Writing in the 19th century, Henry Buckle put together a three-volume History of Civilization in England (1869). Buckle was no friend of Christianity, and was happy to witness its demise in his time. But his observation as to the cause of the decline of the influence of Christianity is rather revealing. Speaking of the decline of ecclesiastical power and the emergence of what he called “religious liberty”, he made these comments:
Among the innumerable symptoms of this great movement, there were two of peculiar importance. These were the separation of theology, first form morals, and second from politics. The separation from morals was effected late in the seventeenth century; the separation from politics before the the middle of the eighteenth century. And it is a striking instance of the decline of the old ecclesiastical spirit, that both of these great changes were begun by the clergy themselves. . . . Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, was the first who laid down that the state must consider religion in reference, not to revelation, but to expediency; and that it should favour any particular creed, not in proportion to its truth, but solely with a view to its general utility. . . .
Thus it was that, in England, theology was finally severed from the two great departments of ethics and of government. . . [1]
The loss of freedom we are witnessing is not for lack of speaking. The books, articles, speeches, and sermons on what is wrong, or warning us against evil, can fill libraries, and they have done us little good.
Men are not saved by talking, nor by warnings, nor by endless fact-finding investigations. Many women believe that they can save their husbands by nagging them. Salvation by nagging is a modern article of faith, and more than women believe in it. On all side of the political fences, in Congress, through the pulpit, school, and press, the basic presupposition seems to be a very simple one: people can be saved if they are nagged enough.
Few ideas are more ridiculous and yet more popular. What nagging involves is a faith in ourselves, in the power of our arguments to save. Therefore, we talk on and on, hoping we will eventually be heard and salvation brought forth.
The Bible makes clear that salvation is the act of God and His sovereign grace. Our response to God’s grace cannot be a wind of words but active obedience. “[F]aith without works is dead” (James 2:26). As our Lord expressed it, “[E]very good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit” (Matt. 7:17).
Our problem today is not a lack of people speaking out, but a lack of people with faith, bringing forth the fruit of faith.
This quotation from:
[The following essay was written in 1991 by Matthew Hodge, then aged 13. The essay was the winning entry in an American essay competition sponsored by “Families for Life” and “Kids for Life.” The competition
was open to all ages under 18, and the topic was chosen by the sponsors. Matthew is the eldest of five children, and the son of Ian and Jessie Hodge. He is now married and has three children of his own to teach these principles.]
Society is facing many problems. We have dilemmas such as violence, juvenile delinquency, bad education, unemployment, inflation, debt, abortion, and other issues like this. Many of these could be solved if we had good Christian families doing what the Bible says to do.
For example, education is one area that we are having a lot of trouble with. Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld, author of “Alpha-Phonics” and “How to Tutor” was a guest in our home recently. He was telling me about the high rate of illiteracy in the public schools. That is because there is no phonics-based teaching program. In public schools they teach children to read by looking at the picture and trying to guess. There are other problems, too, such as drugs, violence, and humanistic teaching.
All these bad situations could be prevented if parents would do what the Bible says and teach their children God’s law. The Bible teaches us how we should live each day, and what we should and should not do.
STEP ONE: ELIMINATE MASCULINITY IN THE CHURCH
I’ve a confession to make. If you’re like me, you go to church, sing some hymns or spiritual songs, listen to a sermon, listen to someone else pray (except when you’re in a church that allows congregational participation) then go home and forget the experience.
Take this morning for example. The song leader extols the virtues of “He loves me” repeated many times. Now you could be forgiven for making a mistake on the meaning of these words if you did not realize the “he” meant Jesus. Otherwise it sounds just like any other romantic song.
And there, in the midst of the regular Sunday worship service, we sing and hear of the feminization of the culture — starting first in the church.
Ann Douglas, in her provocative book, The Feminization of American Culture, had this to say about Christianity and how churches were feminized. The hymns played an important part. After pointing out that “In Puritan days, congregations chanted ‘hymns’ which were drawn from the psalms,” Douglas comments that one of the problems of this was it “necessitated a certain disrespect for easy comprehensibility” (p. 217).
STEP TWO: FEMINIZE THE CULTURE WITH MUSIC
In the first part of this discussion topic, I highlighted the feminization of culture with hymns. Here, I want to look at music.
