THE MORAL
DECLINE OF THE WEST
Stes de Necker
Introduction
Moral
decline (or degeneration) refers to the process of declining from a
higher to a lower level of morality. The condition of moral decline
is seen as preceding or concomitant with the decline in quality of life, as
well as the decline of nations.
It
seems one can hardly watch the television or go on the Internet anymore without
being bombarded by profanity, sexually explicit content or barely clothed women.
When
I was a youngster, prayer was still the norm schools. My school day started with prayer.
We didn’t have condom machines in the restrooms, and immoral behaviour was the
exception, rather than the norm.
Today
children are taught that parents who object to homosexuality or its
indoctrination in our schools are divisive, intolerant, narrow-minded, bigots.
How did the world end up at this point of
moral decay?
We
need to bear in mind that the moral decline in the world did not happen
overnight. If it had, there would have been an outcry. It simply
would not have happened. Most cultures would have rejected the
change. But it didn’t happen overnight. It took decades.
Each
moral concession made was barely noticed with the passage of time. I’ve
used this analogy before, but I’ll use it again. A frog dropped in a pot
of boiling hot water will jump right out. Put that same frog in a pot of
cool water, and heat it to its boiling point, and that same frog will
cook. It does not notice the slowly increasing water temperature, and
suddenly it’s too late. That is how we’ve ended up here.
A world
that has since the mid sixties relentlessly been driving God out of public life, out of our schools, our courts, our Parliaments, shouldn’t be surprised at all the problems we have.
In
order for morality to be upheld and for degeneration to be effectively
measured, standards must exist as points of moral reference. While legal
philosophy may hold that immorality is whatever a moral person considers
immoral, these judgments are typically based on or are derived from either
transcendent religious sources or established secular ideology.
On
a corporate scale, all governments and their legal and educational institutions
operate out of some basic moral beliefs, making complete separation of State
from moral ideology impossible.
What
the world needs now are strong political leaders to do something to get us out
of the moral slump that we're in.
But
what are these moral issues that have declined so much?
Abortion
has returned as a hot-button issue, and is eating away at our moral fibre.
Increases
in divorce and infidelity can be considered indicators of our moral decay.
Other
areas that might indicate declining virtue are teenage pregnancy, out of
wedlock births, abortion, school dropout, lowering of educational standards,
poor work ethics, crime, corruption and the list goes on.
The Basis
of Morality
Biblical theology
The
cause of moral degeneration continues be a subject of study.
In
the Bible, moral decline was always a result of spiritual declension, that of
falling into idolatry (the worship of false, gods), which is evidenced in the
Bible to be the mother of all sins. In addition to the transitory and
finite nature of such created gods, these are seen to be forbidden due to their
being the product of man's corrupt nature, such as is expressed in Romans 1 in the Christian New Testament.
Man
also tends to become more like the object of his highest devotion and allegiance.
(Psalm 115) God, who is stated to need nothing, (Acts 17:25) and being
omnipotent, omniscient and perfect, (Dt. 32:4) is seen to command man to
worship Him as a matter of righteousness, and for the good of man. (Dt.
6:1-13; 28:1-14; 30:16)
Certain
environmental conditions are also seen as being conducive to idolatry and its
spiritual and moral decline, these conditions most primarily being that of an
abundance of sensual and material satisfaction, as well as ego fulfilment
(pleasures, possessions and power). The Bible states that these created things
are what the world "lusts" after, (1 John 2:16) and exhorts believers
to set their controlling affection upon God and holy things. (Dt. 6:5; Col. 3;
Phil. 4:8)
A
latter acknowledgment of this guilt and the need to place priorities where they
should be was eloquently expressed by President Abraham Lincoln in
his Proclamation for a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer,
issued in the midst (1863) of the American Civil War, which
reads (in part):
“
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Whereas,
it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon
the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in
humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to
mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy
Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed
whose God is the Lord.
And,
insomuch as we know that, by His Divine law, nations like individuals are
subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear
that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be
but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful
end of our national reformation as a whole People. We have been the
recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these
many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and
power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.”
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Secular ideology
Moral
decline begins when transcendent moral values, which have proven to be
beneficial over time, are discarded in preference to various ideas which man
finds more conducive to achieving ultimately destructive lustful desires.
While
people without religion may sometimes be considered relatively good, and
contrasted with evil people, yet, in contrast to the Bible, atheism
offers no objective transcendent authority which comprehensively defines good
and evil, and which is proven to provide beneficial morality.
In
addition, the moral foundation of atheism is seen by many as having allowed atheists such
as Mao Zedong and Pol Pot and others to easily justify their atrocities,
these being pragmatically reasonable to them.
The
corresponding responses from atheists, such as which invoke Hitler as an
example of a Christian, and or charge God with immorality (paradoxically, by
Biblical standards), is part of a renewed conflict.
