence of the humanistic doctrine of cultural relativism. But how does one order a society if it is culturally relativistic, that is, what anchors its beliefs and welds together a cohesive society? Humanists claim that order is achieved by a tolerance that requires a suspension of judgment as to matters of truth and beliefs with regard to moral judgements of right and wrong since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all the truth. In such a progressivist view, a strong belief in anything becomes a desire to impose those beliefs on other people which translate into loss of freedom. It is humanism’s values-free approach which must ultimately deny any absolutes. Through the humanist understanding of toleration comes liberty by preventing the development and promotion of strong beliefs.[2]

One dictionary’s definition of tolerance is “…the allowed deviation from a standard.”[3] This definition implies a standard by which to measure the value of other cultures as well as a limit to the extent to which deviation from the prevailing culture’s standard will be allowed. However, this definition violates the humanistic understanding of tolerance which suspends all judgement as to standards of truth and morality.

Progressivist multiculturalism

Progressivist ideas of multiculturalism closely mirror its rationale for tolerance which is based on a relativistic, values-free society and a denial of absolutes. Multiculturalism is a humanist doctrine that came into vogue during the late twentieth century. As humanists see it, morality shouldn’t be imposed by religions or legislated by governments. Rather, the alternative is to develop civic and moral virtues in accordance with humanist doctrine by means of moral education.[4] As a result the humanists’ doctrine of multiculturalism has spread throughout the educational system in America. Humanist educational elites believe that America has been too immersed in Western “Eurocentric” teachings to the detriment of other cultures. It has been their goal to redirect the education curriculum toward various counterculture teachings (i.e., Afrocentrism, humanistically defined feminism, legitimization of homosexuality, and radical doctrines such as neo-Marxism) that challenge the “white, male-dominated European studies.” But a closer examination of the humanist agenda reveals that multiculturalism is not intended to supplement but rather to supplant Western culture that is so steeped in Christianity.[5]

Progressivist diversity

Humanism’s diversity is a close kin of multiculturalism and focuses on the differences within society and not society as a whole. With emphasis on the differences, mass culture becomes nothing more than an escalating number of subcultures within an increasingly distressed political framework that attempts to satisfy the myriad of demands of the individual subcultures. There is a loss of unity through fragmentation and ultimately a loss of a society’s central cultural vision which leads to disintegration. Humanism’s impulse for diversity is a derivative of relativism and humanism’s perverted concept of equality.[6]

The meaning and defense of culture

Once again we must turn to Richard Weaver for his brilliant insights into the meaning of culture and its defense against becoming syncretistic (a culture that attempts to mix or combine different forms of belief or practices).

It is the essence of culture to feel its own imperative and to believe in the uniqueness of its worth…Syncretistic cultures like syncretistic religions have always proved relatively powerless to create and to influence; there is no weight or authentic history behind them. Culture derives its very desire to continue from its unitariness…There is at the heart of every culture a center of authority from which there proceed subtle and pervasive pressures upon us to conform and to repel the unlike as disruptive…it must insist on a pattern of inclusion and exclusion…[It is] inward facing toward some high representation…Culture is by nature aristocratic, for it is a means of discriminating between what counts for much and what counts for little…For this reason it is the very nature of culture to be exclusive…There can be no such thing as a “democratic” culture in the sense of one open to everybody at all times on equal terms…For once the inward-looking vision and the impulse to resist the alien are lost, disruption must ensue.”[7]

The essence of a culture may be described as a general synthesis of values common to a group’s vision of the world, that is, the way things ought to work. Every culture has a center which commands all things. Weaver called this center imaginative rather than logical and “…a focus of value, a law of relationships, an inspiring vision…to which the group is oriented.” The foundation of the cultural concept is unity that assumes a general commonality of thought and action. A unified culture requires a center of cultural authority from which radiates a subtle and pervasive pressure to conform. The pressures to conform may range from cultural peer pressure to moral and legal restraints. Those that do not conform are repelled of necessity. Thus, in any culture there are patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Without such patterns, the culture is unprotected and disintegrates over time.[8]

There is an inherent tension between the exclusivity demanded by culture and progressivism’s doctrines of tolerance and its corollaries of multiculturalism and diversity. Tolerance suggests acceptance and inclusiveness while exclusivity implies segregation and denial. By segregation is not meant segregation within a culture but between cultures. The culture that values its central vision welcomes integration of diverse groups that share or at least respects that culture’s common central vision. Because of such diversity, a culture becomes a stronger.[9] It is in the humanistic definition of pluralism in which cultures are prone to failure because the central cultural vision becomes fragmented as the values-free central cultural vision does not provide the cohesion necessary for survival.

By its very essence, culture must discriminate against those outside its boundaries that do not share or respect its central vision. A culture must believe in its uniqueness, worth, and the superiority of its worldview. To attempt to meld together or comingle multiple cultures into one culture with multiple centers of vision is to create a powerless culture with little influence and place it on the road to disintegration. By definition, culture must be an inward-looking vision and resist the alien. Without such is a loss of wholeness, and a culture’s cohesiveness dissolves into chaos as its various parts drift into orbits around parochial interests and egocentrism.[10]

Failure of Western liberal ideology

There is hope that Western civilization is awakening to the real and looming dissolution of its respective cultures because of decades of dominance by liberal elitists who promote a humanistic culture and impose policies in support of that worldview.

In the evening of December 19th, a terrorist hijacked a truck and ran over and killed twelve people and injured forty-eight more at a Christmas market in Berlin. Patrick Buchanan wrote of this tragedy and points out that it was merely the latest of a decade of similar attacks in London, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, and Berlin. Buchanan wrote that the responsibility for the attacks can be laid at the door of Western liberal ideology which is says is the ideology of Western suicide.[11]

…the peoples of Europe seem less interested in hearing recitals of liberal values than in learning what their governments are going to do to keep the Islamist killers out and make them safe…Liberals may admonish us that all races, creeds, cultures are equal, that anyone from any continent, country, or civilization can come to the West and assimilate…But people don’t believe that. Europe and America have moved beyond the verities of 20th century liberalism…Only liberal ideology calls for America and Europe to bring into their home countries endless numbers of migrants, without being overly concerned about who they are, whence they come or what they believe.[12] [emphasis added]

Buchanan rightly identifies the first duty of government is to protect the safety and security of the people. But the responsibility for our present peril in the West goes beyond a failure of government to protect its people. It is the failure of the peoples of Western civilization to defend their respective cultures from the false claims of those holding and promoting a humanistic view of the world. The rapidly approaching demise of the Western ethic can be stopped and reversed. It will not be quick, easy, or painless, but we have no choice other than to battle this menace if we care about what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “pluralism,” Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pluralism (accessed December 29, 2016).
[2] M. Stanton Evans, The Theme is Freedom – Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994), pp. 40-42.
[3] “tolerance,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publisher, 1963), p. 930.
[4] Paul Kurtz, Toward a New Enlightenment – The Philosophy of Paul Kurtz, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994, p. 101.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity –The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, LLC, 2011), pp. 188-189.
[6] Ibid., p. 398.
[7] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 10-12. Originally published by Louisiana State University Press, 1964.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., pp. 11-13.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Patrick J. Buchanan, Patrick J. Buchanan – Official Website, December 22, 2016.
http://buchanan.org/blog/europes-future-merkel-le-pen-126291 (accessed January 4, 2017).
[12] Ibid.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part III

Posted by :webmaster On : March 6, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

We ended Part II with the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as to the importance of interpreting the Constitution according to its plain meaning and intent of the authors. George Washington also wrote of the importance of adhering to the prescribed methods for changing the Constitution.

