Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
I won't restate the problem that Dr. Murray presents in his books because I think we all know what he's pointing, whether we agree with the particulars. What I want to focus in on is whether the problem can be solved and how. I'm relieved to hear him say that there aren't any social policies that can resolve this. He talks about the importance of family, taking on responsibility personally, religious beliefs, self-control, etc.
All these are good things, but what's going to motivate someone to do all the right things? More importantly, maybe, what will compel people to change? In order to get to the point where society generally adheres to certain principles that shape our culture, social institutions, and behavior don't we need a revival of religious belief, in general, if not Judeo-Christian?
And I'm not just asking hypothetically, but realistically. Certain reasons may be enough for some people some of the time but I doubt it will have a widespread effect. Given the severity of the cultural fraying and the immense change that is needed we'll need something drastic to change course. And what's more significant than a person's religious beliefs?
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May '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Troy Senik, Ed.: "Living by the light of a setting sun."
Katie, it may only be Thursday but I'm going to go ahead and declare that you've come up with the most beautiful, lyrical sentence of the week on Ricochet.
I would love to be able to take credit for the phrase, but it's not my own. I got it from my friend and former professor, John F. Crosby, in an essay he wrote about Christian personalism for our site. Here's the context.
Apr '11
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Gus Marvinson
1) Chirstianity became the dominant religion of Western Civ because it was forced on the populace by a dictatorial emperor.
2) Christianity was used to support the divine right of kings and despotism after the fall of the Roman Empire.
3) Christianity was used to repress science and learning for hundreds of years during the dark ages.
4) The inquisition.
It is undeniably true that it was the enlightenment and modern society that forced Christianity out of its dark roots. · 47 minutes ago
Every one of your points illustrates a deviation from New Testament teaching. Defending Christianity is easy. Defending ecclesiastical institutions is a nightmare. · 33 minutes ago
I do not believe that 1. or 2. are contrary to biblical teachings, either Old Testament or New. I do not believe that 3 is true, but agree that it would have been contrary to biblical and patristic teachings if it was. The statement in 4. is not specific enough to be falsifiable, but accurate statements condemning the inquisition constitute the minority of condemnations.
Jun '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
1) Chirstianity became the dominant religion of Western Civ because it was forced on the populace by a dictatorial emperor.
Not true. Christianity spread like wildfire in ancient Rome on the strength of persuasion and conversion (and the blood of many martyrs). If the emperor you have in mind is Constantine, the Edict of Milan merely permitted Christians to practice their faith openly for the first time without fear of being crucified or fed to the lions. It's actually one of the first broad statements of religious tolerance:
Jun '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Jeff Younger:
Social order cannot be imposed rather it emerges. Every utopian program disrupts the naturally emergent, conservative social order. · 7 hours ago
Let's try a test case: Somalia. Somalia lacks anything resembling a central government capable of imposing any sort of utopian program.
Has a thriving, family-based society spontaneously emerged there yet? If not, how soon do we expect it? If Obama wins reelection, should we all make plans to move to Somalia since it should blossom into a conservative paradise any day now?
May '11
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Peter Wehner at the Contentions blog at Commentary.com today had an interesting post about compassionate conservatism in terms of the sense of compassion which was prevalent in Victorian England. He quotes from Gertrude Himmelfarb"s Poverty and Copmpassion:
"In her last chapter, Himmelfarb argues that in “rediscovering” poverty, those of us in modern American society have much to learn from the late Victorians. “After making the most arduous attempt to objectify the problem of poverty, to divorce poverty from any moral assumptions and conditions,” she writes, “we are learning how inseparable the moral and material dimensions of that problem are. And after trying to devise social policies that are scrupulously neutral and ‘value-free,’ we are finding these policies fraught with moral implications that have grave material and social consequences.”
I think she got that about right.
Mar '11
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Gus Marvinson
1) Chirstianity became the dominant religion of Western Civ because it was forced on the populace by a dictatorial emperor.
2) Christianity was used to support the divine right of kings and despotism after the fall of the Roman Empire.
3) Christianity was used to repress science and learning for hundreds of years during the dark ages.
4) The inquisition.
