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Saving the Republic – The Second Great Awakening – Part II

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : December 27, 2013
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity

In Part I, we noted the ebb tide of religious fervor and an increase in secularism and irreligion following the American Revolution, especially in the decade of 1790s. The Constitution creating the United States of America had just been ratified in 1787 and the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Washington was President and there was an air of optimism regarding the nation’s future. But, at the same time morality at all levels of society was spiraling downward and threatened the survival of the young nation.

Following years of moral decline, the shameful debacle of the presidential campaign of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson illustrated the threat to the nation’s survival. Both candidates were vilified and slandered by their political opponents and operatives. Jefferson was accused of swindling clients as a young lawyer and charged with cowardice during his time as governor of Virginia. Pamphlets and newspapers called Jefferson a “…hopeless visionary, a weakling, an intriguer, intoxicated with French philosophy, more a Frenchman than an American…carried on with slave women…a howling atheist…” Adams was portrayed as being “…old, addled, and toothless…procuring mistresses… a vain Yankee scold, and, if truth be known, ‘quite mad’.” [McCullough, pp. 543-544.] Such was the political and immoral atmosphere that permeated the nation at the close of the century.

A society cannot avoid destruction if political ties are relaxed without a corresponding tightening of moral ties. [Tocqueville, p. 344.] The Political ties so painfully forged over a quarter century were in danger of permanently unraveling in the campaign wars of 1800 between the Federalist and anti-Federalist partisans. Destruction of the new nation was imminently possible without a corresponding tightening of moral ties. The republic had to be saved.

Thirty-one years following the end of the eighteenth century, a young Frenchman of the aristocracy traveled extensively in America and subsequently wrote of his impressions. Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America has been called 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…

On my arrival in the United States, it was the religious atmosphere which first struck me. As I extended my stay, I could observe the political consequences which flowed from this novel situation.

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. [Tocqueville, pp. 343, 345.]

How do we reconcile these two disparate pictures of America? Here we have a nation sinking into immorality—a cesspool of secularism, irreligion, political expediency, and debauchery following the Revolutionary War through the end of the century. Thirty-one years later Tocqueville described America as having a highly religious atmosphere in which the spirit of religion and freedom are inextricably entwined. Something must have happened to dramatically alter the course of the nation. We call that happening the Second Great Awakening.

In 1791, through the Union of Prayer that was begun with the efforts of William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliffe, and other church leaders, the Second Great Awakening began sweeping Great Britain. It was a New England Baptist pastor named Isaac Backus that played a pivotal role in igniting the Second Great Awakening in America. Backus was both a product of and participant in the Great Awakening led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Born in 1724, he began preaching in 1746, initially as a Congregationalist. Struggling with the issue of the incompatibility of infant baptism and salvation through grace, Backus and a number of his church members organized a Baptist church in 1756 at which he was the pastor for fifty years until his death in 1806. [McClymond, pp. 43-44; Johnson, p. 410.]

With spiritual conditions in America at their worst in 1794, Backus sent an urgent plea to pastors of all churches of every Christian denomination in America. His plea for prayer for revival was widely adopted, and a network of prayer meetings on the first Monday of each month soon led to revival. By 1800, revival had reached the western extremities of civilization in Logan County, Kentucky, if the wild and irreligious people of Rogue’s Harbour (as it was known) could be called civilized. Lawlessness was so rampant that local citizens formed themselves into regiments of vigilantes that fought outlaws, often unsuccessfully, to establish a measure of law and order for the settlements. It was here that Presbyterian minister James McCready settled and became pastor of three small churches. All through the winter of 1799, McCready and several of his congregants joined the national monthly Monday meetings to pray for revival as well as holding weekly Saturday evening to Sunday morning prayer meetings. Following months of prayer, revival came in the summer of 1800. The spiritual hunger was so great that eleven thousand came to a communion service. Overwhelmed, McCready called for help from all denominations. [Orr; Johnson, p. 410.]

