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AR 25:13 - Decadent America, a victim of its own "success"
In this issue:
CULTURE - "the young and the dispossessed have been tranquilized"
EVANGELICALISM - a history of the Christian Study Center Movement
Apologia Report 25:13 (1,470)
March 31, 2020
CULTURE
"The point ... of most ancient wisdom, was to teach humility. ... Hubris - the prideful desire to reach the heavens and be like unto God - will be punished." So ends Mark Lilla's first paragraph in his review of The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, by Ross Douthat [1] in the March 8 edition of the New York Times Book Review (p10). Describing Douthat as a "self-declared conservative Catholic," Lilla <www.bit.ly/2wD2UVX> explains that "By 'decadence' he means a kind of cultural exhaustion and world-weariness he senses in our time and that worries him precisely because it seems to be sustainable rather than a prelude to collapse. The malaise he analyzes is the result of various forces - economic, institutional, technological, cultural, even biological - coming together to sap us of our strength and hope. ...
"As a genre, social prophecy assumes a pact between author and reader. The author agrees to let his or her imagination loose in the jungle of trends, developments and crises of the moment. The reader agrees to suspend questions and judgments until the end, picking up insights along the way. This is the spirit in which The Decadent Society can best be approached and appreciated. Take, for example, the deeply disturbing chapter on declines in fertility that have placed many developed nations, including the United States, below the level needed to replace the current population. ...
"Douthat does not moralize about this situation or place the blame solely on the sexual revolution. He recognizes that multiple factors contribute to changes in birthrates, including consumerism and workaholism, which the American right celebrates. In the end he accepts that below-replacement fertility 'is the fundamental fact of civilized life in the early 21st century' and that it 'looks like an inevitable corollary of liberal capitalist modernity.' ...
"The least persuasive pages are devoted to pop culture, which he rightly sees as dull and repetitive, but whose significance he vastly overestimates. ... I simply note that Hollywood has still not wrapped its head around Trumpian populism, the most important social change in our lifetimes.
"Somewhat unexpectedly, Douthat levels the same charge of repetitiveness against our political intellectual culture and expresses a little nostalgia for sharp and sometimes violent confrontations that also took place in the year of the moon landing. What about our recent culture wars? ...
"Douthat also reveals himself to be an untraditional Catholic traditionalist, complaining about the lack of 'ferment and experimentation' in the religious sphere since the '70s. He even professes some admiration for a 1980s cult led by an Indian guru [Osho/Rajneesh], whose plans to build a utopian community in Oregon were undone by his staff's penchant for mass poisonings and assassination plots. Lunacy? Yes. But also 'boldness, the yearning for transcendence, the willingness to believe in a life-changing message and a holy man.' ...
"What about the political radicalism and rage exacerbated by social media? Probably just 'a kind of digital-age playacting in which young people dissatisfied with decadence pretend to be fascists and Marxists on the internet, re-enacting the 1930s and 1960s with fewer street fights and more memes.' One chapter concludes: 'It's possible that Western society is really leaning back in an easy chair, hooked up to a drip of something soothing, playing and replaying an ideological greatest-hits tape from its wild and crazy youth, all riled up in its own imagination and yet, in reality, comfortably numb.'
"That would have been a wonderful sentence to end The Decadent Society on had it been intended for European audiences, who have a highly developed taste for despair. ...
"But in the end Douthat sets aside these apocalyptic worries as the product of a 'history-as-morality-play' mentality that assumes punishment must necessarily follow sin. (The Hebrew prophets, apparently, were misinformed about this.)
