Were the "Good Old Days" Really So Good?
I came across this interesting observation from George Marsden’s Understanding Fundamentalism and Evengelicalism. It speaks to ssomething I have suspected for a very long time. Marsden refers to the period from roughly 1865 - 1890 as the “gilded age” of American evangelicalism:
The era marked by the assassination of two presidents and the impeachment of another, a stolen electiion, and a reign of rampant political and business corruption and greed, was well named by Mark Twain. A vaneer of evangelical Sunday-school piety covered almost everything in the culture, but no longer did the rhetoric of idealism and virtue seem to touch the core of the materialism of the political and business interests. It was a dime store millennium.
Outwardly Protestantism prospered. Few Protestants doubted theirs was a “Christian” nation. Though religion in America was voluntary, a Protestant version of the medieval ideal of “Christendom” still prevailed. American civilization, said Protestant leaders, was essentially “Christian.” Christian principles held the nation together by providing a solid base of morality in the citizenry.
Perhaps it is because I wasn’t raised a Christian, but I grow impatient as my children read books which impose a broad-brush Christian gloss on history I believe simply wasn’t there. All the founding fathers were “good Christians.” Ours is a “Christian nation.” All “good” men in bygone days loved the Lord and desired little more than to serve the King. And so it goes …
I’m not denying that American society from the 18th and 19th centuries was more Christian and people generally held more Biblical principles. I am saying, however, in many cases, that this was more veneer than substance. Maybe I’m off base here, but I really like Marsden’s analysis of the era.
What do you think?
that Christian principles went a little deeper, but not by a whole lot. Another fruit of this era was temporary Prohibition of alcohol and prohibition of drugs (which weren’t prohibited until the early 20th century).
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
I’m persuaded that there has been a massive shift away from Christian assumptions/Christian world view. For many centuries several ideas were assumed and shared by most in Western Civilization.
- There is a God who made the world
- We will give account to Him
- We are dependent on revelation to know God, ourselves, our origins, etc.
- Right and wrong are based on a moral code that is not of human invention (and is expressed in varying degrees by revelation and by the created order)
- A family ought to consist of a man a woman and their children; the ideal is the same man married to the same woman for life
- Man and woman have different roles in the family and in society
- Sexual fidelity in marriage is an important ideal
I could go on, but this already quite a list. On these points, there is no longer anything like the consensus there used to be. In that sense, there were indeed “good old days.” But there’s an important distinction that’s often overlooked on this topic: the distinction between how people live and the things they believe. There was never a society where everybody lived up to the claims. But beliefs in general principles resulted in far more living up to them than we have now, with no social consensus. With sinners, it only gets so good. But there were better old days in terms of both belief and conduct.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I am unconvinced that the “good old days” were better but would love to see some proof. Crime for example is way down today. The murder rate has steadily plummeted over the past centuries. Church attendance statistics I have seen show no significant real difference between today and past centuries. Western civilization today would never allow the violence that was allowed in past centuries by governments or individuals. The racism situation is far better today than the past.
It is easy to say the old days of Western civ were better but where is the data? Divorce rates are a notable exception but that is an indication of how divorce is perceived today rather than whether more sins to cause divorce are occurring. In many cases, sin is more in the open and visible today than it used to be but that does not mean that the amount of sin has changed necessarily. A kidnapping gets 24x7 coverage on cable news today and would lead people to think kidnapping is on the rise but in actually, kidnapping is almost an extinct crime in the US.
There is plenty of data, but mostly the case rests on a few widely accepted facts and a biblical evaluation of those facts.
- Fact: the Enlightenment happened
- Fact: modernity happened
- Fact: the jazz era happened (and everybody agrees huge shifts in social attitudes occurred in that period as well)
- Fact: the sexual revolution happened
So why should we believe things were better before? Well, there’s a little complexity in that, but not a great deal. First, “better” in what way? As Christians we don’t measure “better” and “worse” strictly in terms of crime and poverty statistics. To us, better includes what people believe and value.
Virtually nobody thinks that beliefs and values before and after the Enlightenment were the same after (they would have to deny that the Enlightenment happened at all). Almost nobody doubts that the results of these changes worked themselves out in western civilization over the centuries that followed.
So what were the changes and were they changes toward something better, about equal, or worse?
They were changes in how we view the world, its origins, where the idea of right and wrong come from, what a family is and why it matters.
Since the starting point of these changes was an elevation of the ability of man to determine what is true and not true by his own devices (“science”) it’s impossible that the changes in values and beliefs that depend on that authority-inversion could be changes for the better.
And when beliefs and values change, behavior changes. Always. That’s a pretty biblical idea as well, isn’t it? (“Out of the heart….”)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Discussion