Next came the famous Cane Ridge camp meeting in southern Kentucky during the summer of 1801. Six or seven ministers preached simultaneously from various points to reach crowds that were estimated to exceed 10,000. To give perspective to the significant size of the crowds, the largest city in Kentucky at the time was Lexington with a population of only 2,000. [Fishwick, p. 19; Johnson, p. 410.]

The Second Great Awakening provided spiritual and moral regeneration and initiated other civilizing influences on the young nation. These influences included popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, the modern missionary movement, and ultimately sowed and nurtured the seeds that led to the abolition of slavery. [Orr; Johnson, pp. 410-411.] Just as the Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible, it is also fair to say that the Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment that saved the new nation from political and moral destruction.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

David McCullough, John Adams, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 543-544.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 343-345.

Michael McClymond, ed., Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Vol. 1, A-Z, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 43-44

J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,” ochristian.com. http://articles.ochristian.com/ article8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010).

Marshall W. Fishwick, Great Awakenings, (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995), p. 19.

Saving the Republic – The Second Great Awakening – Part I

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : December 20, 2013
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity

“No country on earth was ever founded on deeper religious foundations,” wrote Sherwood Eddy in his 1941 The Kingdom of God and the American Dream. The persecuted refugees from Europe landed on the shores of a vast wilderness and established thirteen colonies, practically all on strong religious foundations, during the first decades of the seventeenth century to the first decades of the eighteenth century. The tremendous hardships, deprivations, and loss of life did not diminish their religious zeal and quest for religious freedom. They were the followers of Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Puritans and non-Puritans, Anglicans, separatists, Baptists, Quakers, and many others groups seeking religious freedom. The fruit of their efforts was a “priceless heritage” which they left for the Founders of America. In 1765, John Adams recognized this heritage when he wrote of the settlement of America, “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” [Eddy, pp. 76-77, 147.]

By the end of the 1600s and beginning of the 1700s, interest in the colonists’ hard-won religious legacy was eroding due to a decline of religious fervor and to a lesser extent because of the assault by the forces of deism and French rationalism. However, the decline of religious life in the colonies was dramatically reversed as new religious forces exploded on the scene in the 1730s. This formative event became known as the Great Awakening and was a major influence that crafted the worldview of the founding generation. [Larry Johnson, pp. 123-124.] Paul Johnson captures the importance of the Great Awakening in the founding of America.

…There was a spiritual event in the first half of the 18th century in America, and it proved to be of vast significance, both in religion and politics…The Great Awakening was the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible…The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event.” [Paul Johnson, pp. 109-110, 116-117.]

However, many any if not almost all of the early historians of the American Revolution gave little credit to religion’s role preceding and during the Revolution. Expanding on that assumption, many present-day historians generally believe that religion was displaced by politics as lawyers replaced the clergy as leaders which effectively “…secularized the intellectual character of the culture.” However, it was the dislocations caused by the war that affected the colonists’ church attendance, and it was natural that publications devoted to religious matters would be reduced considerably during the Revolutionary years as the pressing discourse on the war and political matters would take precedence and therefore gave an appearance that religious interest and fervor had subsided. With the decline of religion in the public arena during the revolution, historians have leaped to the conclusion that the American people were significantly less religious. This is a blatant misreading of the mood and character of Americans in the Revolutionary period. Protestantism in whatever form it took remained the principle means by which Americans perceived and explained the world and ordered their lives. [Wood, pp. 174-175; Larry Johnson, p. 131.]