"Instead he prefers to contemplate the possibility of a Western renaissance, brought about by … Africa. (Surprise!) Just as conservative Catholics fought nobly against the French Revolution, so sub-Saharan Africa has resisted the cultural imperialism of the now decadent West. Which means that, given Africa's high birthrates, continued emigration and increasing rates of conversion to conservative Christianity, it may be poised to rejuvenate the countries that once colonized it, both religiously and demographically." <www.nyti.ms/2xjl9zm>
The Week (Mar 13 '20, p21) notes [7] Jake Bittle's take in The New Republic: "Revolution from within is unlikely, [Douthat] says, because the young and the dispossessed have been tranquilized by pornography, video games, and drugs." [6]
"Douthat isn't a fan of stasis," writes Peter Thiel in First Things. "His book, in fact, 'sets the stakes for the most urgent debate of the 2020s' by demonstrating that our most pressing problem is that we have lost our faith that we can create a better future. But when speculating about the form salvation might take, he singles out religious revival and interstellar travel.... 'It is a paradox of our time,' in fact, 'that the path to radical progress begins with moderation.'" [4]
Kirkus (Jan 1 '20) opines: "Douthat underscores religion's entanglement with decadence. No civilization, he writes, 'has thrived without a confidence that there was more to the human story than just the material world as we understand it.' Underlying his call for change is an invocation to look 'heavenward: toward God, toward the stars, or both.'" [5]
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EVANGELICALISM
To Think Christianly: The Christian Study Center Movement, by Charles E. Cotherman [2] -- InterVarsity Press: "In the late 1960s and on into the next decade, the American pastor and bestselling author Francis Schaeffer regularly received requests from evangelicals across North America seeking his help to replicate his innovative learning community, L'Abri, within their own contexts. At the same time, an innovative school called Regent College had started up in Vancouver, British Columbia, led by James Houston and offering serious theological education for laypeople. Before long, numerous admirers and attendees of L'Abri and of Regent had launched Christian 'study centers' of their own - often based on or near university campuses - from Berkeley to Maryland. For evangelical baby boomers coming of age in the midst of unprecedented educational opportunity and cultural upheaval, these multifaceted communities inspired a generation to study, pray, and engage culture more faithfully - in the words of James M. Houston, 'to think Christianly.' ... Charles Cotherman traces the stories of notable study centers and networks, as well as their influence on a generation that would reshape twentieth-century Christianity.
"Beginning with the innovations of L'Abri and Regent College, Cotherman elucidates the histories of:
* - The C. S. Lewis Institute
* - Ligonier Valley Study Center
* - The Consortium of Christian Study Centers
* - New College Berkeley, Graduate Theological Union
* - The Center for Christian Study, University of Virginia
(Strangely absent: John Stott's influential London Institute for Contemporary Christianity)
"Each of these projects owed something to Schaeffer's and Houston's approaches, which combined intellectual and cultural awareness with compelling spirituality, open-handed hospitality, relational networks, and a deep commitment to the gospel's significance for all fields of study - and all of life. Cotherman argues that the centers' mission of lay theological education blazed a new path for evangelicals to fully engage the life of the mind and culture."
Collected accolades include: "superbly written" - Os Guinness; "fascinating, readable, and well-informed" - George Marsden; "well-written and compelling" - Mark A. Noll; "I cannot imagine a better recounting" - Andrew H. Trotter Jr., executive director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers
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OF COURSE ...
With a title that would have been be a fitting obit headline for her, Sylvia Browne (1936-2013) characteristically resurfaces by way of her 2008 book, End of Days [3], which reappeared two weeks ago -- at #10 on USA Today's March 19 bestseller list.
The undeniably occultic Browne also appears (incongruously) on another familiar sales chart (Mar 23 '20):
"Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #242 in Books
"#1 in Christian Prophecy (Books)
"#2 in Christian Eschatology (Books)"
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, by Ross Douthat (Avid Reader, 2020, hardcover, 272 pages) <www.amzn.to/2L4Xabx>
2 - To Think Christianly: A History of L'Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement, by Charles E. Cotherman (IVP, 2020, hardcover, 320 pages) <www.amzn.to/2xf30mB>
3 - End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies About the End of the World, by Sylvia Browne (Berkley, 2009, paperback, 336 pages) <www.amzn.to/2UUJMdW>
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