If, in the opinion of the people…the constitutional powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; though this in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”[1] [emphasis added]

Joseph Story was the leading Constitutional scholar of the nineteenth century and in 1833 wrote in Commentaries on the Constitution that the Constitution “…was to be understood in terms of its plain, commonsense meaning” and must not be changed by the caprice of men.

The reader must not expect to find in these pages any novel construction of the Constitution. I have not the ambition to be the author of any new plan of interpreting the theory of the Constitution, or enlarging or narrowing its powers, by ingenious subtleties and learned doubts…”[2]

For 150 years original intent was the courts’ coin of the realm when interpreting the Constitution. But that dramatically changed in 1947. The beginning of that change occurred seventy-seven years earlier when Christopher Columbus Langdell became president of Harvard Law School in 1870 and developed the theory of legal positivism which was adopted and applied by other leading lawyers and jurists that followed him including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.[3] Since 1947, legal positivism has replaced original intent as the standard for interpreting the Constitution. The essence of the theory is summarized as follows:

1. There are no objective, God-given standards of law, or if there are, they are irrelevant to the modern legal system.

2. Since God is not the author of law, the author of law must be man; in other words, the law is law simply because the highest human authority, the state, has said it is law and is able to back it up by force.

3. Since man and society evolve, therefore law must evolve as well.

4. Judges, through their decisions, guide the evolution of law (Note again: Judges “make law).

5. To study law, get the original sources of law – the decision of judges; hence most law schools today use the “case law” method of teaching law.[4]

The Founding fathers including those who drafted the Constitution held a biblical worldview. In this worldview, eternal truths were revealed to man by God through his creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians. In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, laws of nature from which it can never depart. However, man was His special creation and was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic and timeless, and are essential elements needed to provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These truths are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms.[5]

These absolutes became the basis for American law and were expounded upon by men such as William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Law of England. Blackstone wrote:

This law of nature…directed by God Himself…is binding in all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.[6] [emphasis added]

The American Constitution’s biblical origins and the Founders’ unbending devotion to original intent in its interpretation were hindrances to the proponents of legal positivism. In his book The New Freedom, Woodrow Wilson disparaged the Founders’ notions of original intent and argued that progressives should be allowed to apply the Darwinian principle in interpreting the Constitution.

And they [the authors of the Constitution] constructed a government…to display the laws of Nature…The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of “checks and balances.” The trouble with this theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin…Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men…Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of Life, not of mechanics, it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development,” “evolution,” “is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.[7]

Wilson’s profoundly humanistic understanding of man jettison’s the Founders’ concern for the universal wickedness of fallen man and therefore dispenses with the need for those pesky “checks and balances” so important to the Founders. The Darwinian understanding of man is that he basically good and ever progressing. Therefore, as men and society evolve, so must their constitutions and laws.

Not content with a fluid interpretation of the Constitution to meet the needs of an evolving society, there is a new breed of activist judges that have gone beyond legal positivism to legal realism. Such realists are using the legal system to promote their own ends while using positivism as the “basis for denying divine law and/or natural law.” Judicial realism is another name for judicial usurpation of legislative power. Legal realists such as Charles Evans Hughes, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during most of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, believe that, “We are under a constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”[8] Put another way, judges don’t just interpret the meaning of the Constitution; they decide what they believe the Constitution ought to say. They become social policy makers who craft decisions based on what they think as opposed the wishes of the people and their elected representatives. Prophetically, Thomas Jefferson warned of such an activist judiciary, “The Constitution… is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”[9]

The basis for liberals’ plea for separation of church and state rest only on eight words taken out of context in 1947, but they are now used to blast any hint of America’s Godly heritage from every facet of American society. Theirs is not a true separation of church and state but creation of an invisible church subservient to the state. However, the history and importance of separation of church and state is far longer and greater than its misapplication to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The separation of the spiritual realm from the secular was instituted by Christ. The separate but complementary roles of church and state were designed and ordained by God. Therefore, the battle is not merely between church and state but just one battle on the far larger battleground of humanism versus Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the renowned German theologian who was martyred for his stand against Nazism, called humanism “the most severe enemy” that Christianity ever had.[10]

The sad state of American jurisprudence with regard to a real separation of the dual realms of church and state occurred because of two major failures by the Christian church in America. We shall call the first failure an abandonment of the public arena which occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the rise of the “social gospel.” The social gospel movement started within the church but was used by secularists for left-wing social reform. Fearing a gospel of “salvation by works,” many conservative and evangelical churches developed a “ghetto mentality,” backing away from society and burying themselves in prayer, Bible study, converting the lost, and personal morality and holiness.[11] But in doing so, they also became the silent church that also buried its responsibility to be salt and light to the government and culture at large. [See: Matthew 5:13]

The second failure of the church in maintaining the dual realms of church and state we shall label as acceptance. Contemporaneous with the abandonment of the public arena by conservative and evangelical churches in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many mainline churches felt the effects of a loss of cultural authority as secular humanism advanced on the coattails of science and rationalism. In order to retain a measure of cultural authority and acceptance in the face of humanism’s onslaught, mainline Protestant leaders began embracing secular human sciences to lend credibility and cultural relevance to the tenets of their religion.[12] But such acceptance brought compromise of its creedal doctrines which resulted in a profane and powerless church that had lost its saltiness, “…no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” [Matthew 5:13b. RSV] And because of the church’s abandonment of society or the compromise of its message, the humanistic worldview reigned supreme and subsequently spread into every facet of culture.

The leaders and many of their bureaucratic subordinates in the institutions of American life now present what appears to be the face of an almost invincible monolithic humanism. In the presence of such a daunting challenge, Christians and others in America may ask how society can return its laws and Constitution to reliance on the original intent of the Founders when the rules for interpreting and enforcing those laws and the Constitution are made up by judges as they see fit to protect and promote their humanistic worldview. Our first priority is to correctly identify our adversary. The Apostle Paul paints a vivid picture of the enemy and his lair. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.” [Ephesians 6:12. RSV]

Even though it is a spiritual battle in this life and the heavenlies, we are not meant to be mere uninvolved spectators banished to the sidelines by a hostile society. In this earthly life, Christians are His “boots on the ground,” and our marching orders are to actively spread salt and light into all arenas habited by a lost and dying world.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution-The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1987), pp. 392-393.
[2] Ibid., p. 393.
[3] Ibid., p. 394
[4] Ibid.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 392.
[6] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1-Book I & II. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1910) p. 27.
[7] Eidsmoe, p. 390. Quoting: Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, (New York: 1914), pp. 44-48.
[8] Ibid., pp. 395-397.
[9] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), p. 195.
[10] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 85.
[1] Eidsmoe, p. 407.
[12] Johnson, p. 252.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part II

Posted by :webmaster On : February 27, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

1947 was a busy, exhilarating, and optimistic year in America. The final days of World War II ended sixteen months earlier with the defeat of the Japanese Empire. Miracle on 34th Street was playing in the movie houses across the nation, and a solid-state semi-conductor called a transistor was invented in the Bell Laboratories. An unknown object crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. Thousands of former soldiers and sailors were in their second year of a G.I. Bill-financed college education, and the first Boomer generation children were barely over a year old.

