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Photo: Newscom
There is no sugarcoating it. With each passing year, on most cultural fronts, things have been getting worse. There is a coarseness to our society and a rending of real ties that bind us to one another. Only about half of Americans are currently married, and about half of the children in the U.S. will spend time outside a household with a married mom and dad. Whatever the circumstances, that has an impact on people and culture, and it shows up in indicators from fertility rates to teen drug use. Our brotherly social safety net is fraying, and we now look to government instead, compounding our problems. After all, bureaucracy doesn’t do love as well as civil society does.
The brave new world of family life today, with seemingly endless prospects for future chaos, makes one nostalgic for the days when we were at least agreed on some of the fundamentals for a good, healthy home environment for children and women and men. Our lack of a common vocabulary and understanding of human nature has made public opinion—and now even our lawmaking and courts—susceptible to wild claims about truth and tolerance in spite of social science evidence about marriage and family to the contrary. Devoid of reason, history, and tradition, these claims simply wouldn’t have made any sense a few decades ago.
As recently as a decade or so ago, a sensitive cultural observer might have referred to “broken homes” without the prospect of a politically correct shutdown. That shutdown of serious dialogue about the direction of our society is a hallmark of what has been dubbed an “Insatiable New Intolerance.” As a powerful, thinly veiled intolerance has established its power—throughout the culture: in education, the entertainment industry, medicine, and politics—the outlook can seem grim for anyone holding traditional views of marriage, family, and life.
Photo: Getty Images
Even knowing this all, however, there is some good news. Despite the fact that the United States has among the most permissive abortion laws in the world, abortion is on the decline. Public opinion is also headed in an encouraging direction. Polling commissioned in early 2014, consistent with other polling, found that nearly half of Americans consider themselves “pro-life,” with three in 10 Americans considering themselves “strongly pro-life.” Importantly, polling found that “84 percent of Americans believe abortion should be restricted … or never allowed at all.” Even those who wouldn’t necessarily label themselves “strongly pro-life” or “strongly pro-choice” support placing limits on abortion and providing women accurate information. The abortion lobby’s insistence on pretending that even late-term abortions are a mere matter of women’s freedom is not accepted by most Americans.
Familiar, widespread, euphemistic rhetoric about abortion actually reflects an encouraging reality about our culture. Throughout the decades, campaigns for abortion rights have had to take the turn of referring increasingly to “choice” and “health” and anything “women.” That rhetoric has been necessary to sell Americans on legal abortion, since abortion is a source of revulsion and regret for most and a necessary, in the view of some, evil at best. America is [still] a generous country built on the inviolable dignity of the human person.
Practical efforts to restore a culture of life are an encouraging development that bodes well for the prospects for tackling other cultural indicators heading in the wrong direction. Creative initiatives provide pregnancy support and maternity care for those in need. They teach basic skills and nurture community life and fellowship for mothers and fathers and their children.
In addition to the ministries and projects devoted to helping women in crisis pregnancies, efforts in the past decade have increased outreach to the women who bear the pain of abortion regret. Project Rachel, for example, is a well-known model. Observing that “Abortion Changes You,” these efforts have sought to serve the woman and those with whom she is most intimately connected. The culture of generosity that has been the ecumenically pervasive lifeblood of American history is making a palpable difference.
Photo: Getty Images
That spirit of community and service has driven efforts to lift up human dignity in the darkest of places: our nation’s prisons. The work of the Prison Fellowship and some of the state-level re-entry programs focusing on skills and fellowship, opportunity and accountability, is also some of the best of our culture. The news that violent crime is down at the same time is legitimately encouraging. Of course, anyone who lived through the ’80s and ’90s in an inner city as I did in Manhattan doesn’t need to see the numbers to notice the sea change.
All of this civil-society work provides models for the renewal of the culture more broadly. There is much to be alarmed about in the culture, as this section chronicles. The breakdown of marriage and family life—with more children growing up without a married mother and father and fewer married couples having children—affects every aspect of American life.
But just as four decades of persistent activism, education, service, and prayer have brought us to a point where the tide is turning on abortion, a similar level of commitment can affect the cultural landscape as it pertains to marriage and family life. Just as progress is being made on crime and even divorce rates, we need to strive for a culture in which women and men see one another as complementary and needed by one another, made for one another and for the children whom they have participated in creating, who are completely and most naturally dependent on them.
We will need to recover a common language and moral grammar that reflects our shared tradition and experience of cherishing life, family, and community. Our responses must take into account the realities, wounds, and lessons from the cultural havoc of recent decades. Our efforts must be true to both nature and history and pursue persuasion and coalition building. We must tell the stories of what works, pointing to the people and groups who are restoring a culture of life, marriage, and religious liberty.
