JESSE POWELL writes:
“You really must read this page and the website in general for yourself to appreciate the alarmist worldview of those who think that the world is closing in on them because of rising equality of women and gays gaining mainstream acceptance, and feel helpless to do anything about it.”
In some ways this characterization is fair and in some ways it isn’t. The world is closing in on us, but we are not helpless.
Speaking as an atheist myself, feminism and the secondary and related issue of the acceptance of homosexuality are terrible things that do indeed make it seem sometimes that the world is “closing in on us” or that the world is falling apart, that the social order is collapsing; however you want to put it. This is not “alarmist”; this is simply the reality of what is going on in America and in the Western World in general. Many, many statistics show the scope and the severity of the crisis that is unfolding.
Take a trip back in time to 1900. In 1900, three percent of white married women worked. The Total Fertility Rate per woman was about four. The out-of-wedlock birth ratio was about one percent for whites. The divorce rate was eight percent. It is very, very hard to imagine such a world today, it is so foreign to our “modern” existence. Still, it is true, you can look it up. In 2010, about 60 percent of white married women worked. The Total Fertility Rate per woman (among whites) was 1.8. The out-of-wedlock birth ratio among whites was 29 percent. The divorce rate was 53 percent. This is a radical deterioration among all the social indicators. This is a process of destruction of the very foundations of life. The fertility rate is below replacement level, this by itself means extinction or decline in our culture if nothing is done to reverse the downward trend.
When I look at the relentlessly deteriorating family situation so obvious in the world around us today my conclusion regarding the source of this disaster is that American family life is being destroyed because of our willful disobedience against the natural order of relations between men and women. To put it simply; men are to provide for and protect women and women have obligations to obey men. Each individual man in turn has an obligation to obey the social rules that men as a collective decide upon for the community.
In other words, patriarchy combined with chivalry is the natural order of how a society should be organized. Rebellion against this natural order can only lead to disaster as is manifestly obvious when looking at the results of the current experiment against the natural order that is currently under way in America and in the Western World in general.
Up until the very fall of the Berlin Wall, many Communists and their fellow-travelers maintained, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that things would all work out or that the real problem was that Communism hadn’t been truly tried.
Well, what can we say? Some people are stubbornly unable to cope with reality, especially with the consequences of the Sexual Revolution, which wears this deceptive mantle of freedom. They insist the world is not closing in on them when it is. And to the most vulnerable members of society, to children especially, who are the overwhelming victims of these changes, they say: Tough luck.
Mr. Powell adds:
One last thing, Mano Singham made a comment about how we at The Thinking Housewife “feel helpless to do anything about it” regarding the myriad social disasters facing our civilization. Speaking for myself, this part is definitely not true. Christian Patriarchy is on the rise and it is actually rising very fast. The long term victory of patriarchy is really just a simple matter of survival of the fittest. Christian Patriarchy families have far more children than atheists do. Feminists and atheists are the ones losing the battle, not Christians.
As an atheist myself, I strongly recommend to all the new visitors here to have a look around and see what you can learn from us. There is a way out of the moral relativism that so many atheists find themselves trapped in. There is hope of conversion to Christianity or in the alternative to become what I call a “devout atheist.”
Objective truth is what this website specializes in; there is much to learn here.
— Comments —-
Powell’s prediction may be an overstatement, a triumphalist speech. I believe many, if not most, of the children of those “Christian patriarchal families” are going to be nonbelievers, liberal christians or simply regular members of the mainstream culture.
Many of these children have been raised in the homeschooling subculture, where they have been exposed to their intellectual heritage. They will have a hard time melding comfortably into a culture that exalts trash and stupidity. They will find it ugly and just plain dumb.
Mr. Powell responds:
Regarding my basis for optimism, I see new recruitment or conversion as being a more important factor for growth than merely high fertility. If we say for instance that the average Christian Patriarchy family has 6 children and that the length of a generation is 25 years that translates to a growth rate of 4 percent a year. However, there are Christian Patriarchy churches that are growing at 25 percent a year or faster in their church membership. It needs to be kept in mind that the originators of the modern Christian Patriarchy Movement are themselves converts. Christian Patriarchy is a rebellion against modern culture; it is not merely the outgrowth of large families.
As far as the children of Christian Patriarchy families converting back to mainstream culture after they grow up; I’m sure some will but not enough will to change the fundamental dynamics. Most importantly more people will be converted into conservative pro-patriarchy Christian churches than will be converted away into the mainstream culture.
It needs to be kept in mind that a conservative religious culture has real absolute advantages over secularized mainstream culture. People convert to Christian Patriarchy for a reason, because the lifestyle and values of the community are intrinsically more healthy and rewarding than what secularized mainstream culture has to offer.
As the broader culture deteriorates the motivation to escape from liberalism and secularism will only grow more intense leading to more rapid conversion to conservative forms of Christianity. At the same time the Christian Patriarchy churches will gain more experience in how to create a culture that works within their churches thereby moving their churches in a more and more conservative direction over time.
The fundamental factor in play is that conservatism and religiosity out-competes liberalism and secularism. People will have a natural tendency and desire to escape what does not work and join what does work. Christian Patriarchy works; this is therefore the fundamental reason why Christian Patriarchy is the future.
I personally do not care whether Christian Patriarchy “out-competes” liberalism.To me, the only thing that matters is whether a belief system is true or false. The fact that a belief system is capable of creating and sustaining social order, however, is one indication of whether it is true or false.