But in 1947, many Americans also sensed an increasing undercurrent of unease and foreboding. The post war euphoria was short-lived as 1947 was the beginning of the four-decade long Cold War with the Soviet Union. The two superpowers were now separated by the “Iron Curtain,” so labeled in March 1946 by Winston Churchill in his famous speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The West was being challenged by an aggressive Soviet Union and a monolithic block of “satellite” states under soviet domination, eastern European countries formerly under the control of Nazi Germany. The House Un-American Activities Committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist influence and propaganda within the Hollywood motion picture industry.

Amidst the tumultuous events of 1947 there was also one little-noticed occurrence—a seemingly insignificant ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that would eventually have a monumental impact on the course of religious liberty and freedom of speech for almost seven decades lasting to the present day. Known as Everson v. Board of Education, the case revolved around the authorization by the Ewing Township School Board for reimbursement of parents for fares paid for the transportation by public carrier of children attending public and Catholic schools. The school board made the authorization pursuant to a New Jersey statute authorizing district boards of education to make rules and contracts for the transportation of children to and from schools other than private schools operated for profit. Therefore, parents of children attending not-for-profit Catholic schools qualified for reimbursement under the New Jersey statute.[1]

In a 5-4 opinion, Justice Hugo Black spoke for the majority of the Court in their finding that upheld the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals’ decision which struck down the New Jersey statute:

No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between church and State.” Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 98 U. S. 164.

… The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. New Jersey has not breached it here.[2] [emphasis added]

The particulars of the case were relatively unimportant except to Plaintiff Everson and the citizens of Ewing Township, New Jersey, but the larger ramifications of the decision would spread into almost every facet of American society by overturning one-hundred fifty years of legal precedent, legislative actions, and its citizens’ quiet enjoyment of their religious liberties. The Court’s decision was contrary to the intent of the Founders with regard to the Establishment Clause and the meaning of Jefferson’s metaphor in his January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.

The Establishment Clause derives its name from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[3]

The First Amendment protections for religious liberty were extremely important to the citizens of the newly-formed nation. In England, the established state church had been an onerous foe of those whose religious beliefs differed. Facing religious oppression in Europe, the original colonies were primarily founded by those seeking religious liberty. By the 1760s, the colonists had experienced this freedom of religion for almost one-hundred fifty years, but in those final years before the Revolution, they received a rude reminder of former times of religious oppression by one denomination over another when King George III appointed an Anglican bishopric to oversee the religious affairs of Puritan New England—the very reason the Puritans had left their homeland.[4]

At the time of the writing of the Constitution in 1789, although the states encouraged Christianity, no state allowed an exclusive state-sponsored denomination. A dozen years after the drafting of the Bill of Rights which included the First Amendment, rumors still circulated that the new American government would designate a state-authorized denomination. These rumors were so prevalent that the Danbury Baptist Association wrote to President Jefferson about their concern that a particular denomination would be established as the official denomination. It was in this context that Jefferson wrote to the Baptists at Danbury, Connecticut, to assure them that the rumor had no basis in fact. In an attempt to assuage their fears, he said,

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions—I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.[5] [emphasis added]

Jefferson’s belief that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal government’s establishment of a national denomination is confirmed by his letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, a fellow-signor of the Declaration of Independence.

[T]he clause of the Constitution which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States…especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes and they believe…any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly.[6] [emphasis added]

Jefferson’s metaphor of “a wall of separation” meant only the establishment of one particular denomination as the state-authorized denomination. Also, Jefferson’s wall was intended to be a one-way wall to protect the church from the state and not the other way around. But modern court rulings have perverted the original intent of the Establishment Clause to allow, in their own words, the construction of a “high and impregnable” wall between church and state.

The Supreme Court’s Everson decision divorced the First Amendment from its original intent and “…reinterpreted it without regard to either historical context or previous judicial decisions.”[7] In effect, the Supreme Court took eight words from Jefferson’s letter to the Baptists out of context and used them without support of sound judicial precedent to dramatically diminish religious freedom in the United States. Subsequently, the ruling has been used for additional judicial chicanery by the proponents of a humanistic worldview to systematically and completely remove religion and especially Christianity from all spheres of American public life.

Jefferson would have strenuously objected to the 1947 Supreme Court’s departure from original intent with regard to the First Amendment as can be seen in his admonishment to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson.

On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.[8]

James Madison’s regard for the importance of original intent also mirrored Jefferson’s beliefs.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful, exercise of its powers…What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense.[9] [emphasis added]

In 1947, the Supreme Court produced Madison’s dreaded metamorphosis as original intent was dumped for modern invention. As the Establishment Clause has been reconstructed by the Court’s Constitutional revisionists, the illegitimate modern interpretation of Jefferson’s wall of separation produces the same consequences as Churchill’s infamous Iron Curtain—the suppression and ultimate destruction of religious liberty.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] The U.S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, No. 52. Decided February 10, 1947.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/330/1/case.html (accessed February 5, 2015).
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Constitution of the United States of America, (Washington, D. C.: National Archives and Records Administration).
[4] M. Stanton Evans, The Theme is Freedom, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994), p. 217.
[5] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), pp. 51-52.
[6] Ibid., p. 51.
[7] Ibid., p. 27.
[8] Ibid, p. 28.
[9] Ibid., p. 28.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part I

Posted by :webmaster On : February 20, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

Ask the average American to define the meaning of the oft-repeated phrase of “separation of church and state” and usually you will receive a blank stare. Following a brief pause, they may start giving examples like: “It means we can’t have prayer in schools.” “The government can’t sponsor any event that is connected with a church.” or “The Founders wanted to keep church and faith out of government.” If one follows up with a question as to the origins of “separation of church,” answers will include: “It was invented by Thomas Jefferson.” “It is part of the Declaration of Independence.” “It was established by the Supreme Court.” And a few will identify its source as the U.S. Constitution.

Not only are most Americans substantially ignorant of our nation’s history, they are grossly uninformed about the form and operation of American government. What little understanding of government they have usually originates from listening to the nightly news, political pundits, Hollywood and media celebrities, Internet headlines and sound bites, and an educational system vehemently opposed to the central cultural vision of the Founders. Few concepts within American governance are so important and so misunderstood as that of separation of church and state.

The original Constitution was signed by Congress on September 17, 1787 and subsequently ratified by the states. The Bill of Rights was adopted by Congress on September 26, 1789 and became part of the Constitution when Virginia became the tenth state to ratify the Amendments on December 15, 1791.[1] The First Amendment reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[2]

The Founders were strong proponents of separation of church and state. But the confusion as to its meaning over the last seventy years derives from the modern revisionists’ misrepresentation of the Establishment Clause as opposed to those who argue for the original intent of the Founders that had been observed by custom and the courts for over 150 years.

It is clear from the words and actions of the Founders that the intent of the Establishment Clause was to prohibit government from establishing one denomination as the official or preferred church. Modernists have reinterpreted the Establishment Clause to be a separation clause that effectively purges any hint of religious activity and influence in the public square which has come to mean any of the spheres of American life.