It is undeniably true that it was the enlightenment and modern society that forced Christianity out of its dark roots. · 47 minutes ago
Every one of your points illustrates a deviation from New Testament teaching. Defending Christianity is easy. Defending ecclesiastical institutions is a nightmare. · 3 minutes ago
-- G. K. Chesterton
Feb '12
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
This is a great blog! It is absolutely right that "we need a revival of religious belief, in general, if not Judeo-Christian" As a Roman Catholic, this translates into teaching "Orthodoxy"!! As George Weigel et al. have amply pointed out, we may be very encouraged by recent developments at the United States Council of Catholic Bishops. These bishops have grown a backbone under the stalwart leadership of Cardinal Archbishop Dolan. Finally they will resist the bullying of the Democratic Party and the President's attack on religious freedom! Finally Catholics are beginning to see the way around the ambiguous "Faithful Citizenship" document that stems out of the old "seamless garment" pro-life policy implemented by Cardinal Bernardin in the '70's! Finally we may hold pro-choice Democrats accountable for their support of the corruption of religious freedom, let alone their phony "preferential option for the poor" in supporting socialist policies and higher taxes! The whole idea that a "socialist" could be somehow seen, by the "seamless garment" theory of pro-life politics, to be morally superior to a politician who resists intrusion of the government into the private charitable means of supporting the poor may now be rejected!
Aug '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Jeff Younger
On the contrary, you've misread me. I'm not arguing against religious revival, but against the rhetoric of compulsion:
We need not worry about that. In the absence of government coercion, most all societies become religious and conservative in temperament.
It didn't occur to me that Bereket might've been using the word compel to mean coerce. I simply assumed he was asking about what compels us in the sense of what drives us from within.
The way a composer feels compelled to write down the melody that's winding through his brain or a great work of literature compels us to stay up reading long past our bedtime. What captivates our imaginations? What inspires us?
But you're right that compulsion has another sense.
Apr '11
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
I'm actually surprised our resident Lutheran editor hasn't chimed in yet on this post, but in lieu of her undoubtedly thoughtful engagement here, I'll take a stab at what has already been a very good conversation in the OP and ensuing meta to take issue with one term that's sort of disappeared in the discussion: 'the Gospel.'
I mention Lutherans because of their doctrine of "two kingdoms," i.e. the civil and the ecclesiastical. 2K's implications have impacted U.S. government through the further Reformational influence of Luther down through Calvin and later the Puritans, some of whom (e.g. Witherspoon, etc) were numbered among our Founders.
Gospel, as a term, has a specific meaning in such a context. It is a specific message, about specific events regarding a specific Person. It is not less than, but far more than a system of ethics or basis for morality or polity. There are real issues (c.f. the Civil War/s) to contend with re: church & state w/r/t 2 Kingdoms, but real benefits (e.g. Civil Rights, etc), also.
A better term than "gospel" might've been simply "Judeo-Christian or civil religion."
Aug '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Troy Senik, Ed.: "Living by the light of a setting sun."
Katie, it may only be Thursday but I'm going to go ahead and declare that you've come up with the most beautiful, lyrical sentence of the week on Ricochet.
katievs
I sometimes think I detect in unbelieving conservative intellectuals a kind of nostalgia for the post-Englightment period when an intellectual elite enjoyed the pleasures of personal apostasy while benefitting from the social goods of other people's religion.
But they were living by the light of a setting sun. · 3 hours ago
2 hours ago
Agreed. I'm certain there is a song lyric hiding in that line.
Aug '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Just to pick one:
3) Christianity was used to repress science and learning for hundreds of years during the dark ages.
What specifically do you think you mean by this? What was this vast body of science and learning that Christianity repressed during the dark ages?
On the contrary, Christian institutions such as monasteries served as refuges for scholarship in barbaric times. It's largely thanks to them that any Classical scholarship survived in the West at all. Even the Islamic world inherited much of its Classical scholarship from the Christians it conquered in the Mideast.
Moreover, medieval Christian scholarship in logic, kinematics, and mathematics paved the way for later scientific thought, and the medieval era brought numerous humble but important advances in technology.
Galileo himself enjoyed the elite patronage of the church until his unfortunate falling-out with his benefactors. Copernicus and Kepler, both trained at religious institutions, inherited a Christian scholastic tradition without which the formulation of their own ideas would have hardly been possible. Etc.
(And if Giordano Bruno is your martyr, his heresy was pantheism and Hermeticism, not his astronomical conjectures. That doesn't make his persecution right, but it wasn't over science.)
Edited on March 15, 2012 at 9:22pmAug '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Joseph Stanko
1) Chirstianity became the dominant religion of Western Civ because it was forced on the populace by a dictatorial emperor.
Not true. Christianity spread like wildfire in ancient Rome on the strength of persuasion and conversion (and the blood of many martyrs). If the emperor you have in mind is Constantine, the Edict of Milan merely permitted Christians to practice their faith openly for the first time without fear of being crucified or fed to the lions.