A brief look at the growth in the number of churches during 1760-1790 refutes historians’ assertions that religion declined during the Revolutionary period. It is true that state-oriented churches declined or failed to gain during this period as the total number of all congregations doubled between 1770 and 1790. The Church of England-Anglican in the South and Puritan churches in New England accounted for more than forty percent of all American congregations in 1760 but declined to less than twenty-five percent by 1790. New denominations spawned by the Great Awakening were alive and well and growing—popular people’s churches including Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. The Baptists grew from ninety-four congregations in 1760 to 858 by 1790. During the same time period the Methodists grew from no adherents to over seven hundred congregations. Gordon Wood wrote of this period, “The revolution released more religious energy and fragmented Christendom to a greater degree than had been seen since the upheavals of seventeenth century England or perhaps since the Reformation.” Others would call the period a “…Revolutionary Revival.” [Wood, pp. 185-188; Eddy, p. 147; Larry Johnson, p. 132.]

History has proven that the years following protracted wars are generally periods of significant moral decline. This was true of the remaining years of the eighteenth century following the Revolutionary War (1776-1781). All denominations began to feel the effects of the war years, especially during the last decade of the century. [Larry Johnson, p. 132.]

The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennos, Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person in fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York…quit functioning; he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.”…Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.” [Orr]

The churches had become almost totally irrelevant in curbing the nation’s downward spiral into immorality. During the last decade of the century, out of a population of five million Americans, six percent were confirmed drunkards. Crime had grown to such an extent that bank robberies were a daily occurrence and women did not go out at night for fear of assault. [Orr]

Christianity at the universities was just as destitute. Students at Harvard were polled, and not one Christian was found. Two admitted to being Christians at Princeton while only five members of the student body were not members of the filthy speech movement of the times. Few if any campuses escaped the denigration of Christianity and general mayhem. Anti-Christian plays were presented at Dartmouth, a Bible taken from a local church was burned in a public bonfire, students burned Nassau Hall at Princeton, and students forced the resignation of Harvard’s president. Christians on college campuses in the 1790s were so few “…that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.” [Orr]

Yet, the last decade of the eighteenth century also saw the planting of seeds destined to flower as the Second Great Awakening.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), pp. 76-77, 147.

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. 123-124, 131-132.

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 109-110, 116-117.

Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 174-175, 185-188.

J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival, ochristian.com. “http://articles.ochristian.com/article 8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010).

Tis the Season for Secular Silliness

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : December 13, 2013
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Culture Wars, Humanism

Holiday letter to my secular humanist friends,

The first signs of the holiday shopping season peek from store shelves in September. October’s chill warns that Halloween nears. We must select a costume that tops last year’s. November heralds that most wonderful time of the year—Black Friday. But Oh My! What shall we do with December and that highly embarrassing “other” holiday? You know the one I mean. We once masked it by calling it Xmas. But the X could be misconstrued as a cross. And a cross can be associated with you know who, and that will never do. Now we call that “other” holiday by many names such as Winter Solstice celebration, Festival of Lights, and Winter Carnival. Those are so inclusive, so democratic…so…so generic. (I almost said ecumenical, but that sounds too religious.) With these new names, the holiday season can mean whatever one wants it to mean rather than have a religious meaning crammed down our throats each December. Why must we be subjected to those old-fashioned myths and fables that have lingered for two thousand years? We have Santa Claus!

But there are still millions out there who haven’t gotten the message. They are generally backward, unintelligent, and remain culturally insensitive unlike those of us who have progressed beyond those crude expressions of faith. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to join our shining, non-offensive, tolerant, all inclusive, sensitive secular society.

You hear those sentimental Christians whining every year at this time. They are always hiding behind the Constitution which they say guarantees their religious freedom. Well of course they have religious freedom as long as they don’t flaunt it in public!