To understand the concept of separation of church and state and why the Founders so valued it, we must look back in history. The idea that a group of people bound by a religious allegiance with its own history, beliefs, and traditions could exist within a society but remain independent of the governing political entity was a concept unknown to the ancients. This radical concept that a distinction must be made between the roles of church and state arose from Christianity at its very birth.[3] It was evident in Christ’s challenged to the politically-connected religious leaders (Pharisees and Herodians) when they attempted to entrap Him with questions as to man’s loyalty to man or God. “Then he said unto them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’” [Matthew 22:21a. RSV]

For the next three hundred years the church fathers maintained this separation but endured severe persecution as a consequence. In 313 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, but he soon began intruding in church affairs. In 353-356, Hosius, bishop of Cordoba, Spain, reprimanded one of Constantine’s three sons (Emperor Constantius II) for intruding in church affairs by attempting to get Western bishops to oppose Athanasius of Alexandria for supporting those who rejected the Arian heresy. Hosius invoked Christ’s words in Matthew 22:21 which were preceded by a warning to the Emperor. “Intrude not yourself into ecclesiastical affairs…God has put into your hands the [secular] kingdom; to us [bishops] He has entrusted the affairs of His church.”[4]

Because of Constantine’s legalization of Christianity and in spite of the church’s early resistance to government interference, the church began a thousand year period in its history when church and state were intertwined to varying degrees. At the beginning of this period, government attempted to interfere with and bend the church to its will. However by the Middle Ages, it was the church who attempted to bend government to the will of the church. This was a corruption of God’s design for each realm.[5]

Out of the mixing of church and state came abuses such as the Crusades and the Inquisition. In spite of their motives to further His kingdom, the church had violated God’s plan because Christianity is not a religion that can coerce faith for it is a matter of the heart.[6] This intermingling of the spiritual and secular realms corrupted the roles of both church and state. A few men such as John Wycliffe and John Huss in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries recognized this corruption and called for changes in the church which was in dire need of fundamental reform. They also recognized that such reform would only occur with the recognition that the Bible was the final arbiter of faith and not the church.[7] These early stirrings of reformation exploded in the early sixteenth century when Martin Luther nailed his ninety five theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. The turmoil within the church produced one of the doctrinal pillars of Protestantism–the priesthood of the believer.

Alvin Schmidt presents an excellent summation of Martin Luther’s understanding of the distinct roles of the two realms in the early sixteenth century.

He [Luther] especially criticized the papacy’s role in secular government, seeing it as violating what he called the concept of the two kingdoms (realms). It was the church’s task solely to preach and teach the gospel of Jesus Christ…the government’s task was to keep peace and order in society by restraining and punishing the unlawful. The secular government can only compel people to behave outwardly; it can never make a person’s heart spiritually righteous. Only the preaching of the Gospel (the spiritual realm) can do that. In the spiritual realm the Christian functions as a disciple of Christ; in the secular realm he functions as citizen. Although the two realms are separate, the faithful Christian is active in both because God is active in both. In the spiritual realm he is active in proclaiming the gospel, whereas in the secular kingdom he is active by means of the law and the sword, or government.[8]

The early colonists and their descendants still had fresh memories of the church-state conflagrations that swept Europe in the century prior to their first arrivals on the eastern shore of America. They well understood the need for separation of church and state, but that separation was a freedom of religion and not a freedom from religion as interpreted and imposed by modern Constitutional revisionists. For the colonists and Founders, separation of church and state was an institutional separation and not an influential separation. Institutional separation meant that government has certain roles and duties in which the church must not interfere (keeping peace and order in society by restraining and punishing the unlawful by means of the sword). Yet, the church has every right and duty to influence government. Likewise, the government does not have the right to interfere with the roles and duties of the church (teaching and preaching the gospel and influencing society).

There are numerous documents that attest to the Founders’ sentiments of the right of the church to influence society. Perhaps one of the best examples of the attitude of the Founders was expressed by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (appointed by James Madison, the fourth president and delegate to the Constitutional Convention which speaks volumes about Story’s understanding of the Founders’ meaning and intent with regard to the Constitution and its Amendments). Speaking specifically of the Establishment Clause, Story wrote:

…We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general and especially to Christianity which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution…Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and of the Amendments to it, the general, if not universal, sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State…An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation (condemnation), if not universal indignation.[9]

To confirm the continuing existence of this strong religious sanction that still held sway over the nation forty years after the Constitutional Convention, we look to the words of Alexis De Tocqueville’s 1835 Democracy in America, one of the most influential political texts ever written about America.

Americans so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive the one without the other…

In France I had seen the spirit of religion moving in the opposite direction to that of the spirit of freedom. In America, I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land.[10]

Tocqueville went on to say that the peaceful influence exercised by religion over the nation was due to separation of church and state.[11] Unlike the modernists’ separation of church and state, Tocqueville’s separation was a separation of the spheres of power and not a separation of government from ethics and moral guidance supplied by the moral suasion of Christianity and the church.

The Founders did not prohibit but encouraged the church’s influence upon government, and for one hundred fifty years the church played a vital role in helping the state be the state by continually asking if the state’s actions were justified as a legitimate fulfillment of its role. Since 1947, the courts have sided with the modern Constitutional revisionists who deny the church has a right to influence the state and society in the public square. This denial is the subject to be discussed in Part II.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Michael Kammen, ed., The Origins of the American Constitution – A Documentary History, (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. xxix.
[2] The Constitution of the United States of America, (Washington, D. C.: National Archives and Records Administration).
[3] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), pp. 265-266.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., p. 266.
[6] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), p. 86.
[7] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1964), pp. 143-145.
[8] Schmidt, p. 266.
[9] David Barton, The Myth of Separation, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 1989), p. 32.
[10] Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 343, 345.
[11] Ibid, p. 345.

Gridlock – Governmental stalemate arising from a deeper cultural divide

Posted by :webmaster On : December 5, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Constitution, Government, Progressivism

Gridlock is a favorite bogeyman of journalists, columnists, and commentators in recent years, especially following national elections. They may as well save their breath and barrels of printer’s ink for the political divide has never been wider and deeper. Perennial prescriptions of non-partisanship and cooperation disappear as quickly as the morning mist following Election Day. One must ask if political polarization always results in gridlock which is shorthand for the inability of government to govern effectively. A cursory review of American history reveals many times of intense polarization, but the country and its government survived. Why was that possible then and not possible now? An examination of one of the defining moments in our nation’s history suggests an answer.

The fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention had labored through the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. Their efforts to draft a constitution for the fledgling nation were floundering and near failure amidst bitter debate and hostile feelings. On June 28th, eighty-one year old Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet and addressed General Washington who served as Convention president and the other 54 delegates. Here we recite only portions of this perhaps nation-saving speech.

Mr. President:

The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other—our different sentiments on almost every question…is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding.

In this situation of the assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding?

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God Governs in the affairs of men…

We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages…I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business…[1]

Franklin noted on the bottom of his copy of the speech that the convention, except for three or four, thought prayers were unnecessary.[2] But he was wrong. Jonathan Drayton, delegate from New Jersey, reported the response of the convention.