Ancient
Moral Values
China
China's
long recorded history testifies to both various degrees of moral virtue as well
as moral declension and its consequences, and to some degree of reform. Recent
evidence indicates moral decline is seen an increasing problem in China today.
One
influential contemporary moralist comments, "The problem isn’t that people
don’t follow moral standards; the problem is that there no longer exist moral
standards.”
He
attributes the loss of morality to five decades of atrophy under Communist
political power, plus two decades of corrosion under the money and wealth
brought by the Western market economy.
Roman Empire
While
pagan Rome evidenced that its people had retained a somewhat strong degree of
adherence to many basic moral values for much of its history, without which it
could not have been a great empire, their gods themselves (mainly being forms
of Greek deities) were immoral, and the Roman Empire followed the path of moral
degeneration that would be its ruin.
The
moral deterioration of the Empire is seen to have attained its highest point in
the dissolute age of the immoral Roman Emperors, almost
all of which were active homosexuals, and who often claimed godhood
themselves in order to legitimize their rule.
Alfred
Edersheim (1825-1889) adds, “Slavery was not even what we know it, but a
seething mass of cruelty and oppression on the one side, and of cunning and
corruption on the other. More than any other cause, it contributed to the ruin
of Roman society.
The
freedmen, who had very often acquired their liberty by the most disreputable
courses, and had prospered in them, combined in shameless manner the vices of
the free with the vileness of the slave. The foreigners - especially Greeks and
Syrians - who crowded the city, poisoned the springs of its life by the
corruption which they brought.
The
free citizens were idle, dissipated, sunken; their chief thoughts of the
theatre and the arena; and they were mostly supported at the public cost.
While, even in the time of Augustus, more than two hundred thousand persons
were thus maintained by the State, what of the old Roman stock remained was rapidly
decaying, partly from corruption, but chiefly from the increasing cessation of
marriage, and the nameless abominations of what remained of family-life.”
Modern
Day Values
The United States
America is seen to be somewhat unique in the degree of
moral foundation which was it founded upon, with a strong Biblically based
influence, which was strengthened as a result of religious revivals, and which
affected a strong union of faith and civil life in the new Republic.
French
historian Alexis de Tocqueville commented, “The Americans combine the notions
of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is
impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction
does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in
the soul rather than to live.”
The Puritans in New England, and later, other Christian groups were
instrumental in forming a country with a distinctive Christian character. Noted
evangelical author and commentary Os Guinness comments
that, while America has never officially been a "Christian Republic,"
for much of its history the Christian faith has been a leading contribution to
its unofficial civil religion.
Though
the extreme of creating theocracies ruling over those without the church (contrary
to the charter given to the church in the New Testament) was rightly resisted
by men such as Baptist Roger Williams, yet all 50 states referred to God in their
Constitutions.
Evangelical
Calvinism (then the predominate faith) is seen as fostering a fervent American
nationalism, and the effect of a Bible based Christianity is credited with
working to bring souls to be ruled from within, by the Spirit of Christ and a
sound conscience. This helped to enable relatively small government and
yet promote stability in a vast and fertile country with a multitude of
different peoples, and to endure and progress in overcoming many serious
negative consequences of the abuse of power, and the iniquity of unjust
bondage.
While
not all the Founders were Christian, none were known atheists, and Deists consisted
of men such as Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Paine.
Primary
in establishing a strong moral foundation was education.
In
elementary schooling in early America, the overtly Christian New England
Primer was used in New England, which is estimated to have sold upwards to
3,000,000 copies from 1700 to 1850. Introduced in 1690, this reader was used in
what now would be the 1st grade, and taught multitudes of children how to read
for 200 years, until 1900.
The Alphabet was taught with Bible verses that began with
each letter of the alphabet. Lessons had questions about the Bible and the Ten
Commandments. An example of the Primer is, A = In Adam's fall, we sinned all. B
= Heaven to find, the Bible mind."
In
addition, approximately half of all American children learned from the McGuffey Reader, a
series of textbooks of which 122 million copies were published (during a time
when the population was much less than today, and books were passed on more).
The first Reader was published in the 1830's, and was followed by five
additional Readers, the last being published in 1885. This was an advanced
teaching system for its time, written by William Holmes McGuffey, who later
became a Presbyterian minister, and a work which earned him the title, “the
Great Schoolmaster of the Nation.”
McGuffey
believed religion and education were to be interrelated and were essential to a
healthy society. McGuffey exalted the Lord Jesus Christ, and used the Bible
more than any other source, though the later revised editions (which used
McGufey’s name though he neither contributed to them nor approved their
revisions) became more pluralistic in their moral instruction. The Readers were
filled with stories of strength, character, goodness and truth, working to instil
standards of basic Christian-based morality for more than a century.