"The Rise of Christianity" by Rodney Stark (sociology prof at Baylor University) is a very readable history on the subject.
BTW - Great thread - Bereket.
May '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
katievs
Troy Senik, Ed.: "Living by the light of a setting sun."
Katie, it may only be Thursday but I'm going to go ahead and declare that you've come up with the most beautiful, lyrical sentence of the week on Ricochet.
I would love to be able to take credit for the phrase, but it's not my own. I got it from my friend and former professor, John F. Crosby, in an essay he wrote about Christian personalism for our site. Here's the context.
2 hours ago
Reminds me of: "I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." -- CS Lewis
May '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
The original post brings to mind this comment from one of the Founders:
Our nation has strayed far from the basic understanding of the Founders of what a good and moral society should be. I fear that, apart from a return to those principles, our nation cannot help but "Come Apart." The Founders understood. We need to rediscover. And, while a rediscovery of God is necessary for the survival of our country, I hold that it is even more important for each individual. There is no greater source of deep personal satisfaction than for the creature to know his Creator in a deep and abidingly personal way.
Feb '12
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" -- Voltaire.
This is not to say I think God is a human construct (though there's only so many times you can pray for the same thing and not get it before you start to wonder). But this sentiment is one of the ways I defend my Christianity against those who say I'm "far too smart to be taken in by that religion [garbage]."
Call it the "South Park Mormon's Wager" (as opposed to Pascal's wager) -- being a practicing Christian has enough value in the here-and-now to be worth doing even if it's all fake.
Jun '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Amy Schley
This is not to say I think God is a human construct (though there's only so many times you can pray for the same thing and not get it before you start to wonder).
I have a parable for you: a small child sat down for dinner, took one look at his plate, and said "Spinach is yucky! Mommy, can I have ice cream instead?" "No dear," his mother replied, "eat your spinach, it's good for you." Every day for a month the boy asked for ice cream instead of veggies, and each time his mother patiently told him no. So at the end of the month, the boy reached the only logical conclusion: Mommy doesn't exist.
Feb '12
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Eh, it'd be one thing if I was asking for ice cream, or a date with the prom king, or any of the other examples used when one is thanking God for unanswered prayers. It's another when I'm an attorney who's been begging for a job that will let me pay my $600/mo mortgage. I'm 16 months into a foreclosure with no hope or miracles in sight.
I will thank God for letting me in foreclosure in this market, as the banks are willing to put up with an incredible amount of stalling to avoid the kind of haircut they're getting in my neighborhood. (e.g. the ~$70K house next door sold at auction for $18.5K.)
But back to the original topic: having a church family has helped enormously, both in helping us keep our other bills paid and in providing the support I need to avoid going insane. (Even if the Lord hasn't been much use as a job placement agent.)
Edited on March 15, 2012 at 10:24pmDec '11
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
bereket kelile
More importantly, maybe, what will compel people to change?
My answer is to stop forcing taxpayers to subsidize aberrant behavior by severely trimming back welfare benefits, food stamps, govt sponsorship of PP clinics, medicaid, etc. If people are forced to take fiscal responsibility for their actions, they tend to make more coherent decisions about their lives.
Capitalism works.
Oct '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Wow, I didn't expect to spark an epic conversation. I know there's a lot that's glossed over and so I tried to narrowly make my point. I guess I should clarify that it can be seen in my post that I'm not contemplating any social program or policy that can solve the problem.
I think Joseph Eager really gets at what was on my mind as I was writing. The dilemma is that you can't impose the gospel on anyone but at the same time ideas do have consequences. So how can we ensure that a society does hold to a common set of beliefs which they must believe by choice? I'm not sure anyone can do that, save God Himself.
New Clear Option, I take your point and will say that I had in mind the claims of the gospel and its implications. I think that in turn serves as a basis for how the civil religion emerges and evolves.
Oct '10
Re: Isn't Charles Murray Saying We Need The Gospel?
Bereket: You are correct that we cannot see the renewal of Western Civ. through a program.
Remember that the period before the Founders brought about the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution that there was a period called the Great Awakening. It was during those times that the religious foundation within Western Civ. found it's voice and became the inspiration of the work done by the Founders.
God, through the sovereign work of His Holy Spirit caused that to come about. For reasons that we can only conjecture about, there was a moment when the people softened their hearts to a willingness to experience God, and He chose to bring it about.
To repeat a quote from G.K. Chesterton: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
Imperfectly, as with all things in this world, for a flicker in the history of plant earth, it was tried. And we are now, to quote Katievs, "Living by the light of a setting sun."