Bruno, to be honest as a young woman from a devout Christian family my interest in secularism and liberalism are quite weak. The planes are far too differentiated for me to be able to move from light to darkness.
Bruno responds to Laura:
I believe that may be true concerning aesthetics. A person raised through a classical education won’t be thrilled by the aesthetics of modernity. Lady Gaga isn’t interesting for a boy or a girl who knows Shakespeare, for example.
Concerning traditional values, however, I see a different picture. Orthodox Christian culture’s emphasis on authority and obedience are prone to alienate the ever present free spirits of any generation. That will not change. Orthodox Christian culture is a spent force; there is no novelty there, just worship of the forms of the past. The free spirits and the free thinkers cannot and will not stay inside it. And where they go, they will drag the whole society with them.
Liberalism did not win because of some sort of conspiracy, or because of its opponents incompetence, but because it has a few key elements that are unmatched by Orthodox Christian culture. Freedom is one of them.
Free spirits require social order. They cannot thrive and express themselves without it. No society, including this one, has been founded on openness and pure freedom because human brings never make up life entirely on their own as they go and because we are social beings with laws and institutions. While Christianity is not the only possible source of social order, it creates an unparalleled balance between individual freedom and restraint. It motivates the individual to love prudent and moderate obedience. It rejects the forces within the human heart that destroy trust and social bonds: greed, selfishness, materialism, and lust. The Christian is duty-bound to love and he is explicitly encouraged to question his suffering and also God’s authority, as we see in the Book of Job, which wrought an important redirection in the relations between human beings and God, who did not reject Job because he cried into the whirlwind and accused God of injustice. Job was a free spirit. He had the audacity to question a God whom he believed was real, which takes far more courage than rejecting a God one doesn’t believe is real. Free spirits flourish in Christian societies, which is why Christian societies are so dynamic. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Beethoven, Nietzsche, Schubert, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Goya - these were eminently free spirits. To say that orthodox Christian culture is a “spent force” is to say that thought itself is a spent force. Atheism and pantheism (which is much more common) are as old as humankind. They are ancient and will last as long as this world exists. How is an “atheist” anymore of a free thinker today than a Christian? Christian symbolism and traditions are proscribed from most universities and mainstream institutions. Our laws are not Christian. One is hardly demonstrating one’s freedom by going along with the flow.
I would just like to highlight the irony of Bruno contending at this website that Christianity does not produce free thinkers. I consider myself a free thinker — free enough to question the prevailing orthodoxy at the risk of ostracism and banishment from every major intellectual institution.
Mr. Powell writes:
“Free spirits require social order.” This is very true. “Freedom” cannot be allowed to mean the freedom to harm, the freedom to abuse, the freedom to violate one’s obligations to others. Unfortunately, this is exactly what cultural “freedom” means according to the modern liberal definition of the term. The American nation was founded upon freedom but it was founded upon economic freedom and political freedom; not on cultural freedom as it relates to family matters or public morals. Yes, certain kinds of freedoms regarding family life were allowed even in the traditionalist past but great care was made to make sure that the freedom allowed did not conflict with a responsibility or duty of a more fundamentally important nature. The reason why historically cultural freedom was much more restricted than economic or political freedom is precisely because of the inherent duties and obligations that family life necessarily entails. Family life is centered around the upbringing of children, it is not about the wishes and preferences of adults. The reality of the dependency of children is what creates the moral purpose of family life and it is what imposes upon family life its interconnected web of duties and obligations. Since the dependency of children is inescapable the obligations and duties of family life are inescapable as well. This then is the foundation for the necessity of “traditional values.”
Authority and obedience are necessary for a society to be able to function as a whole. Each individual creating their own version of morality, when taken to an extreme, does not work. Religion, or in the case of the Western world, Christianity, is the central means by which society is organized and given purpose in its cultural realm. A secular government can function to give a society its political and economic rules but (for the Western world) Christianity is necessary to give the society its cultural rules; its moral values, its rules regarding family life.
I do not see cultural liberalism as being an innovation that took off because it had certain advantages over orthodox Christianity. Instead I see cultural liberalism as being a self-reinforcing pathology that was able to gain a foothold because of the disorientation precipitated by very rapid economic growth and technological change. New technology created a “new world” that people were unfamiliar with and didn’t know how to react to. They responded by “filling in the gaps” with whatever “felt good.” This was the beginning of social deterioration and once social deterioration got started it fed on itself.
The solution to the present cultural crisis is the reestablishment of traditional values with the resurrection of Christianity being the most obvious means by which this can be accomplished. Christianity is not a spent force, nothing superior to Christianity has been discovered or invented. As far as novelty is concerned there is nothing more exciting and new than a newly emerging fast growing conservative Christian Church that introduces God to former non-believers.
Greetings from London.
Liberalism definitely does seem to be unsustainable, so in the nature of things some form of patriarchy must be the long-term future, as always. Unfortunately here in Europe it seems likely to be Islamic patriarchy, with liberals in the kind of hanger-on role that Christians and other high-IQ minorities take in the Muslim Middle East.
America has some potentially brighter prospects; although America will become a majority non-white country, and probably Latino (nominally) Catholic-majority, I suspect that eventually the majority of white Americans will be Mormon.
Thanks for writing.
Perhaps the visibility of Mitt Romney gives you the impression that Mormonism is more of a cultural force than it is. Mormons represent about two percent of the American population. They are definitely outnumbered by Christians leading a traditional life.