We must be ever vigilant and ready to crush any efforts to return to those bad old days. Just a couple of years ago, a group of carolers singing at various businesses in a Silver Springs, Maryland, shopping center entered a U.S. Post Office also located in the shopping center. Dressed in period costumes reminiscent of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” they were only a few words into their first carol when the vigilant and brave Post Office manager rushed into the lobby to stop the indiscretion. “You can’t do this on government property,” the angry manager shouted. He ordered them to leave immediately because there was a Post Office policy prohibiting solicitation. They attempted to explain that they were going to all the businesses in the shopping center. But he would have none of it and insisted they leave in spite of boos from the patrons waiting in line. [Duffy] Even though there was no such policy, this Post Office manager should serve as a role model for that small minority of managers who aren’t so enlightened and have allowed caroling in their Post Offices. Fortunately, our government is filled with like-minded militant secularist bureaucrats rigorously defending society from such unauthorized merriment.

But we can never let down our guard. Just the other day the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives announced that its members would be allowed to use previously banned holiday greetings in official mailings to their constituents. Representative Candice Miller said, “I feel it is entirely appropriate for members of Congress to include a simple holiday salutation, whether it is Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and so on.” [Deaton] Shameful! How could these legislators abuse their franking privileges by including messages of Merry Christmas to thousands of their constituents? Such episodes tend to be contagious and must not be allowed to go unchallenged.

Such blatant relapses can cause others to become weak-kneed when banning Christmas from any public display or expression. One example is the Bordentown, New Jersey, Regional School District administration that had banned religious Christmas music at winter public school concerts effective as of October 18th. Less than two weeks later the superintendent backed down after national attention was focused on the school’s ban. The superintendent announced that the religious Christmas music would be allowed for now “…after reviewing additional legal considerations and advice on this matter and the expressed sentiments of the community at large…” However, she promised that, “…the school board will continue to examine the issue to determine how the policy will be handled in the future.” Of course it is always wise to impose these unpopular restrictions on a low-key basis. The school administration should have imposed the restrictions banning religious Christmas music in, let’s say, March. Once policies are established and in effect for a period of time, opposition to those policies can usually be attributed to a fringe element of religious fanatics bent on imposing their religion on others and which violates our constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. It doesn’t matter that the words “separation of church and state” aren’t in the Constitution; we know the Founders really meant freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion. You see, that Constitution thing can work both ways.

Wait a minute. I must go to the door. No, it can’t be! There are carolers out there singing religious Christmas songs and indiscriminately shouting Merry Christmas right there on the public sidewalk for everyone to hear. Where’s my cell phone? Hello! 911? Send the police. No, better yet send a SWAT team. We are having a major public insurrection right here in River City in direct violation of the Constitution. Hurry! There are children in the neighborhood being exposed to this brazen criminal activity!

I must go. I think I see one of my neighbors putting a nativity scene on his front lawn. Hmmm. Would that violation fall under the city’s building code or advertising ordinance? Where’s my cell phone?

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

J. P. Duffy, “Post Office Manager Throws Christmas Carolers Out into the Cold,” Family Research Council, December 12, 2011. http://www.frcblog.com/2011/12/post-office-manager-throws-christmas-carolers-out-into-the-cold/ (accessed December 10, 2013).

Chris Deaton, “Victory: House members no longer prohibited from saying “Merry Christmas” in official mail,” Red Alert Politics, December 4, 2013. http://redalertpolitics.com/2013/12/04/victory-house-members-no-longer-prohibited-from-saying-merry-christmas-in-official-mail/ (accessed December 10, 2013).

Billy Hallowell, “N.J. School District That Banned Christmas Music With ‘Religious Origins’ Backs Down,” The Blaze, November 6, 2013. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/06/n-j-school-district-that-banned-christmas-music-with-religious-origins-backs-down/ (accessed December 10, 2013).

Who owns the language?

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : December 6, 2013
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Category: Archives, Culture Wars, Truth

Sarah Palin spoke to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition on November 9th. Her views on the damaging effects of the burgeoning federal debt were well received by the conservative audience, but it provoked considerable hostility in the liberal media and in particular from MSNBC’s Martin Bashir. What especially provoked Mr. Bashir was Palin’s statement that the burgeoning federal debt would eventually result in a form of slavery for American citizens.

