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AR 26:36 - Did the Sexual Revolution become part of a new religion?
In this issue:
MORALITY - a predatory attempt to 'engineer souls'
ORIGINS - "created in the image of God, literally descended from a common ancestor"
RACISM - conflict over a "gospel of grievances" roils Cru leadership, staff
Apologia Report 26:36 (1,541)
September 9, 2021
MORALITY
"Religion ghosts? The New Yorker offers hellish glimpse of pedophile science in Germany" by Terry Mattingly -- refers to "a recent Rachel Aviv feature at The New Yorker <www.bit.ly/3jjKNtE> that ran with this headline: 'The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles.' ...
"The man at the center of this horror story is Helmut Kentler, a Sexual Revolution hero <www.bit.ly/3heyq0A> in post-World War II Germany who sincerely believed, for reasons personal and professional, that it would be a good thing for the government to fund experiments in which lonely, abandoned children were placed in the homes of male pedophiles."
Doing so "was seen as a way of attacking traditional religions. ...
"The unstated theme running through this stunning New Yorker piece is that the Sexual Revolution has become part of a new civil religion. On the moral and cultural left, sexual liberation helps citizens to escape the chains of the nasty old faiths. ...
"Aviv explains with bracing clarity how the context of the 1960s and 1970s made the experiment entirely plausible." The idea that "strict sexual rules imposed neurosis while liberation offered wholeness was embraced with particular fervor in Germany, because the old order was associated not just with prudery but with fascism and Auschwitz."
Aviv notes "experimental day-care centers, where children were encouraged to be naked and to explore one another's bodies. ...
"All this was part of a wider Western mood, distilled in the slogan of May 1968: It is forbidden to forbid.
"This brings us to the feature's primary discussion of 'morality.' ...
"'[I]n a society that was more free about sexuality, Auschwitz could not have happened,' German legal scholar Herbert Jäger said. ...
"Much of Aviv's story focuses on 'Marco,' a victim - now a troubled adult - whose life was dominated by his foster father, an engineer named Fritz Henkel.
"This is the backbone of the story. But the brain of the story belongs to the state-funded expert who was pulling the strings in this bizarre dance. ...
"Marco was Henkel's eighth foster son in sixteen years. When Henkel began fostering children, in 1973, a teacher noticed that he was 'always looking for contact with boys.' Six years later, a caseworker observed that Henkel appeared to be in a 'homosexual relationship' with one of his foster sons. ... Helmut Kentler, who called himself Henkel's 'permanent adviser,' intervened on Henkel's behalf - a pattern that repeats throughout more than eight hundred pages of case files about Henkel's home. Kentler was a well-known scholar, the author of several books on sex education and parenting, and he was often quoted in Germany's leading newspapers and on its TV programs. The newspaper Die Zeit had described him as the 'nation's chief authority on questions of sexual education.' ...
"If there were ever files in the city's archives documenting how Kentler's project came to be approved - or how, exactly, he located the men who served as foster fathers - they have been lost or destroyed."
Kentler found "a research field that would allow him, as he once said in a public lecture, to be 'an engineer in the realm of the … manipulatable soul.' ...
"The key assumption here - that traditional morality (and by implication, traditional forms of religious faith) was the fertile soil for Fascism - is mocked, kind of, but never really discussed. ...
"[R]eaders are left with a devastating indictment of a bizarre form of anti-religion that seems to have been, for a time, a kind of state-funded faith in sexual liberation as a [way to] manipulate and, perhaps, heal souls - at least to offer healing based on a different set of doctrines and sacraments." <www.bit.ly/3znsUj9>
Parallels with today's culture of casting off all moral constraints seem disturbingly close at hand.
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ORIGINS
In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration, by William Lane Craig [1] -- the Eerdmans promo begins: "Was Adam a real historical person? And if so, who was he and when did he live?" Craig "sets out to answer these questions through a biblical and scientific investigation. He begins with an inquiry into the genre of Genesis 1-11, determining that it can most plausibly be classified as mytho-history - a narrative with both literary and historical value. He then moves into the New Testament, where he examines references to Adam in the words of Jesus and the writings of Paul, ultimately concluding that the entire Bible considers Adam the historical progenitor of the human race - a position that must therefore be accepted as a premise for Christians who take seriously the inspired truth of Scripture. Working from that foundation of biblical truth, Craig embarks upon an interdisciplinary survey of scientific evidence to determine where Adam could be most plausibly located in the evolutionary history of humankind, ultimately determining that Adam lived between 750,000 and 1,000,000 years ago as a member of the archaic human species Homo heidelbergensis. He concludes by reflecting theologically on his findings and asking what all this might mean for us as human beings created in the image of God, literally descended from a common ancestor - albeit one who lived in the remote past."
See AR 26:24 for additional recent discussion on this topic. <www.bit.ly/3DkYXma>
Craig was recently ranked <www.bit.ly/3Bl0Z46> as the tenth most influential philosopher in the world and the third most influential theologian in the world over the last three decades (1990-2020).
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RACISM
A 'gospel of grievances:' Christianity Today tries to unravel racial divisions at Cru" by Julia Duin (GetReligion, Jun 8 '21) -- considers the arguments among evangelicals on "whether concerns about race issues are taking over whole organizations and diluting their work."
Christianity Today "broke the most intriguing story <www.bit.ly/3yHexVF> about the knife fight going on in Cru - the college ministry formerly known as Campus Crusade - about the backlash against the organization's attempts to address racism. At issue is a series of national conferences that have left its white staff feeling like they've been hit by a truck.
"The Cru conflict is a microcosm of the stand-off between younger, more culturally liberal staff and older conservative ones. A major sticking point is critical race theory (CRT)....
"The debate over critical race theory has landed at Cru, one of the country's most prominent parachurch ministries, where a 179-page letter <www.bit.ly/3kQMwWW> alleging an overemphasis on racial justice has exacerbated tensions that have been quietly brewing within the organization for years." The authors of "Seeking Clarity and Unity" raise concerns that a "victim-oppressor worldview" has become embedded throughout the organization, "dividing staff and detracting from the true gospel."
After skimming the document, Duin finds the Christianity Today piece "doesn't tell half of it. At a basic level, many staff and students (and certainly donors) are not buying into the CRT or Black Lives Matter message and they're leaving. ...
"The document said Cru is creating social justice warriors, not Christian evangelists and coming up with theological oddities, such as arguments that what Genesis 2 really said is that the first human was not male but non-binary. ...
"[D]isagreements over Cru's handling of justice and diversity issues have caused both seasoned and recently recruited leaders to resign from staff. ...
"Is this wide divide just at Cru or is the same conflict happening in other evangelical groups that involve young people such as Youth With A Mission or InterVarsity Christian Fellowship? What the Southern Baptists are fighting over is very different, but there must be similar versions of the Cru experience happening in smaller evangelical groups. ...
"Cru has served as a pipeline into leadership at other evangelical organizations. If this main feeder group becomes woke, and then divided, expect that conflict to move up the chain to other agencies where similar fights will break out." <www.bit.ly/3jJUbqM>
For valuable context, see "Cru Divided Over Emphasis on Race" by Curtis Yee (CT, Jun 3 '21). <www.bit.ly/3yHexVF>
Meanwhile, how is InterVarsity doing on the CTR front as students return to campus? Consider this recent report, also from Christianity Today (Aug 16 '21). <www.bit.ly/38W7dei>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration, by William Lane Craig (Eerdmans, 2021, hardcover, 420 pages) <www.bit.ly/3DrRTo2>
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