R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 286

The Briefing 03-11-16

Stanford Review argues for Western Civ class in curriculum, affirming Judeo-Christian moresStanford Review (Editorial Board) — The Case for a Western Civilization Requirement at StanfordMinding the Campus (Patrick Deneen) — How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture

Feminist Glaciology? The importance of worldview on display ad nauseamWall Street Journal — Notable & Quotable: ‘A Feminist Glaciology’

Science community excommunicates heretics: journal pulls article that mentions "Creator"Chronicle of Higher Education (Paul Basken) — Paper Praising ‘Creator’ Puts Fear of God in Open-Access Giant

Rise of antisemitism on the academic Left reveals our inability to learn from the pastNew York Times (Roger Cohen) — An Anti-Semitism of the LeftFinancial Times (Simon Schama) — The left’s problem with Jews has a long and miserable history

While Britain's aristocracy attempted to preserve a culture, America's is tearing one downAlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler) — “Downton Abbey” and the Modern Age—What Are We Really Watching?

The Briefing 03-10-16

Moral opportunists seek to seize on Zika virus crisis to push pro-abortion positionLos Angeles Times (Ann M. Simmons) — Zika fears increase demand for abortions in countries where it's illegal to have one

California law that would ban travel to "anti-LGBT" states an attempt at moral posturingLos Angeles Times (Conor Friedersdorf) — California's flawed LGBT rights bill

Redefinition of marriage led SCOTUS to rule unanimously for gay adoption across state lines Los Angeles Times (David G. Savage) — Supreme Court upholds gay adoptions across state lines

"Bachelor gap" created by sex-selective abortion sociologically and morally objectionableNew York Times (Somini Sengupta) — The World Has a Problem: Too Many Young People

The Briefing 03-09-16

Definition of "liberal" a moving target to the left in Democratic presidential raceLos Angeles Times (Cathleen Decker) — Clinton's pragmatism and Sanders' ideological bent are on full, and divisive, display in debateFinancial Times (Ed Crooks) — Clinton and Sanders talk tough on fracking

Bloomberg not to make third party run, last candidate who did and got elected was LincolnWall Street Journal (Rebecca Ballhaus and Mara Gay) — Michael Bloomberg Says He Won’t Run for President

Students at elite colleges ignorant of Western and Judeo-Christian cultural inheritanceMinding the Campus (Patrick Deneen) — How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture

The Briefing 03-08-16

SCOTUS sends clear pro-abortion signal by temporarily blocking Louisiana abortion lawWall Street Journal (Jess Bravin) — Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Louisiana Abortion Law

Single women now most powerful political force driving progressive agendaNew York Magazine (Rebecca Traister) — The Single American Woman

Blue cities, red states: worldview and living environment often go hand in handLos Angeles Times (Harold Meyerson) — Blue cities, red states

The Briefing 03-07-16

2016 Republican presidential race reaches level of unprecedented coarseness and crudenessNew York Times (James Poniewozik) — A National DescentFinancial Times (Demetri Sevastopulo) — Trump show too juvenile for Jerry SpringerWashington Post (E.J. Dionne Jr.) — The GOP vulgarians

Georgia's Republican governor pledges to veto religious liberty bill on religious groundsAtlanta Journal-Constitution (Greg Bluestein) — Nathan Deal makes a forceful, biblical case against Georgia’s ‘religious liberty’ bill

US Military to begin recruiting women for combat, ignoring physiological differencesABC News (Lolita C. Baldor) — Military Beginning to Recruit Women for Combat JobsWeekly Standard (John McCormack) — A Draft for Women?

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan dies at 94, leaving influential yet complex legacyNew York Times (Lou Cannon) — Nancy Reagan, an Influential and Protective First Lady, Dies at 94Los Angeles Times (Shelby Grad and David Colker) — Nancy Reagan turned to astrology in White House to protect her husband

Exodus 4:1-31

The Briefing 03-04-16

Moral red flags abound in technology where parents can choose sex of their babyCNN (Carina Storrs) — Should parents be allowed to choose the sex of their baby?

Canadian Anglicans not to affirm same-sex marriage in canon law, at least for nowChristian Today (Ruth Gledhill) — Anglican Church of Canada now unlikely to agree to same-sex marriage

Hitler first appeared in the New York Times as a pandering, racist, yet harmless, politicianTwitter (Jon Ostrower) — First New York Times reference to Adolf Hitler: Nov. 21, 1922

Everything That is Solid Melts Into Air — The New Secular Worldview

This post is the third in a four part series on Secularization and the Sexual Revolution.

Impossible to Believe: The Endgame of Secularism

In his important Massey Lectures delivered in 1991, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor spoke of The Malaise of Modernity. The Modern Age, he argued, is marked by two great intellectual moves. The first intellectual move is a pervasive individualism. The second is the reduction of all public discourse to the authority of instrumental reason. The rise of modern individualism came at the cost of rejecting all other moral authorities. “Modern freedom was won by our breaking loose from older moral horizons,” Taylor explains. This required the toppling of all hierarchical authorities and their established moral orders. “People used to see themselves as part of a larger order,” he observed. “Modern freedom came about through the discrediting of such orders.”

