Cultural Q and A about Things That Matter

               Cultural Q and A about Things That Matter

                                                   Published in Marietta Daily Journal May 8, 2016

                Below are 3 questions that beg for answers.  I believe they are serious questions that the nation’s future could hinge on. 

           Number 1: In the event of a multi-hit attack on the nation, one far more pervasive and more destructive than 9-11, do you think the ban against public school prayer might temporarily be suspended?

          I predict the ban would be ignored in a heartbeat.  There would be no tepid “our hearts and prayers are with our nation.”  I suspect the President would implore citizens to get to their places of worship and pray.

         On the evening of 9-11, I drove to my church for a quickly announced prayer meeting.  I envisioned 25 or 30 people gathered on the front pews to pray.  Arriving at the church, I found the parking lot full.  Along with others I parked on the road.

 Finally inside, 5 minutes before starting time, I couldn’t find a seat in the 1500-seat auditorium.  Eventually an usher seated me on the very back row.  Scores stood along the walls.  Why this good turn out?  More pointedly, why did I see friends whom I hadn’t seen since Easter?

 My guess is that if or when our nation is seriously attacked, we’re going to get religion again real fast.  Our talk about faith being a private matter will vanish. Our supposed separation of church and state will be the furtherest thing from our minds.  We won’t object to faith expressions from political leaders.  Religious differences notwithstanding, schools will probably have prayers.  If in fact I am right, what does this say about us as a people?

Number 2: Does it matter that within 50 years America will no longer be a predominantly Anglo-Saxon land?  Racially/ethnically it shouldn’t matter, but politically and culturally it matters tremendously.  It wasn’t Eastern philosophies, a Middle Eastern ethos, or African tribalism that birthed the institutions America has benefitted from.  Jurisprudence, free enterprise, individualism, freedom of speech, and religious freedom took their baby steps in Western Europe.  Why else do we (or did we) call it western civilization?

 Greeks, Romans, and Brits are America’s cultural/political forebears, though not our religious ones.  Judaism and Christianity are of Middle Eastern origins.  Ironically those two faiths have been most fleshed out in Europe and America, not in the Middle East.  Who knows more about the practical counsel of the Hebrew proverbs, about the laborer being worthy of his hire or about the parable of the talents than Christians and Jews?  Has any nation given legs to these ideas more than America?

 Culturally, America is both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian.  Point to a nation on the globe that has produced more freedom and more groceries than those living under these two traditions.

  Those who run the world are those who have the most babies.  America and Europe, the geographical base of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian thought, are having fewer babies.  They are also aborting more babies than any other areas of the world.  Simultaneously, the out of wedlock birth rate for American Hispanics is 51% and for American blacks is 70%.  Hence the expected demise of Anglo-Saxons.

 This second question, then, must be split and re-worded.  Does America wish to perpetuate political, economic, and religious freedom?  If so, how must it be done?  No matter which ethnicity prevails, America must adhere to the things that birthed her.  If she doesn’t, America dies and so does western civilization.

Number 3: What are the siren voices to which Americans have been listening and which have been moving us from our dawn to decadence?  They are too numerous.  A frightening number of young Americans, like their European cousins, are embracing the absurd: the beliefs that free lunches really do exist, that gender is a matter of preference, that learning can and should be easily got, that marriage is passé, and that pleasure is the goal of life.  Immersed in a cyber-world, most 13 to 19 year-olds are incapable of understanding what Solzhenitsyn meant when he wrote, “To destroy a people, first sever their roots.” 

Roots?  Who needs roots, given the immediacy and “intimacy” provided me by my technology?  

If we moderns value pleasure more than we do freedom, we will soon fail to see the connection between roots and life. Our modernization will be totally achieved, but our roots will have withered.

The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, and the sun that never set on the British Empire are no more.  It’s time to ask serious cultural questions lest America go the way of her forebears.  

Roger Hines

5/4/16