Democracy needs a flourishing civil society, the backbone of which is people of conscience who look out for their neighbors, who raise and support families, who take matters of human dignity either as Gospel truth or as a moral imperative to protect and uplift. The cultural indicators that follow [see weblink below] help us to take stock of our efforts in this regard—and a number of them do not give us a good report. But the indicators are grim only if we resign ourselves from our responsibilities to one another.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online, and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.
Read more: "The 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity" - http://index.heritage.org/culture/
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14)
WORLD-WDE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Friday, Sept. 26th - Two Year Anniversary of Pastor Saeed Abedini's Imprisonment in Iran!
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. We also remain hopeful that in addition to getting the medical care he so desperately needs, that Iranian officials display the kind of humanitarian treatment that often accompanies the start of the Iranian New Year which began on March 21st. This is the time of year when the Iranian government frequently offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States must take a strong stand against those violations. "Around the world repressive governments and extremists groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against, so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for," Kerry said. "We stand for greater freedom, for greater tolerance, greater respect, for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience," he said A key development in the 2013 report is the large number of displaced members of religious communities, including entire Christian communities in Syria and Iraq that have been forced to flee their homes because of persecution."
SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
UPDATE: "Second US Doctor Sick with Ebola; Crisis 'Out of Control'" - CBNNews.com, Sept. 02, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2014/September/A-Losing-Battle-Ebola-Going-to-Get-Worse-CDC-Says/ "Another American doctor in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus, according to the international Christian mission organization, SIM. SIM leaders report the American doctor was treating obstetrics patients at the organization's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and not treating Ebola patients..."The epidemic is going faster than we are," he warned. 'We need to scale up our response. We can hope for new tools and maybe they'll come, but we can't count on them.' So far, the West African outbreak has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria."
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
LATEST:"Christians in the Middle East Arm Themselves As Genocide Comes to Their Front Door" - Katie Pavlich | Sep 05, 2014;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/05/christians-in-the-middle-east-arm-themselves-as-violence-rages-around-them-n1887849" Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in... So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria."
/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray:
*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.
*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"How We Can Turn the Tide in the Culture Wars" - Kathryn Jean Lopez/ September 29, 2014 / http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/29/how-we-can-turn-the-tide-in-the-culture-wars/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonsqnPZKXonjHpfsX56eguXa%2B3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DS8RmI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3DWORLD-WDE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Friday, Sept. 26th - Two Year Anniversary of Pastor Saeed Abedini's Imprisonment in Iran!
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. We also remain hopeful that in addition to getting the medical care he so desperately needs, that Iranian officials display the kind of humanitarian treatment that often accompanies the start of the Iranian New Year which began on March 21st. This is the time of year when the Iranian government frequently offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
PRAY ALSO : - For comfort and peace for Saeed’s wife and children here in the U.S.\
- For a strong witness and testimony from Pastor Abedini in the prison where God has placed him
- For Christians around the world who are being persecuted for their faith in Christ
- For leadership from the White House and State Department in defending the freedoms of Abedini and other Americans
- GO TO SaveSaeed.org to sign a petition over 600,000 others asking for his immediate release
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States must take a strong stand against those violations. "Around the world repressive governments and extremists groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against, so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for," Kerry said. "We stand for greater freedom, for greater tolerance, greater respect, for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience," he said A key development in the 2013 report is the large number of displaced members of religious communities, including entire Christian communities in Syria and Iraq that have been forced to flee their homes because of persecution."
SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
UPDATE: "Second US Doctor Sick with Ebola; Crisis 'Out of Control'" - CBNNews.com, Sept. 02, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2014/September/A-Losing-Battle-Ebola-Going-to-Get-Worse-CDC-Says/ "Another American doctor in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus, according to the international Christian mission organization, SIM. SIM leaders report the American doctor was treating obstetrics patients at the organization's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and not treating Ebola patients..."The epidemic is going faster than we are," he warned. 'We need to scale up our response. We can hope for new tools and maybe they'll come, but we can't count on them.' So far, the West African outbreak has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria."
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
LATEST:"Christians in the Middle East Arm Themselves As Genocide Comes to Their Front Door" - Katie Pavlich | Sep 05, 2014;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/05/christians-in-the-middle-east-arm-themselves-as-violence-rages-around-them-n1887849" Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in... So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria."
/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray:
*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.
*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo: Newscom
There is no sugarcoating it. With each passing year, on most cultural fronts, things have been getting worse. There is a coarseness to our society and a rending of real ties that bind us to one another. Only about half of Americans are currently married, and about half of the children in the U.S. will spend time outside a household with a married mom and dad. Whatever the circumstances, that has an impact on people and culture, and it shows up in indicators from fertility rates to teen drug use. Our brotherly social safety net is fraying, and we now look to government instead, compounding our problems. After all, bureaucracy doesn’t do love as well as civil society does.