The primacy of instrumental reason means the elimination of the old order and its specifically theological and teleological moral order. As Taylor explains:

No doubt sweeping away the old orders has immensely widened the scope of instrumental reason. Once society no longer has a sacred structure, once social arrangements and modes of action are no longer grounded in the order of things or the will of God, they are in a sense up for grabs. They can be redesigned with their consequences for the happiness or well-being of individuals as our goal.

More recently, Taylor has written the greatest work yet completed on the secular reality of our times. In A Secular Age, he describes three successive sets of intellectual conditions. In the first, associated with the Premodern Age of antiquity and the medieval synthesis, it was impossible not to believe. There was simply no intellectual alternative to theism in the West. There was no alternative set of explanations for the world and its operations, or for moral order. All that changed with the arrival of modernity. In the Modern Age it became possible not to believe. A secular alternative to Christian theism emerged as a real choice. As a matter of fact, choice now ruled the intellectual field. As Peter Berger famously observed decades ago, this is the “heretical imperative,” the imperative to choose one’s worldview. The third set of intellectual conditions is identified with late modernity and our own intellectual epoch. For most people living in the context of self-conscious late modernity, it is now impossible to believe. That means, especially in terms of the intellectual elites and the culture formative sectors of society, theism is not an available worldview—if not personally, then at least culturally.

Significantly, Taylor pinpoints this unbelief as a lack of cognitive commitment to a self-existent, self-revealing God. Secularization is not about rejecting all religion. Taylor urges that people in the current hyper-secularized culture in America often consider themselves to be religious or spiritual. Secularization, according to Taylor, is about belief in a personal God, one who holds and exerts authority. He describes the secular age as deeply “cross-pressured” in its personal experience of religion and rejection of the personal authority of God. The issue is binding authority.

Christians are the intellectual outlaws under the current secular conditions. Entering a discussion on the basis of a theistic or theological claim is to break a cardinal rule of late Modernity by moving from a proposition or question to a command and law and authority and to do so in the context of a culture now explicitly secularized, and a culture that either reduces such claims to something below a genuine theistic claim or rejects them to court. Secularization in America has been attended by a moral revolution without precedent and without endgame. The cultural engines of progress driving toward personal autonomy and fulfillment will not stop until the human being is completely self-defining. This progress requires the explicit rejection of Christian morality for the project for human liberation.

The story of the rise of secularism is a stunning intellectual and moral revolution. It defies exaggeration. We must recognize that it is far more pervasive than we might want to believe, for this intellectual revolution has changed the worldviews of even those who believe themselves to be opposed to it. Everything is now reduced to choice, and choice is, as Taylor reminds us, central to the moral project of late modernity, the project of individual authenticity.

As he explains this project: “I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.”

The pressing question is this: can any sustainable moral order survive this scale of intellectual revolution? We hear in the today’s intellectual and ideological chorus the refrains of Karl Marx’s threat and promise as stated in The Communist Manifesto: “All that is solid melts into air.” The melting is everywhere around us.

The Briefing 03-03-16

Oral arguments reveal expected ideological divide among SCOTUS justices on abortionWashington Post (Robert Barnes) — Supreme Court hears arguments on Texas abortion-clinics caseWall Street Journal (Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall) — Deeply Divided Supreme Court Wrestles with Texas Abortion Case

Marriage, high school education, full-time job: 3 statistically-proven steps out of povertyBrookings Institution (Ron Haskins) — Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class

As Georgia faces corporate backlash over religious liberty bill, media exaggerate effectThe Guardian (Camille Pendley) — Coalition of 400 companies fight Georgia's proposed 'religious liberty' billSlate (Mark Joseph Stern) — Georgia Is Poised to Pass a Vicious Anti-Gay Law. So This Georgia Company Decided to Move.

In attempt to push LGBT agenda, California considers travel ban on "anti-gay" statesMiami Herald (Jon Ortiz) — California is considering a travel ban on states with anti-gay laws

The Briefing 03-02-16

Christians may face tough decision November as Trump and Clinton gained momentum on TuesdayNew York Times — Super Tuesday Results

Arguments for a woman's right to abortion neglect rights of unborn in case before SCOTUSUSA Today (Editorial Board) — Reproductive rights under siege: Our viewNew York Times (Erik Eckholm) — Young Lawyers Ready to Argue a Major Abortion Case Before the Supreme CourtNew York Times (Adam Liptak) — Eyes on Kennedy, Women Tell Supreme Court Why Abortion Was Right for ThemAlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler) — A Prayer for Primary Day

South Dakota Governor under LGBT pressure vetoed bill that bars opposite-sex bathroom accessWashington Post (Emma Brown) — South Dakota governor vetoes bill that would have restricted transgender students’ access to school restroomsUSA Today (Aamer Madhani) — Battle brewing over transgender bathroom laws in state capitals