The Doctor sat down; and never did I behold a countenance at once so dignified and delighted as was that of Washington at the close of the address; nor were the members of the convention generally less affected.[3]

Upon motion of James Madison, seconded by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Franklin’s appeal for prayer was approved by the delegates who further voted that at the request of the Convention a sermon be preached on July 4th and thereafter prayers be used in the Convention every morning.[4]

On June 30, two days after his speech, Franklin would help set in motion events that would break the impasse and ultimately help shape the new nation.[5] John Drayton noted a profound change in the convention as they assembled on July 2nd. “We assembled again; and …every unfriendly feeling had been expelled, and a spirit of conciliation had been cultivated.”[6]

The entire delegation assembled at the Reformed Calvinistic Church on July 4th to hear a sermon preached by Reverend William Rogers. Rogers prayed that the delegates would be favored “…with thy inspiring presence, be their wisdom and strength; enable them to devise such measures as may prove happy instruments in healing all divisions and prove the good of the great whole…” He closed with, “May we…continue, under the influence of republican virtue, to partake of all blessings of cultivated and Christian society.”[7] God answered Rogers’ request. On September 17, 1787, the delegates approved the Constitution of the United States of America. This was not the first of many instances of God’s providence in the founding and preservation of the nation amidst polarizing events and difficulties including the greatest threat of all—the Civil War that divided the nation not only politically but also divided families and friends.

In reality, the political divide in the nation’s first 150 years was probably more dramatic then than it is today. So what makes modern political divisiveness more intractable than that of our forebears?

The fundamental divide in America goes far deeper than mere political polarization and gridlock. This divide is the result of the ascendance of a humanistic worldview that believes that “change and progress are the law of life.” To maintain progress, America must be unshackled from the past. On the other side of the divide are those who are concerned with the nature of man and values.[8] It is on this side we find the central cultural vision of the colonial Americans, the Founders, and most Americans since then.

The collective consciousness of those early Americans was essentially Christian in the way they saw the world. Man was fallen but redeemable. Their values were fixed by timeless truths found both in the natural law and the revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians. Even though Franklin and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were mired in deep philosophical disagreements regarding the details of founding a nation, the Christian worldview held by virtually all of the delegates defined their basic beliefs and informed their deliberations which made possible compromise and success in creating a document that reflected their understanding of timeless values and the nature of man.

For those who believe that change and progress are the fundamental forces for directing life, it is essential that the Founders’ central cultural vision and values be discarded. In their central cultural vision, man is not fallen. He need not look to any god or the supernatural for solutions to his problems for those solutions come only through man’s reason and scientific advancement. As man progresses, values must change to reflect the times and accommodate current attitudes and situations.

The problem with the worldview of progress and change is that it violates the essential requirements that define a viable and sustainable culture. The essence of culture is to give allegiance to a center of authority that reflects moral codes and laws whereby it enforces what it believes is right and good for society. In other words, a culture must have a unifying central vision of how things ought to work, what’s important, its moral values, and what must be included and what must be excluded from that culture.

The progressive view of culture is essentially disintegrative because it has no unifying, cohesive central vision for it, by definition, produces multiple centers of cultural vision. Progressives attempt to create coherence and cohesiveness among these multiple centers of vision by substituting falsely defined concepts such as diversity, equality, and other egalitarian ideals as the cultural center of authority. However, these concepts do not resonate with man’s innate understanding of truth and freedom and fail to answer the basic questions of life. Therefore, these humanistic concepts inevitably lead to tensions and frictions, are inherently divisive, and result in cultural disintegration.

These tensions and frictions are most evident in the modern political arena and result in gridlock. Present day political polarization has become insurmountable because the conflict flows from fundamental differences in our basic beliefs that can’t be compromised without destroying who we claim to be as individuals and as a nation. And it is in these basic differences of belief that we see the flashpoints in the culture wars which include abortion, same-sex marriage, and homosexuality.

For over 150 years America overcame its political polarization and gridlock because its citizens and leaders were guided by a single cultural vision. Now, many of the leaders in the nation’s spheres of influence adhere to and promote a humanistic view of life in which God is a myth and man is the master of his own destiny. From such beliefs come political solutions that conflict with the central cultural vision that has been held by most Americans for three hundred years (colonial Americans, Founders, and most citizens since then). And without the cohesive and coherent central cultural vision of the Founders, there is no firm foundation upon which America’s leaders can overcome political polarization and gridlock. In Franklin’s words, they have become “the builders of Babel.”

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc.1996), pp. 248-249.
[2] Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin – An American Life, (New York, Simon & Schuster), 2003), p. 452.
[3] Federer, p. 249.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Isaacson, p. 452.
[6] Federer, p. 250.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 4-5.

Progressive view of American history: The good old days were all bad.

Posted by :webmaster On : October 31, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Education, Progressivism, Truth

There seems to be few things that are exempt from the battlefields of the culture wars. The latest casualty is history…you know, the stuff that is learned in high school or at least what people used to learn in high school. But the history lessons taught in American schools for 200 years following the founding has been dumped by the education establishment in recent years. American history is no longer the grand story of American culture since the arrival of the first Europeans but has become a tool to promote the liberal political/cultural agenda. The nation’s history recorded by each generation’s citizens and eye-witness historians is an accurate record of America’s story. But now we have the latest two or three generations which claim the five hundred years of American history recorded by thousands of historians over the period is distorted and not reflective of the real story. Therefore, it must be trashed and replaced by a revised interpretation of history consistent with the current enlightened understanding of what really happened.

This approach to history is not new for it has been around since the early 1800s. It is called the Whig theory of history and is also known as the Progressive theory of history. This theory rests on the belief that the most advanced point in time represents the point of highest development. It assumes “…that history is an inevitable march upward into the light. In other words, step by step, the world always progresses, and this progress is inevitable.” [1] Thus, the historical record must be judged only in light of current beliefs, assumptions, and politics, all devoid of timeless truths, wisdom accumulated through the ages, tradition, and heritage. The roots of the Whig theory reach back to the humanistic concept of human perfectibility of the French philosophers which arose during the Age of Enlightenment during the eighteenth century. Known as progressivism, the theory contradicts the Christian view of man as having a fallen nature.

The progressive theory of history is alive and well in the twenty-first century halls of academia and the organizations that serve its needs. One of those organizations is the College Board whose membership is comprised of 6,000 institutions of higher education. Its mission is to expand access to higher education by helping students to achieve college readiness and college success through such programs as the SAT and the Advanced Placement Program. The organization also acts in areas of research and advocacy for the education community. [2] It is in the College Board’s new Advance Placement course in history that dramatically advances the progressive view of history and which has caused considerable concern to many including the Texas State Board of Education and the Republican National Committee as well as some of the more conservative members of the Golden, Colorado school board.