Now you know coming up, the other side will offer more of the same, more false promises, more free stuff, and the media, for all too long, will go along with it and all of the deception. What will you counter it with? It’s free stuff! It’s seductive. Why is it marketers use free stuff to bring people in? Free Stuff. It’s such a strong marketing ploy. The tool of free stuff is seductive.

Didn’t you all learn too in Econ 101 that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch? Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that note comes due…and this isn’t racist..try it, try it anyway…this isn’t racist. But it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due. Right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master because there is no plan, no plan coming out of Washington, D.C. to stop the incurrence of debt is there? All we’re hearing about is why we need to grow more debt. I believe that if you’re in a hole and you don’t want to be in that hole, quit digging. [Sarah Palin quotes from video excerpts, DesMoinesRegister.com]

Apparently Ms. Palin’s use of the word “slavery” in her analogy was judged to be incorrect as well as unauthorized by the speech police of the liberal establishment. Such was the magnitude of her offense that Mr. Bashir was compelled to respond a week later on his Friday MSNBC show’s “Clear the Air” segment. [Tommy Christopher]

Bashir called Palin America’s “resident dunce” and that her remarks were “scraping the barrel of her long-deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an attempt to sound intelligent about the national debt. Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that she should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history.”

To correct Ms. Palin, Mr. Bashir attempted to contextualize the horror of slavery by quoting from the diary of Thomas Thistlewood, an 18th century British overseer of a Jamaican sugar plantation. Bashir explained that Thistlewood recorded his brutality in a diary which included stories of forcing slaves to defecate and urinate on each other as a form of punishment.

Bashir ended his monologue by saying, “I could go on, but you get the point. When Mrs. Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate.”
After a firestorm of criticism over his remarks, Bashir apologized to Palin and his audience during his show on the following Monday.

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post thought Bashir’s attack on Palin was vicious and unwarranted but agreed with Bashir that the comparison of slavery and debt was inappropriate. Parker wrote, “…slavery merits its own place in America’s memory. To compare it to anything else, especially something as mundane as debt, is wrong on its face. Indentured servitude to China might have been a better choice for Palin…In Palin’s defense, she obviously meant no offense and the attacks in response have been so vicious that the attacks themselves are beyond comparison.” [Kathleen Parker]

What Parker is saying is that some words are so unique or one of a kind that they shouldn’t be used for comparison with other things. She includes words such as “slavery,” “Nazi,” and “Holocaust” in this category of untouchables when devising a simile—a comparison of two essentially unlike things with similar characteristics. (Liberal hypocracy in the application of this practice is abundantly apparent as they frequently affix the label of racism to almost anything which is in opposition to the liberal agenda as defined by the humanistic worldview.)

Well, let’s follow Palin’s analogy to its logical conclusion. Ultimately the free stuff funded by borrowed money must be paid for by someone—either now or in the future. If repayment is not made, the debt is restructured upon negotiated terms or foreclosure follows. When a nation nears default it attempts to renegotiate the debt with its creditors. This generally results in heavy taxation and significant curtailment of services to the citizens of the debtor nation. If a nation defaults on its debts, the population continues its slide into abject poverty over time resulting in life lived at or near subsistence levels.

So, may we not call excessive, onerous, and perhaps unpayable debt a form of slavery? One definition of slavery is that it is “drudgery, toil…submission to a dominating influence.” Ms. Parker would substitute servitude for slavery, but the dictionary lists servitude as slavery, “…the state of subjection to another that constitutes or resembles slavery or serfdom.” [Webster’s]

Liberalism is the precursor for socialism. But the altruistic and lofty goals of liberalism (including the free stuff) become somewhat tarnished when one examines a society under the growing influence of socialism in which freedom gradually erodes slavery. The European Union is a great example in which a number of its members are in severe economic straits (e.g., Greece and Spain) and beholden to the creditor nations. The solvent members of the EU now dictate the rules which have placed extremely painful financial burdens and restraints under which the profligate countries must live. In spite of protests and riots in Greece and other EU debtor nations, it certainly appears that, in the end, debtor members of the EU have submitted to the will of the dominating creditor nations, a situation which we have correctly defined as a form of slavery.