The brave new world of family life today, with seemingly endless prospects for future chaos, makes one nostalgic for the days when we were at least agreed on some of the fundamentals for a good, healthy home environment for children and women and men. Our lack of a common vocabulary and understanding of human nature has made public opinion—and now even our lawmaking and courts—susceptible to wild claims about truth and tolerance in spite of social science evidence about marriage and family to the contrary. Devoid of reason, history, and tradition, these claims simply wouldn’t have made any sense a few decades ago.
As recently as a decade or so ago, a sensitive cultural observer might have referred to “broken homes” without the prospect of a politically correct shutdown. That shutdown of serious dialogue about the direction of our society is a hallmark of what has been dubbed an “Insatiable New Intolerance.” As a powerful, thinly veiled intolerance has established its power—throughout the culture: in education, the entertainment industry, medicine, and politics—the outlook can seem grim for anyone holding traditional views of marriage, family, and life.
Photo: Getty Images
Even knowing this all, however, there is some good news. Despite the fact that the United States has among the most permissive abortion laws in the world, abortion is on the decline. Public opinion is also headed in an encouraging direction. Polling commissioned in early 2014, consistent with other polling, found that nearly half of Americans consider themselves “pro-life,” with three in 10 Americans considering themselves “strongly pro-life.” Importantly, polling found that “84 percent of Americans believe abortion should be restricted … or never allowed at all.” Even those who wouldn’t necessarily label themselves “strongly pro-life” or “strongly pro-choice” support placing limits on abortion and providing women accurate information. The abortion lobby’s insistence on pretending that even late-term abortions are a mere matter of women’s freedom is not accepted by most Americans.
Familiar, widespread, euphemistic rhetoric about abortion actually reflects an encouraging reality about our culture. Throughout the decades, campaigns for abortion rights have had to take the turn of referring increasingly to “choice” and “health” and anything “women.” That rhetoric has been necessary to sell Americans on legal abortion, since abortion is a source of revulsion and regret for most and a necessary, in the view of some, evil at best. America is [still] a generous country built on the inviolable dignity of the human person.
Practical efforts to restore a culture of life are an encouraging development that bodes well for the prospects for tackling other cultural indicators heading in the wrong direction. Creative initiatives provide pregnancy support and maternity care for those in need. They teach basic skills and nurture community life and fellowship for mothers and fathers and their children.
In addition to the ministries and projects devoted to helping women in crisis pregnancies, efforts in the past decade have increased outreach to the women who bear the pain of abortion regret. Project Rachel, for example, is a well-known model. Observing that “Abortion Changes You,” these efforts have sought to serve the woman and those with whom she is most intimately connected. The culture of generosity that has been the ecumenically pervasive lifeblood of American history is making a palpable difference.
Photo: Getty Images
That spirit of community and service has driven efforts to lift up human dignity in the darkest of places: our nation’s prisons. The work of the Prison Fellowship and some of the state-level re-entry programs focusing on skills and fellowship, opportunity and accountability, is also some of the best of our culture. The news that violent crime is down at the same time is legitimately encouraging. Of course, anyone who lived through the ’80s and ’90s in an inner city as I did in Manhattan doesn’t need to see the numbers to notice the sea change.
All of this civil-society work provides models for the renewal of the culture more broadly. There is much to be alarmed about in the culture, as this section chronicles. The breakdown of marriage and family life—with more children growing up without a married mother and father and fewer married couples having children—affects every aspect of American life.
But just as four decades of persistent activism, education, service, and prayer have brought us to a point where the tide is turning on abortion, a similar level of commitment can affect the cultural landscape as it pertains to marriage and family life. Just as progress is being made on crime and even divorce rates, we need to strive for a culture in which women and men see one another as complementary and needed by one another, made for one another and for the children whom they have participated in creating, who are completely and most naturally dependent on them.
We will need to recover a common language and moral grammar that reflects our shared tradition and experience of cherishing life, family, and community. Our responses must take into account the realities, wounds, and lessons from the cultural havoc of recent decades. Our efforts must be true to both nature and history and pursue persuasion and coalition building. We must tell the stories of what works, pointing to the people and groups who are restoring a culture of life, marriage, and religious liberty.
Democracy needs a flourishing civil society, the backbone of which is people of conscience who look out for their neighbors, who raise and support families, who take matters of human dignity either as Gospel truth or as a moral imperative to protect and uplift. The cultural indicators that follow [see weblink below] help us to take stock of our efforts in this regard—and a number of them do not give us a good report. But the indicators are grim only if we resign ourselves from our responsibilities to one another.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online, and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.
Read more: "The 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity" - http://index.heritage.org/culture/