The school board wants to review the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. history course which they believe contains significant anti-American content. The school board proposed to establish a committee to review texts and course plans to assure the course materials were balanced and “promote more citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights” and “don’t encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard for the law.” [3]

Now, who could argue with teaching that promotes a good citizenship and patriotism in a well-ordered and lawful society? Well, hundreds of students, parents, and teachers are bothered by such radical ideas and have been protesting the school board’s planned review for weeks. The protesters claim the board is attempting to change the course content to suit their views (what about the views of the people that elected them?). The College Board’s Advanced Placement history course content being taught for the first time this school year “gives greater attention to the history of North American and its native people before colonization and their clashes with Europeans, but critics say it downplays the settlers’ success in establishing a new nation.” The College Board stated that the course was built “around themes like ‘politics and power’ and ‘environment and geography’.” However, what is missing from the course framework is as significant as that which is included. For example, Martin Luther King isn’t mentioned, but the Black Panthers are. The Board explained that the content was not to be considered exhaustive, but one New Jersey teacher cut to the heart of the College Board’s unspoken agenda. He argues that the course “…has a global, revisionist view” and “depicts the U.S. as going from conquering Native Americans to becoming an imperial power, while downplaying examples of cooperation and unity.” [4]

To a large extent, Americans are a people that are ignorant of their history. Because they don’t know where they came from, they are unaware of the dangers into which the dominant humanistic worldview is leading America. This was not always so, and it has occurred by design and not by accident or neglect. The teaching of history falls within the sphere of education, and education has been in the hands of progressives for a hundred years. Of all of the institutions of life in America, the educational establishment is the one that is most saturated in the humanistic worldview which stands in direct opposition to the biblical worldview upon which the nation was founded.

The founder and architect of America’s progressive education was John Dewey who was bitterly hostile to Christianity and traditional Western thought. Dewey did not believe in the existence of God, supernatural religion, and life after death. Man was an evolutionary product and nature is all there is. The only thing that mattered was human self-realization through interaction with nature. On this foundation he built the progressive theory of education which emphasizes experience, observation, social responsibility, problem solving, and fitting in to society as opposed to centuries of traditional education by which is meant the acquisition of knowledge. [5] For progressives, the historical record holds little importance as a guide to the present and future unless it is used as the “horrible example” of America’s past sins for the purpose of leading ignorant citizens to surrender their values and freedom. From this denigration of American history, we see the obvious disconnect between progressive education and the traditional understanding of that history. If one holds the progressive view of history, the views of the present generation must be superior to those of past generations and by default superior to their concepts of timeless truths, ancestral wisdom, tradition, and heritage. In this denigration of America’s past, the progressive theories of education and history support and promote the larger all-encompassing philosophy of humanism which has been described in several earlier articles.

Ashley Maher is an eighteen year old Chatfield High School senior who helped organize the protests against the Golden school board’s plan to review the content of the Advance Placement history course. She assures that, “We are going to fight until we see some results.” [6] By “results,” it must be assumed she means that the school board’s desire to promote citizenship, patriotism, the free-market system, respect for authority, respect for individual rights, civil order, national unity, and respect for the law will be duly censored from any Advance Placement American history courses in Golden’s high schools. It would be interesting to hear Ms. Maher’s response to the question as to why her values and interpretation of American history are superior and should be taught while at the same time suppressing and/or misrepresenting the factual historical record about which she knows nothing. Following that moment of silence from Ms. Maher, it is also doubtful her parents or her Boomer grandparents peopling the picket lines could give a coherent, logical answer. Should they manage some sort of response, we counter with the words and actions of those eye-witnesses to American history: the Pilgrims and Puritans; colonial farmers and frontiersmen; Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, and the rest of the founding generations; Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln, the Doughboys of WWI and soldiers, sailors, and airmen of WWII, and millions of others who made America the greatest nation in the history of the world. For most modern-day Americans of the last three generations, it would be an answer they have not heard thanks to humanism’s revisionist view of American history and suppression of the historical record of our ancestors.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Murray N. Rothbard, “The Progressive Theory of History,” Ludwig von Mises Institute, September 14, 2010. http://mises.org/daily/4708 (accessed October 28, 2014).
[2] College Board, https://www.collegeboard.org/about (accessed October 14, 2014).
[3] Colleen Slevin, “Colorado board backs review of curriculum,” Tulsa World, October 3, 2014, A9.
[4] Colleen Slevin, “Critics slam school board over history course review,” Tulsa World, October 4, 2014, A4.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 23-24, 289-290
[6] Slevin, “Critics slam school board over history course review,” A4.

Shake and Bake History – Engineering the future while forgetting the past

Posted by :webmaster On : August 1, 2014
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Category: Archives, Education, Progressivism, Worldview

Two recent syndicated newspaper columns contained two views of history that frame the two worldviews contending for dominance in the nation’s central cultural vision—humanism and Christianity. The first was written by David Turnoy, a retired elementary teacher and author.[1] Mr. Turnoy is a proponent of ‘honest” history of the warts and all variety with a strong emphasis on the warts. Turnoy’s article is peppered with numerous phrases descriptive of the humanistic worldview, and some of his quotes will help understand that worldview.

For any progressive student or observer of history, it is well-known that the United States has a mixed record in its treatment of Native Americans, African Americans, women and other groups, including some especially cruel treatment…So what information should be taught? Should it be the traditional bland summary showing America as always in the right, led by truly admirable heroes who bring about change while leaving out any negative actions, which leads to disinterested, unquestioning citizens who allow government and other elites to do as they like? Or should it be a more balanced, honest approach?…If we want a better country with more equality and justice, this is where it starts.[2] (emphasis added)

To summarize, it appears that Turnoy believes that traditional history lessons will be bland summaries if not focused on the negatives and therefore produce disinterested and unquestioning citizens who are unconcerned about equality and justice. Turnoy assumes his approach is more balanced and honest. We will examine how Turnoy’s “honest and balanced” approach really plays out in the American education system dominated by a humanistic worldview.

A contrary view is held by Daniel Burnett who believes that there has been a “…growing trend in historical illiteracy for years, and the culprit is our nation’s education system…it fails to prepare students with the knowledge they’ll need for informed citizenship.” Quoting various research studies on knowledge of history in America, Burnett reported that only five percent of the top fifty public universities in the U.S. required even one survey course on American history. Most college and university curricula require only niche courses to take the place of American history courses. He cites several examples: “Foundations of Rock,” “Human Sexuality,” “History of Avant-Garde Film,” and “America Through Baseball.” Burnett believes that the American education system has produced a population of illiterates and amnesiacs as it relates to the nation’s history.[3]

One must ask why there is such an aversion to teaching American history in primary and secondary schools and at colleges and universities. Turnoy argues that history teachers are not honest with regard to America’s failures. Burnett cites the educational system’s focus on niche courses and a failure to teach a comprehensive history of the nation. Both points of view are a result of the educational system’s dominant humanistic worldview and its aversion to the lessons of the past.

American education’s humanistic worldview

The American education system is extremely humanistic in its worldview, teaching, policies, practices, and course content. The great architect of engineering the future through education without a historical foundation was John Dewey. Dewey was “…recognized as the leader of the ‘progressive movement’ in education.”[4] (emphasis added) His educational philosophy, writings, and twenty-five years at Columbia University dramatically shaped the educational system in the U.S. from the early years of the twentieth century until the present day. His philosophy was centered on humanistic concepts of man with regard to his origins, purpose, and future. Dewey had a substantial disdain for historical influence, tradition, patrimony, and religion (particularly the Christian worldview), all of which were noticeably absent in his development of American education’s modern paradigm.[5] The progressive movement in education resulted in faculty hostility to the courses and fields of study that examine the traditional roots of Western civilization and American institutions. Turnoy’s sought after “honest and balanced” presentation of history has been cast aside in favor of indoctrinating American students with a humanistic worldview.