Therefore, it appears Sarah Palin accurately described the potential outcome of our growing national debt as analogous to slavery. But the Bashir-Palin war of words is merely a tempest in the cauldron of the culture wars.

Who owns the language?

Richard Weaver believed that “…a divine element is present in language. The feeling that to have power of language is to have control over things is deeply imbedded in the human mind.” The symbols of language are words, singly and collectively, through which we assign meaning and truth, and it is inherent in man’s nature to seek truth. This is frightening to liberals for in their worldview truth does not exist except as mere perception without fixed reference points. Thus, the liberal must harness, manipulate, and thereafter mold words to end polarity that arises from pursuit of objective truth which allows man to define what is right and wrong. [Weaver, pp. 148, 151, 153.] Hence, liberals attempt to own the language through imposition of politically correct concepts of appropriateness as well as prohibitions through “hate speech” laws as defined by the liberals.

In our modern age humanists have effectively used semantics to neuter words of their meaning in historical and symbolic contexts, that is, words now mean what men want them to mean. By removing the fixities of language (which undermines an understanding of truth), language loses its ability to define and compel. As the meaning of words is divorced from truth, relativism gains supremacy and a culture tends to disintegration without an understanding of eternal truths upon which to orient its self. [Weaver, pp. 151-153, 163.] In the battle of worldviews, certain words have gained power to obscure truth and history through the intrigues of humanist redefinition. Again, Richard Weaver is a master at describing the humanist protocol with regard to corrupting the language.

Just as soon as men begin to point out that the word is one entity and the object it represents is another, there sets in a temptation to do one thing with the word and another or different thing with the object it is supposed to represent; and here begins that relativism which by now is visibly affecting those institutions which depend for their very existence upon our ability to use language as a permanent binder. [emphasis added] [Weaver quoted by Curtis and Thompson, pp. 195-196.]

Liberals (the vast majority of whom hold the humanistic worldview) attack language in its historic and symbolic contexts in an effort to dislodge the generally conservative biblical worldview from America’s central cultural vision. Media shock troops are complicit in the efforts to discredit and immobilize the opposition (those holding the biblical worldview) through the devaluation of language. For those holding the biblical worldview, we must be vigilant in our endeavor to free language from its enslavement by liberals.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Jennifer Jacobs, “Palin compares federal debt to slavery at Iowa dinner,” Video excerpts, DesMoinesRegister.com, November 10, 2013. Quote from video clip. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20131110/NEWS09/311100047/Palin-compares-federal-debt-to-slavery-at-Iowa-dinner?Frontpage (accessed November 22, 2013).

Tommy Christopher, “Martin Bashir Says Someone Should Sh*t in Sarah Palin’s Mouth,” mediaite.com, November 15, 2013. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/martin-bashir-says-someone-should-sht-in-sarah-palins-mouth/ (accessed November 22, 2013).

Kathleen Parker, “Some things shouldn’t be compared,” Tulsa World, November 23, 2013, A-19.

“servitude, slavery,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963), pp. 793, 818.

Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 148, 151-153, 163.

George M. Curtis, III, and James J. Thompson, Jr., eds., The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 195-196.

Train up a child in the way he should go – Part II

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : November 29, 2013
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Category: Archives, Education, Worldview

Marriage, family, and home are necessary elements in the socialization of children. However, nurturing is the glue that must be added to this mix for socialization to occur. As we learned in Part I, conversations between parent or grandparent and child are a major part of nurturing. It is in such an environment that “socialization” takes place, that is, the generational transfer of moral and cultural values—our cultural inheritance.

