Cultural Trends

(From The Center for Vision & Values, Grove City College. Used by permission.)

By Dr. Paul Kengor

In 1789, America’s first president proclaimed a “day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” George Washington implored the heavens to “pardon our national and other transgressions” and urged the citizenry to practice “true religion and virtue.”

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln urged his countrymen to set aside the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Subsequent presidents continued this civic-religious tradition. “More than three centuries ago, the Pilgrims, after a year of hardship and peril, humbly and reverently set aside a special day upon which to give thanks to God,” said John F. Kennedy in his first Thanksgiving proclamation. “They paused in their labors to give thanks for the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by Divine Providence.” Quoting the Bible, President Kennedy affirmed: “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord.”

From Sunesis. Posted with permission. Read the series.

Posted with permission from Sunesis.

We live in a society dominated by a philosophy of change, a departure from human values, and the rise of anti-authoritarianism. We hear “post” frequently in terms such as post-Christian, post-liberal, and post-conservative; this is also a time of globalism and neo-paganism. Philosophers call the philosophy of this age Postmodernism. Before we look at just what this movement is all about, and how it affects each of us today, a little history is appropriate.

Premodernism was the worldview (whether people understood it as such or not) dominated by authority (in the West this authority was the Catholic Church) and a respect for that authority. It routinely included a belief in a deity and man’s responsibility toward that deity. Angels and demons, the miraculous, and the spiritual were an assumed part of life.

Modernism followed. With the Enlightenment of the 17th century came the rejection of the authority of tradition in favor of human reason and natural science. The autonomous human was the source of meaning and truth, and human ability became the god of this age. There were good things that came from the Enlightenment. It was foundational to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights. It broke the power of Catholicism in Europe. It restored dignity to the individual. Modernism, however, had significant problems. It assumed that man could do anything, including putting himself on the moon and launching himself into the universe. Thus Star Trek became the ultimate in modernist scientific thinking—man could even overcome the laws of physics. With the rise of reason and science, however, came a rejection of the miraculous. There could still be a god, if man felt he needed one, but it would have to be a god subject to the laws of physics and nature. Deism rose at about the same time as Modernism. It was a good fit, for the god of the Deist was one who set in motion the universe as we know it and left it to itself. In the modern worldview, there was a confidence that truth could be discovered and demonstrated as true. The debates, therefore, centered on metaphysical realities—is there a God or is there not? Is Jesus God or is he not? Did miracles happen or did they not? In these debates, it was assumed that there was a definitive answer which could be demonstrated by science, reason, and argumentation. Baptist individualism rose, especially in America, with the rise of the emphasis on the person. For Baptists (and others in the New World), meaning and truth were based on the human conscience and intellect informed by biblical truth. Bible believers were unwilling to give up the God of the Bible or His truth, but the interpretation of that truth was no longer based in tradition.