Religiously conservative American Christians tend to reduce morals to sexual morals. Not all do. For example, read Roger Olson's article on Khrushchev talking about American decadence (click here for the article). In that article, Olson includes social sins as part of American decadence. However, Olson, and I say this hesitantly because his blog is one of the best Christian blogs on the web, doesn't pin America's decadence to its beginning. Perhaps he believes that, but what goes unstated is whether America started in decadence or has transitioned into it.
In its very beginning, American decadence was on full display in its treatment of people of color, its abusive patriarchy, its selective imposition of religious values on others, and its exploitive economic system. Regarding the last item, we should note that the writing of The Constitution was in response widespread dissent and Shays Rebellion which in turn were in response to the economic times of the day. And one of the purposes of The Constitution was to provide a stronger federal government that could put down insurrections using well-regulated militias. The intention for terms for the office of Senator was to remove Senators from preasure posed by voters.
At this point, we have dilemma. We either have to acknowledge that the American experiment started in immorality and decadence or we have to significantly minimize past atrocities and the American belief in white male supremacy. That having a society where the LGBT community has emerged from the margins is considered to be far more decadent than using violence to ethnically cleansing Native Americans from the land and dehumanizing Blacks by regarding and treating them as property comes with choosing the latter option. Yes, some Christians include the fact that religiously conservative Christianity now has much less of a public presence and influence on culture conclude that we are far more immoral now than before. But all of the abuses of the past against people of color and women were condoned by a society during Christendom in America. It is as if we were wearing the WW I German belt buckles that said 'God Is With Us' in German causes us to believe that our past atrocities were less objectionable.
Of course some will try to point out some redeeming qualities in America by mentioning the abolitionists. And though there are some good qualities in America, we must remember that being a white abolitionist didn't didn't negate the possibility that one was a white supremacist, as Northern black abolitionists found out when working with them.
All of that aside, the issue here is about an article posted on the Modern Reformation website called "Strange New World," By Carl Trueman: A Review written by Elisabeth Bloechl. I did not find a webpage which gives any kind of biography for her but she describes herself at the end of the article and has written other articles before this one (click here and there for lists of articles written by Bloechl).
Bloechl's article of Trueman's book called Strange New World (click here for Bloechl's article) is more of an advertisement than a review. For her article contains nothing but glowing praise for what Trueman wrote in his book. She starts with a section by section review of the book. Beginning with chapter 1 and Trueman's observation of today's emphasis on the self and 'expressive individualism' and chapters 2-4 where Trueman discusses past influential thinkers like Rousseau, Marx, Freud and Nietsche, and chapter 5 how Trueman discusses how the ideas of those thinkers came to influence today's 'cultural subconscious.' She then summarizes what Trueman wrote with the following quote:
The collapse of traditional, external anchors of identity . . . explains the attraction of the turn inward. The rise of technology feeds the notion that we can bend nature to our will . . . the loss of sacred order reinforces this subjectivism . . . and the notion that sexual freedom is central to a happy human life is made a practical option by contraception and part of our cultural imagination both by the pornographic industry and by the apparently authoritative claims of social science
According to Bloechl, Trueman spends the rest of his book explaining how the ideas of the previously mentioned thinkers caused what we see in society today. She then quotes Trueman:
Significantly, in a plastic, global, and technologically advanced society, the abstract ideas of intellectuals looks like people picking and choosing their communities “and that means that they pick and choose their identities
And Bloechl reports that Trueman spends a whole chapter of how the selecting of identities and moral standards is played out by the LGBT community. Then Bloechl quotes Trueman in stating where we are going:
Knowing the story of the modern self makes the assaults on traditional freedoms, if not the inevitable, then certainly an explicable, outcome
Here we will just critque what Bloechl has glowing reported from Trueman's book. The problem I see is that Bloechl seems to accepted everything that she quoted from Trueman without partially criticizing or even questioning.
Yes, Rousseau, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche wrote some things that challenge some traditionally held beliefs. I can speak more to what Marx wrote than the others in saying that a significant part of what he wrote pointed out some of the injustices of his day as well as ours. It's not that his solutions were morally kosher, though many of his concerns were. In other words, as Martin Luther King Jr observed and learned from others, Marx is a mixed bag. But in Bloechl's review, and perhaps Trueman wrote this but I would lean toward him not saying this, what Marx and the others wrote only had negative consequences on today's society.
It seems that, according to Bloechl, it is the kind of break that we've had with the past that so deeply disturbs Trueman because of what that break has caused today. But Bloechl doesn't ask if what Trueman complained about is nothing more than a pluralistic society. She doesn't elaborate on how the story of the modern self can explain how we have assaults on traditional freedoms today. Nor does she question whether this break with the past was, at least in part due to weaknesses and injustices that were part of the past. Bloechl could have asked whether today's expressive individualism is due to an abusive authoritarianism from the past. After all, what was protested in the 1960s? Wasn't racism protested along with abusive patriarchy and the immoral Vietnam War? Didn't the beginning of climate awareness cause some to protest our way of life? And thus the materialism of that day was also protested though perhaps replaced with another kind of materialism.
In other words, didn't some of the trappings of Christendom also played a role in why our society and culture is what it is today. Yes, thinkers like Rousseau, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche wrote what they wrote. But how could what they wrote appeal to an ever growing audience if people were happy with the status quo?
It seems that according to Bloechl, Trueman is unhappy because, to quote a title of an old jazz standard, things ain't what they use to be. The old traditionalism, with its inherent authoritarianism, has been overthrown and replaced. And though I can't speak to Trueman's book, it seems that Bloechl has not seriously thought about why people think that this kind of change is good.
The lack of any criticism in Bloechl's review doesn't due justice to Trueman's book. For it leaves his book more unknowns than knowns. Her lack of criticism also carries with it an authoritarian appeal to her endorsement of the book. But I don't think that Bloechl is aware of that. That is because, as Bloechl says at the end of her review, Trueman thinks with Christian presuppositions and has a Christian worldview. Does that mean that Trueman's analysis of the today's world is to be accepted without question?
We might also ask about the role that unbelievers play in society. Does Trueman's book imply, or even suggest, that they must play a subservient role in a society so that we could have a return to Christendom? Or is Trueman writing only to the Church so that believers can better navigate the traps and hazards in today's world? We don't know. What I do know from Trueman's online writings is that he is greatly concerned with the sexual mores of today. Perhaps he is more concerned than he should be.
One more thing should be said about Bloechl's approach to writing the article. Her quoting of Trueman without questioning or even explaining why shows that she takes his opinion to be truth and is a common practice among many Reformed Theological writers. This points to the kind of culture that exists in the Reformed movement. That the words of esteemed teachers are taken as truth is a common practice. And such is not healthy for a number of reasons. One of them being that such a treatment of esteemed teachers leads people to start canonizing what those teachers say. And in so doing, their teachings approach, if they do not become equal to or more important than, what the Scriptures teach. Something Jesus spoke against in Mark 7.
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