The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

by Carl R. Trueman

The use of the term phobia is deliberate and effectively places such criticism of the new sexual culture into the realm of the irrational and points toward an underlying bigotry on the part of those who hold such views.

the changes we have witnessed in the content and significance of sexual codes since the 1960s are symptomatic of deeper changes in how we think of the purpose of life, the meaning of happiness, and what actually constitutes people’s sense of who they are and what they are for.

The ancient Athenian was committed to the assembly, the medieval Christian to his church, and the twentieth-century factory worker to his trade union and working man’s club. All of them found their purpose and well-being by being committed to something outside themselves. In the world of psychological man, however, the commitment is first and foremost to the self and is inwardly directed.

in part the concern in recent years over making the classroom a “safe place”—that is, a place where students go not to be exposed to ideas that may challenge their deepest beliefs and commitments (part of what was traditionally considered to be the role of education) but to be affirmed and reassured.

Once harm and oppression are regarded as being primarily psychological categories, freedom of speech then becomes part of the problem, not the solution, because words become potential weapons.

The intuitive moral structure of our modern social imaginary prioritizes victimhood, sees selfhood in psychological terms, regards traditional sexual codes as oppressive and life denying, and places a premium on the individual’s right to define his or her own existence.

The person who objects to homosexual practice is, in contemporary society, actually objecting to homosexual identity. And the refusal by any individual to recognize an identity that society at large recognizes as legitimate is a moral offense, not simply a matter of indifference. The question of identity in the modern world is a question of dignity.

most of us do not think about the world in the way we do because we have reasoned from first principles to a comprehensive understanding of the cosmos. Rather, we generally operate on the basis of intuitions that we have often unconsciously absorbed from the culture around us.

This is the reason why society now often feels like a cultural battle zone: it consists of groups of people who simply think about the moral structure of the world in utterly incompatible ways.

to them the same principles as you apply to yourself. Each individual is to relate to every other individual in a way that respects his or her own personal integrity and sovereignty. Problems emerge only when one person tries to dominate another.

If personal freedom is the god of this age, society is doomed to dissolve as its social contract is immolated by its constituents

Reich also believes that the state must be used to coerce families and, where necessary, actively punish those who dissent from the sexual liberation being proposed. In short, the state has the right to intervene in family matters because the family is potentially the primary opponent of political liberation through its cultivation and policing of traditional sexual codes.

Society now intuitively associates sexual freedom with political freedom because the notion that, in a very deep sense, we are defined by our sexual desires is something that has penetrated all levels of our culture.

What is clear is that those feminists (and others) who deny the claims of transgenderism will find that they will be dismissed on the basis of alleged animus, not on the basis of argument. The agreed rational basis for debate is gone. All that is left is emotional preference.

Perhaps this is where the church can learn from the LGBTQ+ community, for, whatever moral disapproval we must have toward it, it was—is—a real community where real people look after each other in terms of meeting very real needs.

community. That brings me to my third point: Protestants need to recover both natural law and a high view of the physical body.