McGuffey
Readers became the standardized reading text for most schools across the United
States, especially throughout the West and South, during the mid to late
nineteenth century, and were used widely in America until just after World
War I. This resulted in the Readers becoming a unifying force in American
culture, giving America a common value-laden body of literary reference and
allusion, and “a sense of common experience and of common possession”.
The
first elementary schools also taught Christian morality, and even the Unitarian (a religion which essentially denies Christ and
Divine biblical authority, but which then overall upheld Bible morality, much
unlike it does today) Father of the Common School, Horace Mann (May 4,
1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in
1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from
religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the
general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the
teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.”
Mann,
who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and
lotteries, dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from
virtue”, and that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would
produce more evil than it inherited.
In
higher education, the second requirement of Harvard University Law of 1642 (after requiring
literacy in Latin, which language the Scriptures were then mostly written in),
was that "Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to
know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life.
Overall,
the nature of early colleges and universities was religious, and which
continued at least until the Civil War. Even State colleges had significant
religious (most always Christian) components, such as mandatory religion
courses and attendance at chapel services, while large numbers of their
faculties had formal religious training.
By
1820 American publishers had produced almost 300 different editions of the King
James Bible, and by 1870 the number had increased to almost 1,900 in the English
language alone.
By the mid-800'sBiblical literacy so high that, as these
historians state,:
"Authors
throughout this period used biblical stories and phraseology as a kind of
cultural anchor in their own works. They were able to allude to the biblical
narrative—or how that narrative was worded in the King James Version of the
Bible—with an un-abashed fluency and confidence. Readers were so familiar with
certain biblical stories, characters, and passages that authors could build
upon these narratives in their own works without feeling any need to point out
the biblical roots of their thinking."
Frederick
Douglass could write of weeping "near the rivers of Babylon" and
Harriet Beecher Stowe could underline the Christ like character of Tom in Uncle
Tom's Cabin (1852) by lacing his conversation with unattributed biblical
allusions, knowing that their readers would know the parts of the Bible they
were so freely referencing.
While
iniquity was always a significant part of America, it was generally held as
shameful and overall resisted by Church and State.
Early on, in a pamphlet for
Europeans titled Information to Those Who Would Remove to
America (1754), Benjamin Franklin wrote, in part:
“...serious religion, under its
various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced.
Atheism is unknown there; Infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live
to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting
with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have
manifested His approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness by which the
different sects treat each other, and by the remarkable prosperity with which
He has been please to favor the whole country. “
During
certain periods of America's growth moral degradation increased, and a strong
correlation was felt between loss of Christian religious devotion and the
increase in iniquity. America's faith saw revival as a result of the First Great Awakening in
the 1730s and 1740's, and which is held to have began the modern Evangelical Christian movement.
During
the period of approximately 1800-1830's the Second Great Awakening took
place, and a Third Great Awakening occurring
from the late 1850's to the early 1900's. These revivals had a profound
spiritual and civil impact on Christian faith within America and England, and worked toward the abolition of the
well-entrenched historical institution of slavery.
Early to mid 20th century
Religiously,
the early 1900's saw a revival of Pentecostalism, as well as the rise of Evangelical Christian Fundamentalism as a distinct form. The latter was
manifested in response to the growth of liberal Christianity and
doctrinally laboured to combat liberalism's move away from historical Christian
faith, especially as concerned Christ and salvation, and the Bible's strong
emphasis upon personal morality.
Liberal
theology also placed primary emphasis on a social gospel, while Fundamentalism was rightly committed to
uphold the primacy of basic doctrine and to tend to the spiritual needs of
souls.
However, opportunities to meet material needs of those without tended to
be marginalized, an overreaction that some later recognized as an imbalance.
Educationally,
the rise of Darwinism worked against the view of
man as being made in the image of man and reduced him to being simply a higher
order of primates, with morality having no firm foundation. High schools and
places of higher education increasingly became places of rampant STD's, inflated
grades, and the marginalization of core subjects.
Economically,
building upon the foundation of the past, post World War 1 capitalism and the ongoing Industrial revolution helped
enable more goods and funds for the general public.
Morally,
much effort was expended in passing Prohibition in the United
States (1920 to 1933), while during the same period the Roaring 20's manifested
a marked degree of cultural rejection of traditional moral decency.
The
following Great Depression (1929-1940's)
signalled an end to the economic boon, and post World War II saw the
traditional family focused on, as many men and women married and raised children.
The
overcrowding of cities was seen as contributing to moral corruption, and in
1890 the New York Society for Parks and Playgrounds, described as
a “moral movement not a charity”, was incorporated. Its purpose was to provide
healthy recreation for the 500,000 boys and girls in New York city, and so help to counteract "the physical
and moral degeneration" which so often follows densely populated cities.