Humanism’s aversion to history

In the humanist worldview history is excess baggage that must be tossed to make way for new, bold, and progressive ideas. Therefore, humanists subscribe to the Whig theory of history which states that the most advanced point in time is the point of its highest development. This fits nicely with humanists’ progressivism whose foundation is the Enlightenment belief of the perfectibility of man, a “…belief that critical and autonomous human reason held the power to discover the truth about life and the world, and to progressively liberate humanity from the ignorance and injustices of the past.”[6] Those holding the humanistic worldview eliminate the traditional historical narrative of America unless that narrative can be sifted and parsed to present selected evidence of America’s supposed widespread historical inequality and injustice.

Rob Koons, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas, has called the modern American university’s array of unconnected courses the Uncurriculum. Koons describes the Uncurriculum as a smorgasbord approach to curriculum offerings whose design usually exhibits a general lack of required courses, structure, and systematic order in meeting core course requirements for liberal arts studies.[7] From such comes a citizenry that is profoundly illiterate with regard to America’s story and the reasons for its preeminence among the past and present nations of the world.

The story of America

America cannot be understood without a comprehensive historical narrative. Such a narrative reveals that America’s founding originated from a biblical worldview that runs through the history of Western civilization since its inception. One cannot understand America by substituting a shake and bake curriculum that substitutes courses such as “America Through Baseball” or “History of Avant-Garde Film” for traditional comprehensive history courses that present the matchless story of America.

Russell Kirk expressed the true ideal of education.

True education is meant to develop the individual human being, the person, rather than to serve the state. In all our talk about “serving national goals” and “citizenship education”—phrases that originated with John Dewey and his disciples—we tend to ignore the fact that schooling was not originated by the modern nation-state. Formal schooling actually commenced as an endeavor to acquaint the rising generation with religious knowledge: with awareness of the transcendent and with moral truths…to teach what it is to be a true human being.[8]

Writing of the humanistic view of education, Richard Weaver’s words capture the goal of such education. “The student is to be prepared not to save his soul, or to inherit the wisdom and usages of past civilizations, or even to get ahead in life, but to become a member of a utopia resting on a false view of both nature and man.”[9]

It is safe to say that the great majority of modern Americans do not understand the true story of America and its institutions. Turnoy and Barnett’s prescriptions to achieve an informed citizenry with regard to American history follow starkly different avenues. Turnoy’s humanistic education model has ruled for the better part of a century and has utterly failed. Barnett offers hope that a return to telling the comprehensive though politically incorrect story of America will result in an informed and politically adept citizenry.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] David Turnoy, “When can we introduce children to honest history?” Tulsa World, June 8, 2014, A14.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Daniel Burnett, “Historical amnesia: Let us never forget D-Day,” Tulsa World, June 6, 2014, A14.
[4] Robert B. Talisse, On Dewey, (Belmont, California: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2000), pp. ix, 1, 4.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 23-25.
[6] Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 54.
[7] Johnson, p. 300.
[8] Russell Kirk, The Essential Russell Kirk, ed. George A. Panichas, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2007), p. 400.
[9] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 117.

Liberalism explained

Posted by :webmaster On : May 2, 2014
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Category: Archives, Government, Progressivism, Socialism

To understand the origins of the pervasive humanism and secularization that blankets modern America, particularly as it affects government, we must examine the rise of liberalism. Liberalism is the political legacy of the Enlightenment, a skeptical and revolutionary cultural tradition that emanated from eighteenth century Western Europe and “…promoted the belief that critical and autonomous human reason held the power to discover the truth about life and the world, and to progressively liberate humanity from the ignorance and injustices of the past.” [1]

This new understanding of what freedom meant and how it was to be achieved was more practical than idealistic and resulted in a major paradigm shift. The new freedom proposed that man should be happy on this earth, a new concept invented in the eighteenth century. However, the emphasis on this new freedom unhooked from tradition became an attack on the Church and then religion itself. [2] The fundamental difference between liberalism spawned by the Enlightenment and the Judeo-Christian ethic revolves around a disagreement on the end purpose of man. The Enlightenment’s humanism says, “The end of all being is the happiness of man.” But Christianity says, ‘The end of all being is the glory of God.” [3]

Before we proceed, we must distinguish between what Robert George calls “old-fashioned liberalism” of the American Founding and the Constitution as opposed to “contemporary liberalism.” Liberalism of the Founding era was one “…of religious freedom, political equality, constitutional democracy, the rule of law, limited government, private property, the market economy, and human rights.” [4] Contemporary liberalism and liberals are of a wholly opposite variety which

…defend large-scale government-run health, education, and welfare programs. They support redistributive taxation policies. They favor affirmative action programs for women and minorities and call for the revision of civil rights laws to prohibit discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” They may support the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex relationships. They certainly support legalized abortion and the government funding of abortions for indigent women. They oppose the death penalty. [5]

Professor George’s “old-fashioned liberalism” is one and the same as F. A. Hayek’s “true liberalism” in the original nineteenth century sense and the opposite of the contemporary liberalism in which “…liberal has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control.” As a result, many old-fashioned liberals began describing themselves as conservatives. [6] Conservatism will be examined in the next article. For our purposes, when we speak of liberalism we refer to a contemporary understanding of liberalism which emphasizes extensive state control in all aspects of society.

As the powerful forces of Enlightenment liberalism rolled across the Atlantic from Western Europe during the nineteenth century, the Protestant establishment and the nation experienced significant inroads of secularization between 1870 and 1930. Out of that struggle a tenuous compromise occurred between evangelical Protestant Christianity and Enlightenment liberalism. The American Christian church, already divided by denomination, region, race, ethnicity, and class, would split again into fundamentalists and modernists between the late nineteenth century and the mid-1920s. Amid the rising skepticism, positivism, and Darwinism emanating from Enlightenment liberalism, the new liberal and modernists Protestant leaders chose survival through accommodation with the adversary and their doctrines of Science, Progress, Reason, and Liberation. But this compromise would only forestall the approaching “…final dominance of Enlightenment moral order in the public square and the relegation of Christian and other religious concerns to private life” that has gained increasing momentum since the 1930s. [7]

By the 1930s, liberalism’s eventual domination of the moral order was assured. As the nation wallowed in the depths of the Great Depression, liberalism used the economic crisis to advance its political agenda. Beginning in 1936, the Supreme Court’s liberal interpretations of the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution have dramatically enlarged the powers of the federal government, diminished the rights of states, and encroached on fundamental property rights through its welfare programs. [8] This liberal interpretation significantly expanded what the legislature could do with regard to providing for the “general welfare” of the United States. The results of the liberal interpretation of the “general welfare” clause is an unprecedented assault on right of private property through imminent domain laws, a diminution of the right of contract and obligations thereunder, an oppressive income tax system, and the onerous limitations on the possession and use of property through regulation. [9]

To give a clearer understanding of liberalism’s secular political ideology, we must examine its signature postulates.