If your life is similar to mine, then we’ve both spent an awful amount of time trying to make up for a bad education. Public schooling was my background. It was not good. Here’s why. Being hostile to Christianity, public school secular education left out anything that might point to God. That, according to St. Paul in Romans chapter one, is most of the creation.
Now it is through the arts that the secularization and feminization of culture has received one of its strongest influences. I was never taught this at school, though. Based on faulty philosophy and faulty conclusions, education began the “dumbing down” process which continues today.
Consider this:
Step 3: USE MUSIC FOR THE MORAL REVOLUTION
In this series on the feminization of culture, I’ve wanted to get you thinking about communication. In particular, communication with music.
First, I highlighted how hymns were used to help eliminate a rigorous intellectualism in the church and replace it with a more emotional environment.
Second, I drew your attention to how music is an important ingredient in communication, and how we can contradict ourselves by having the wrong music with the right words.
One composer who understood this was Richard Wagner. Remembered often because his music was popular with German Nazism, it is also important to remember what Wagner contributed to musical development in another way. He contributed to a moral — better known as an anti-faith — revolution with his particular style of music.
Step 5: RADICALLY CHANGE THE THEOLOGY
This piece of historical information should get your mind racing!
In trying to understand the cultural changes of recent centuries, one has to look at religion. “Culture,” as Henry Van Til argued, “is religion externalized.”
Step 4: Preach Psychology Rather Than Theology
If you want to radicalize the church and feminize it, there is not much left to do after you’ve replaced the Psalms with hymns and accompanied the hymn with 19th century romantic style music.
A remaining task is to feminize the preaching, and that’s pretty easy to do. Now I happen to think there is a place for women in the church, and there’s even a teaching role for them. But, if only women do the teaching, you can be certain that some things in the Bible will be left out.
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When you speak of Christian culture, what do you mean? What do you understand by the idea of Christian culture?
There is a tendency by many to think of Christian culture in terms of things: movies, art, music, business, money, economy, property rights, and so forth.
In the past, however, when Christianity did influence the culture, it had an advantage. The key elements of Christianity were constantly a reminder to the people, not just through the implementation of music, art, literature, and law, but through a series of events that spread throughout the calendar year.
I’m referring to the Christian calendar. This created what Robert Webber calls “Christian-year spirituality”. According to Webber,
Through Christian-year spirituality we are enabled to experience the biblical mandate of conforming to Christ. The Christian year orders our formation with Christ incarnate in his ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and coming again through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. In Christian-year spirituality we are spiritually formed by recalling and entering into his great saving events (Ancient-Future Time, p. 22).
Now when was the last time you had a Christian-year calendar that recalled the major events of God’s saving work through Christ, and participation in that and his future as King of kings, and Lord of lords?
If a Thief Hands You Stolen Money, What Should You Do?
Returning to Australia from time to time, I was soon reminded of many of the issues that dropped out of sight while living in America.
At the top of the list is the Australian concept of socialism. Socialism is the idea that the government takes control of all resources within the nation and allocates them in some fashion. Frederick Hayek drew the distinction between communism and socialism when he observed that in communism, the government owns everything and allocates according to government plan. Under socialism, ownership remains in the hands of individuals, but the government determines the allocation of the privately-held resources. The Australian government pretends it is neither socialistic nor communistic. But as Ludwig von Mises argued so clearly, the middle-of-the-road policy is the road to full socialism. You cannot control part of the economy without controlling all of it.
The key issue here is one of ownership and the meaning of the idea of ownership. “Thou shalt not steal” establishes the right of private ownership, ownership being the right of dispossession. This is the key. If you cannot dispose the things you own in the manner in which you would like, you don’t own the thing. Whoever controls the dispossession is the real owner, even though there may be official papers giving title to the individual.
In the modern world, it is taxation, perhaps more than anything else, that determines the biblical framework of ownership. The government not only takes for itself the right to tax, but it also allocates to itself the right to determine how much tax it might be entitled to. This is important because it raises the question of property ownership in money. It doesn’t exist any more. But it did exist at one time, when the Bible provided the prevailing philosophy.
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