But nurturing is very difficult in modern society as family members are rarely together for extended periods of time. The demands on families in a fast-paced, technologically driven, and rapidly changing society makes nurturing of children difficult at best. The difficulties expand considerably in households requiring two-incomes, particularly in a society dominated by a humanistic worldview focused on the individual as opposed to the biblical worldview which emphasizes relationships. For most Americans home has become merely a place to sleep and store stuff, and family members are reduced to tenant status where there is little mutual dependence, connection, or cohesiveness. [Johnson, Ye shall be as gods, pp. 336-337.] There is little if any time for conversations and other elements of nurturing, but time is the essence of nurturing.

The cultural and moral values of the colonists and America’s Founders were rooted in the biblical worldview. Regarding the education of children in this biblical worldview, parents are admonished “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” [Proverbs 22:6. KJV] The implication is plain that the primary purpose of a child’s training was transmission of cultural and moral values. This purpose is upheld by the words of Samuel Adams, known as the “Father of the American Revolution.” Adams instigated the Boston Tea Party, signed the Declaration of Independence, and served in both the Continental Congress and the U.S. Congress. His views on education paralleled those of many other Founding Fathers. [Federer, p. 21.]

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them to the study and practice of exalted virtues of the Christian System. [Federer, pp. 23-24.]

Until early in the twentieth century, transmission of parents’ cultural and moral values to their children was supported by the educational system and other institutions of American society such as religion, government, and popular culture in general. Beginning principally in the 1960s and 70s, the generational transfer of a family’s moral and cultural values to their children has been significantly hampered in two ways by the progressive education establishment.

Train children to have a humanistic worldview

First, the American educational system is totally immersed in the philosophy of John Dewey that purveys the humanistic worldview which stands in opposition to the Founders’ central cultural vision based on a biblical worldview. John Dewey was a signor of Humanist Manifesto I in 1933, and his humanistic philosophy and worldview have saturated substantially all of American education.

Robert J. Roth describes Dewey’s philosophy as one of naturalism in that…“man with his habits, institutions, desires, thoughts, aspirations, ideals, and struggles is within nature, an integral part of it…and insists…on man’s continuity with nature and on the fact that man can achieve self-realization only in and through nature.” Effectively, Dewey is saying that the human being survives and develops only in and through his material environment. [Roth, pp. 100-101.] In summarizing Dewey’s philosophy, Roth states:

Nothing can be admitted which transcends the possibilities of concrete, human experience. There is no absolute, no transcendent being, no extra-mundane reality…there is no room for a supernatural religion…and that “supernatural” means that which transcends the possibilities of concrete human experience and involves an absolute being. [emphasis added] [Roth, p. 101.]

Thus, we have the dominant theme of John Dewey’s philosophy—denial of God and human self-realization accomplished only through interaction with nature. Under such policies, the primary purpose of this “progressive” education is to prepare children for a career and to be a contributor to the goals of the secular state. The educational system is no longer an ally but an enemy of the generational transmission of the cultural and moral values of the parents.

Limit exposure of preschool children to the biblical worldview of parents

The second way the American educational system stands in opposition to the status of parents and family in the socialization of young children of preschool age is to remove them from the home at a younger age and further isolate them from parental influence in those formative preschool years. The cradle to career approach of education undermines the philosophy that parents have the primary responsibility, right, and privilege to provide the best education for their children. But such social engineering that relegates parents to secondary status in the socialization of their children is unnatural with regard to human nature and results in dire consequences for such a society.

The pressures for universal preschool began in the 1960s. In the Preface for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of The Hurried Child, Dr. David Elkind wrote of the 1971 enactment of the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA) which mandated compulsory attendance of every preschool child in America at federally run centers. The bill was vetoed by President Nixon who stated that the effect of the bill would be “…to pledge the vast moral authority of the federal government to the side of communal approaches to childrearing [nurturing] as against a family centered approach…” and ultimately lead to destruction of the American family. [Elkind, p. xiii.]

