The soul of a republic can be viewed as its central cultural vision—that collective worldview that animates and informs all of society. Rooted in their hearts and minds, that vision is also supported and invigorated by its citizens. However, the American Republic is comparable to the demise of high civilizations in ancient times in that certain elements of alienation have entered into America’s central cultural vision which has weakened its citizens’ love for and belief in its compelling purposes. [Reinsch, p. 98.] These elements deny the value and truth of the Republic’s beleaguered central cultural vision and attempt to replace it with multiple centers of cultural vision based on arbitrary and ever-changing inventions of man. In other words, the sickness of the American Republic’s soul is cause by a loss of unity and the denigration of the truths upon which the nation was founded.
Loss of Unity
Culture is a product of the collective consciousness of a group seeing certain felt needs, “…a complex of values polarized by an image or idea.” The very foundation of the cultural concept is unity that presupposes a general commonality of thought and action. As a culture is formed and begins ordering its world to bring the satisfactions for which it was created, directions must be imposed on its members. These directions, limits, and required behaviors radiate through a center of authority with a subtle and pervasive pressure to conform. This pressure 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. Every culture has a center which commands all things. Weaver calls 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 intrinsic nature of culture compels that it be exclusive rather than all inclusive. Cultures fail and disintegrate without the power to reject that which does not adhere to its central force. [Weaver, pp. 10-12] When a culture’s complex of values is polarized by an image or idea, we describe this image or idea as its central cultural vision, that is, its collective worldview.
In America, disunity is pandemic in every facet of cultural life including government, education, family, politics, standards of moral behavior, arts, economics and business, and religion. Disunity is evident as the war of words flow from daily newspaper headlines and radio and TV sound bites. This disunity occurs because of the ubiquitous attack on America’s original central cultural vision.
Denigration of Truth
For a culture to survive over the long-term, its central cultural vision must be based on truth. In other words, a culture’s central cultural vision must be informed by and reflect that which is true. In Western civilization, the Christian worldview reflected this truth. Since the nation’s founding, this central cultural vision has been under assault by the humanistic worldview that gained ascendance in Europe during the eighteenth century. The core of the battle revolves around the truth about the nature of man—who he is.
In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. These principles dictate rules of action and applies to animate and inanimate objects. These “laws of nature” must invariably be followed by the universe and the created matter therein. One exception was man, the pinnacle of God’s creation, who was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic, timeless, and are essential elements that provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These absolutes are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. [Johnson, p. 392.] These absolutes were revealed to man by God through His creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians.
The humanistic worldview regarding truth is one of cultural relativism which requires a suspension of judgment since all belief systems contain some truth within while no one belief system has all truth. For humanists, all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—i.e., truth can be manufactured. [Johnson, pp. 392-393.] Man is merely the end-product of a long evolutionary process that occurred by chance and not the result of some supernatural Creator.
The central cultural vision of colonial Americans and the nation’s Founders was built on the truth of Christian principles. The assault by the opposing forces of humanism was repelled until the mid-twentieth century when they gained critical mass in the various spheres of American life.
For those that adhere to the central cultural vision of the Founders, we will examine in Part II what must be done to defend and reverse the decline of the central cultural vision of the Founders?
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
Richard M. Reinsch II, Whitaker Chambers – The Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2010), p. 98.
Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 10-12.
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. 392-393.