Progress – The liberal mantra is progress, ever onward and upward to a better society, perhaps even a utopia. Man is not fallen but basically good and therefore perfectible. Progress also implies movement, change, and challenge to the status quo. Yet, as the liberal marches boldly into the future, he has become a prisoner of time, perhaps more precisely a prisoner of the moment. Truth becomes relative. Search for an enduring order fails as one’s worldview constantly changes bringing disquiet to the soul and society. Progress, being oriented to time, fails to apprehend those timeless truths that bring order to the soul. [10]

Change – The liberal’s chant for change is a matter of principle and reflects a doctrinaire hatred for permanence. But what is the liberal’s answer as change upon change only compounds the lack of rootedness? Change requires movement, but movement doesn’t always mean progression. The promises of progress ring hollow in light of rising social disorder. [11]

Individual – Liberalism exalts the individual with a resulting self-centeredness; hence, selfishness becomes virtue. For the liberal, community is secondary to a pervasive individualism where individual, personal rights are supreme. Duty and obligation to clan and community are consigned to the dustbin of a foolish and irrelevant past. Yet, there appears a fundamental conflict in the statements of humanists with regard to the individual and the larger society, and such conflict cannot be hidden by fuzzy and euphemistic definitions extolling the dignity of the man and the cherishing of the individual. Under the humanist philosophy it is evident that the individual must be subordinate to the good of all humanity, and it is the leaders of the state that determine the definition of what is good. This subordination of the individual is confirmed by terms such as “greater good of all humanity”, “obligation to humanity as a whole”, and “contribute to the welfare of the community.” Ultimately the designated elite of society rule as they see fit and do so without regard to the individual. [12]

Liberty – Liberalism’s new freedom centers on the individual and is superior to the other two requirements of a civil society—Justice and Order. As to the individual, humanists promise a freedom from the mores, norms, tradition, and distant voices of the past by which humanity has achieved a measure of civilization. The freedom espoused by the humanist is a freedom that gives unbridled control to the self and senses and ultimately leads to bondage. However, for all of man’s time on this earth this personal license has been the path toward disaster. To believe that such personal freedom will lead to the greater good of mankind is folly for man is a fallen creature, and he cannot lift himself by pulling at his own bootstraps. [13]

Liberalism is the child of humanism, and the inevitable destination of liberalism is socialism. Socialism breeds disharmony and erodes the foundations of a civil society. Socialism leads to a leveling of society with resulting declines in quality of life, standards of living, a loss of trust in government and its institutions, and ultimately a loss of freedom.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: The University of California Press, 2003), pp. 53-54.

[2] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 693.

[3] Paris Reidhead, “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” Remnant Resource Network. http://remnantradio.org/Archives/articles/Ten%20Shekels/tenshekels.htm (accessed December 18, 2010).

[4] Robert P. George, The Clash of Orthodoxies, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2001), p. 232.

[5] Ibid.

[6] F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom – Text and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1944, 2007), p. 45.

[7] Smith, pp. 52-55, 58, 66-67; Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 213-214.

[8] W. Cleon Skousen, The 5000 Year Leap, (www.nccs.net: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1981), p. 175; Johnson, Ye shall be as gods, p. 249.

[9] Johnson, Ye shall be as gods, p. 249.

[10] Russell Kirk, The Essential Russell Kirk – Selected Essays, ed. George A. Panichas, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, p. 26; Johnson, Ye shall be as gods, pp. 215-216.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

Progressivism’s Fatal Flaw

Posted by :webmaster On : August 16, 2013
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Category: Archives, Progressivism

Liberalism as we know it came of age in the nineteenth century and was a product of the Enlightenment, that skeptical and revolutionary humanistic cultural tradition that emanated from eighteenth century Western Europe which “…promoted the belief that critical and autonomous human reason held the power to discover the truth about life and the world, and to progressively liberate humanity from the ignorance and injustices of the past.” [Smith, p. 54.]

For the humanist-liberal-progressive, man is continuously perfectible, a process whereby he will become progressively better and better. Progress is possible because man is not fallen and does not need redemption. Therefore, humanists assert there is no limit to the perfecting of the powers of man other than the duration of the globe upon which nature has spawned us.

Progressives believe that through human reason alone, truth about life and the world can be discovered and pave the way to liberate humanity from ignorance and injustice. How is this to be achieved? Perfect justice, prosperity, and equality are possible if enlightened elites are given the power to organize and run society according to scientific knowledge about human nature and behavior.

Therefore, in the humanist worldview, the liberation of humanity from ignorance and injustice rests on three assumptions:

• Power must be surrendered to the elites to organize and run society. This is achieved through socialism and big government based on man’s laws.

• Reliance on reason and scientific knowledge alone. There is no room for a supernatural God or His laws.

• Man’s nature is basically good and therefore perfectible.

But the liberal chant of progressivism is a flight from reality. If reality is objective truth (and it is), then progressivism is a lie. The humanistic worldview’s pillars of human reason, scientific advancement, flawed understanding of human nature, and organization of society contrary to man’s innate thirst for freedom crumble under the weight of objective truth.

Denial of the progressive’s assumptions does not mean that those with a Christian worldview are unprogressive or deny the value of progress. They only assert that the source of that improvement must come from God and not man. And this improvement must first occur within the individual as he orders his soul by returning to a right relationship with God. For those that look to those universal truths revealed by the Creator in his creation and the biblical revelations to order their souls, they neither progress nor regress but move to the center. It is a matter of being, not becoming. As like-minded citizens order their souls accordingly, order comes to society.

Those holding the biblical worldview focus on the eternal beyond time—not regressing nor progressing in an ever frustrating march to some unknown, unknowable, and unattainable destination. The progressive labors on the treadmill of time, always moving but never arriving at his destination for the goals of infinite progress always recede into the future and therefore are never attainable. In fact, the goals of such progress are not even identifiable apart from the pliable platitudes of the current conditioners of society. For the progressive, time and matter are paramount, but such are rudderless, temporal, and pass away. However, the things of the highest value rest with eternal truths, and without eternal truths man becomes purposeless.

The progressive may even equivocate that although the goal of perfectibility of the human condition will never be attained (something not admitted), the process of self-improvement is still worthwhile and thereby mankind will become better and better. However, an understanding of human nature and history defeats this assertion. Civilization is an intermittent process with some cultures descending from a high state of organization to dissolution. History is replete with societies that achieved great stature in past eras only to fall to ruin—Egypt, Greece, Venice, and Germany to name a few.

In modern times the humanistic worldview in organizing society continues to fail—the greatest example being the socialistic variant of communism in the twentieth century. There is an intimate relationship between the communist ideology espoused by Karl Mark and humanism with regard to the nature of man, the non-existence of the Creator, and the need for a socialistic form of organizing society run by the elites. Both had their roots in the eighteenth century Enlightenment philosophy. Marx’s ideas presented in The Communist Manifesto ultimately were responsible for the enslavement of a third of humanity for three-fourths of the twentieth century, the consequences of which were failure, misery, and death unparalleled in the history of mankind. So we see that regardless of the era examined, the humanistic philosophy fails to sustain its promise of infinite progress and perfectibility of man.

To summarize, the humanistic formula for the perfectibility of man is this: the innate goodness of man + progress over time = perfectibility of man. But the fatal flaw of progressivism in achieving perfectibility of man is that he has a fallen nature, and no amount of psychologizing or social engineering will change that truth.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 103, 213, 219-220, 387.

Christian Smith, The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 54. Quoted in Ye shall be as gods, p. 213.