Almost a half century later, the educational progressivists are once again peddling the communal approach to nurturing through a vast, federally controlled early childhood learning program. This time it is Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) which provides grants at the state level “…to improve the quality of early learning and development programs and close educational gaps for children with high needs.” RTT-ELC includes the establishment of early childhood systems that “ambitiously” moves forward a state’s early learning and development program. Like the first RTT initiative, RTT-ELC mandates include early learning and developmental outcomes, common standards within the state, assessments that measure child outcomes and address behavioral and health needs, and extensive accountability and data gathering programs to name just a few. Families are also to be engaged in the RTT-ELC process (and therefore effectively buy into the concept of federal control). [U.S. Department of Education] All of the flaws associated with federal control of education were enumerated in “Common Core Curriculum Standards – The devil is in the details” and need not be repeated in this article. [Johnson, “Common Core Curriculum Standards – The devil is in the details.”]

Not only does RTT-ELC push federal control of education downward to the preschool level, more importantly it is also flawed in the same manner as is the decades-old Head Start program, and children are the unwilling victims. Dr. Elkind gives an insight into our Orwellian future under the current educational model.

The concept of childhood, so vital to the traditional American way of life, is threatened with extinction in the society we have created. Today’s child has become the unwilling, unintended victim of overwhelming stress—the stress borne of rapid, bewildering social change and constantly rising expectations. [Elkind, p. 3]

The homogenizing progressive education system is the force that maintains the factory model of education. Such a model allows the progressives to control the child and ultimately to instill a humanistic worldview. Parents have been shoved aside and the emotional damage to their children will last a lifetime. Elementary schools have become assembly lines where textbooks and curriculum are standardized on a national level, testing has become standardized and one-size-fits-all, teaching is driven by the curriculum content necessary to pass the tests, teachers and administrators are held accountable for educational failures with roots that go far beyond the classroom walls, and teacher creativity and innovation are smothered as they spend as many hours in non-teaching work activities as they do in teaching. [Elkind, pp. 49-50.] The value of many highly qualified and hard-working teachers as well as schools and school districts is measured by test scores significantly influenced by external circumstances and the realities of children’s capabilities over which the teacher has little or no control.

Somewhere in the midst of all of these progressive educational reforms the child has been forgotten as the factory model of education relentlessly hurries children into adulthood. Individual differences in mental abilities as well as learning rates are ignored as children are pressed to meet uniform standards as measured by standardized tests. There is a progressive downward thrust of curriculum, i.e. the pressure to introduce curriculum material at an ever younger age. [Elkind, pp. 50-51.] Parents contribute to the problem by rushing children to a multitude of programmed extra-curricular activities which allow little down-time for un-structured play. Hovering over all of this haste is the omnipresent fear of retention if one doesn’t measure up. Dr. Elkind believes that we have lost perspective about what childhood really means.

…it is important to see childhood as a stage of life, not just as the anteroom to life. Hurrying children into adulthood violates the sanctity of life by giving one period priority over another. But if we really value human life, we will value each period equally and give unto each stage of life what is appropriate to that stage…In the end, a childhood is the most basic human right of children. [Elkind, p. 221.]

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. 336-337.

William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc., 1996), pp. 21, 23-24.

Robert J. Roth, John Dewey and Self-Realization, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publisher, 1962), pp. 100-101.

David Elkind, Ph.D., The hurried child – growing up too fast too soon, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2007), pp. xiii, 3, 49-51, 221.

U.S. Department of Education, “16 States and D.C. Submit Applications for the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge,” ED.gov, October 18, 2013. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/16-states-and-dc-submit-applications-race-top-early-learning-challenge (accessed November 14, 2013).

Larry G. Johnson, “Common Core Standards – The devil is in the details,” culturewarrior.net, November 8, 2013. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2013/11/08/common-core-curriculum-standards-the-devil-is-in-the-details/