In
1897, New York city Mayor William L. Strong appointed the Small Parks Advisory
Committee, which advised constructing playgrounds with equipment and trained
recreation specialists, for "the physical energies of youth, which, if not
directed to good ends, will surely manifest themselves in evil tendencies.” In
addition to recreation, children took part in drills, singing, a salute to the
flag, a talk by the school principal, and occupation work, etc.
These
early reformers saw recreation not as an end in itself, but as properly carried
out, a program directly linked to “social morality.” “If our boys . . . are
going to acquire the habit of subordinating selfish to group interests, they
must learn these things through experience and not from books or the bleachers
. . . ”
In
the 1950's, the danger of Communism worked a renewed
affirmation of America being a basically Christian nation, though no
significant religious revival was evident, and liberal ideology increased its influence through colleges
and universities, as well as the film industry.
1960 and Beyond
The
decade of the 1960's would begin the most dramatic moral change in America's
history. While a more developed moral social consciousness helped to effect
beneficial and needed changes, such as in the area of civil rights, as regards
such non-moral aspects as race and colour, this recognition of basic equality
was used by liberal moralists to advocate liberty for immorality in word and in
deed, most predominately in the area of sensuality.
The
1967 "Summer of love" saw hundreds of thousands of teenagers leaving
their homes in search for deeper meaning, as well as satisfaction of fleshly
lusts, with "turn on, tune in, and drop out," being a favourite
phrase.
Vast
multitudes made their pilgrimage to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco,
an area home to many rock icons, and known for its liberalized ideology and
culture. The civilization that resulted was a testimony to the practical result
of the prolonged practice of this ideology, and when the infrastructure of
tradition society, which they both rebelled against and depended upon, could not
support them.
While
the liberal media tended to celebrate it
as a positive attempt at Utopian culture, indolence, homelessness or unsanitary
living, and drug use (and overdoses) abounded, along with marked increases in
crime and disease.
"By
the fall of 1967, Haight-Ashbury was nearly abandoned, trashed, and laden with
drugs and homeless people. Most of the kids that descended upon the Haight with
such hope and optimism in June returned home sick and out of money by
September."
The
1960's culminated with two major distinctive concerts in 1969, Woodstock and the Altamont Speedway Free Festival. The
former would become the world's most celebrated rock concert, being peaceful
despite over 500,000 people, while the other was the largest rock disaster
ever, with security being provided by Hell's Angels (whom many saw as
counter-cultural brothers), and a murderous man being killed while the Rolling Stones sang "Sympathy to the Devil".
As
regards moral decline, overall much of the generation of that decade and those
that followed evidenced increased rebellion against authority in general(though
usually not to living off the government) and against capitalism, and the
promotion and practice of pre-marital sex,
recreational drug use, the rise of feminism and the advocating of liberal ideology.
While
most of the main stream media and University
professors in America are seen to treat this revolution and its foundational
ethos as liberating and beneficial, its effects have been manifestly
deleterious, as evidenced by multitudinous studies and statistics.
While
promoting tolerance within its culture, and (in the beginning) rejecting the
idea that materialism brought fulfilment, the 1960's cultural revolution birthed an unprecedented intolerance of
traditional values, while its affection for drugs - used to find the
alternative reality they sought - and the its later promotion of the
demonic victim mentality (Gn.
3:1-5), had destructive effects upon society, in particular upon its weakest
members.
The
emphasis on social justice may well have been a means to justify a basic
rebellion against authority in general, in particular fathers, headmasters,
police officers, soldiers. Truth is people have receive too many 'rights', too soon, without the necessary guidance to realize that for every right there is a concomitant responsibility. We have the right to life, but then we must live responsibly. We have the right to own property, but then we must obtain that property in the normal legal way. We have the right of freedom of movement, but that does not mean you can trespass on someone else's property.
The
rejection of Biblical and traditional sexual laws and promotion of sexual
promiscuity and homosexuality would result in a
greatly increased incidence of infectious diseases and premature death, with a
half million of Americans dead because of AIDS.
Colleges
and universities largely became the seminaries of the new cultural
"religion" and its ethos.
Revised
standard studies and new courses, such as gay studies, became part of the new
orthodoxy, with a later neglect of core subjects.
Relative
few teaching posts became staffed by conservatives. While early attempts
by students to gain positions of administrative power in their institutions had
only limited success, its graduates would soon fill positions of power in
informational, educational, and governmental agencies, and as by a Fabian
strategy achieve its victories.
Religiously,
a notable number of young seekers for a better reality became part of what some
term a Fourth Great Awakening,
out of which evangelical churches such as Calvary Chapel began and grew to be significance
denominations.
Conclusion
Our
world is in a moral decline. This decline is still progressing. It
is up to us as concerned Christians to take an active role in the democratic
process of our nation. Don’t be afraid to stand up and be counted.
You have a
voice. Make it heard.
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