The Gallup’s annual poll on moral values found 76% of Americans said moral values in the country are getting worse, up five percent from last year. This year’s rise marked the second highest one-year increase in nine years. In 2004, 77% of Americans said moral values were getting worse, marking a 10% rise from the previous year.

Opinions about moral values in the country tend to stay relatively stable between years.

The highest figure was in 2007 at 82%.

Respondents most often cited declining moral values/standards and disrespect of others (both at 15%) as ways they see moral values in the U.S. getting worse. The open-ended question also found popular responses to be: parents not instilling values in children (8%); dishonesty among government, business leaders (8%); and rising crime and violence (8%).

Others said the moral value decline can be seen in people moving away from religion, church and God (7%), the breakdown of family and unwed mothers (7%), and sex, promiscuity, and pornography (5%).

The hot-button issue of abortion and gay relations were each only cited by 3% of the respondents.

Overall, 45% of Americans said the state of moral values in the country is poor – three times more than those who said it is in excellent/good shape (15%). This figure has stayed relatively constant over the past four years, but is still among the worst Gallup has measured in the past nine years.

The Gallup results are based on telephone interviews with more than 1,029 national American adults from May 3 to 6, 2010.

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>>Morality Continues to Decay (Barna Research, 031103)

Of the ten moral behaviors evaluated, a majority of Americans believed that each of three activities were “morally acceptable.” Those included gambling (61%), co-habitation (60%), and sexual fantasies (59%). Nearly half of the adult population felt that two other behaviors were morally acceptable: having an abortion (45%) and having a sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse (42%). About one-third of the population gave the stamp of approval to pornography (38%), profanity (36%), drunkenness (35%) and homosexual sex (30%). The activity that garnered the least support was using non-prescription drugs (17%).

Faith Commitment Impacts Views

Morality perspectives vary tremendously according to people’s faith commitments.

Of the seven faith groups studied, evangelicals were the least likely to accept each of the ten behaviors as moral. Less than one out of every ten evangelical Christians maintained that adultery, gay sex, pornography, profanity, drunkenness and abortion are morally acceptable. In contrast, every one of those ten behaviors was deemed “morally acceptable” by more than one out of ten people from each of the other six faith groups studied. (The other faith segments included non-evangelical born again Christian, notional Christians, adherents of non-Christian faiths, atheists/agnostics, Protestants and Catholics.)

On average, born again Christians who are not evangelical were more than three times as likely as evangelicals to describe any given behavior tested as morally acceptable. In fact, the data showed that non-evangelical born again Christians were more similar in their moral perspectives to “notional” Christians than to evangelicals. (Notional Christians are those who describe themselves as Christian but are not born again – that is, they do not believe that after they die on earth they will go to Heaven solely because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.)

Among people aligned with faiths other than Christianity, half or more described each of seven behaviors as “morally acceptable” - gambling, co-habitation, sexual fantasies, having an abortion, having a sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse, pornography and profanity. Atheists and agnostics were the people most likely to describe any of these behaviors as morally acceptable. In total, atheists and agnostics defined nine of the ten behaviors as morally legitimate, dismissing only the use of non-prescription drugs.

Percentage of Adults Who Consider A Behavior To Be “Morally Acceptable”

(Base: 1024 adults)

* indicates born again Christians excluding evangelicals

	All Adults	Evangelicals	Born Again*	Other Faith	Atheist/Agnostic
gambling	61%	27%	45%	69%	75%
living with someone of the opposite sex without being married, sometimes called co-habitation	60%	12%	49%	70%	87%
enjoying sexual thoughts or fantasies about someone	59%	15%	49%	71%	78%
having an abortion	45%	4%	33%	45%	71%
having a sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex to whom you are not married	42%	7%	35%	47%	69%
looking at pictures of nudity or explicit sexual behavior	38%	5%	28%	49%	70%
using profanity	36%	7%	29%	46%	68%
getting drunk	35%	8%	24%	44%	61%
having a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex	30%	5%	20%	41%	55%
using drugs not prescribed by a medical doctor	17%	6%	11%	25%	38%

Protestants and Catholics differed to some extent on nine of the ten behaviors, with Protestants less likely to describe any of those behaviors as morally acceptable. (The only moral behavior for which both groups held the same view was regarding the use of non-prescription drugs.) The biggest gaps between Protestants and Catholics were found in relation to cohabitation (deemed morally acceptable by 50% of Protestants and 66% of Catholics), sexual fantasies (51% and 63%, respectively), and gambling (52% and 70%, respectively).

Generation Gap Evident

There were also huge differences in moral viewpoints based upon a person’s generation. In nearly every case there was a pattern of Mosaics (the oldest members of the youngest generation, currently 18 or 19 years old) and Busters (those 20 to 38 years of age) being most likely to deem the behavior morally acceptable. Baby Boomers (ages 39 through 57) were less likely to buy into each behavior, and Elders (a combination of the two oldest generations, comprised of people 58 or older) emerged as the people least likely to embrace the behavior.

Whereas at least half of the Mosaics and Busters considered eight of the ten behaviors morally acceptable, a majority of Boomers endorsed only four of the behaviors, and a majority of Elders identified just one behavior (gambling) as morally legitimate.

Also noteworthy was the fact that men were more likely than women to deem nine of the ten behaviors to be morally acceptable. (The exception was sexual relations between people of the same gender, which women were slightly more likely to condone.) The most sizeable gaps were related to pornography (men were twice as likely to deem pornography acceptable) and drunkenness.

Views On “Morally Acceptable” Behaviors, by Generation

(Base: 1024 adults)

	Mosaics	Busters	Boomers	Elders
gambling	75%	67%	60%	51%
living with someone of the opposite sex without being married, sometimes called co-habitation	75%	72%	60%	41%
enjoying sexual thoughts or fantasies about someone	79%	68%	60%	40%
having an abortion	55%	48%	46%	36%
having a sexual relationship with someone of the opposite sex to whom you are not married	54%	56%	40%	24%
looking at pictures of nudity or explicit sexual behavior	50%	48%	38%	23%
using profanity	60%	49%	30%	20%
getting drunk	50%	48%	33%	15%
having a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex	40%	41%	32%	14%
using drugs not prescribed by a medical doctor	20%	22%	16%	12%

Morality Likely to Decline Further

“The data trends indicate that the moral perspectives of Americans are likely to continue to deteriorate,” predicted researcher George Barna. “Compared to surveys we conducted just two years ago, significantly more adults are depicting such behaviors as morally acceptable. For instance, there have been increases in the percentages that condone sexual activity with someone of the opposite gender other than a spouse, abortion (up by 25%), and a 20% jump in people’s acceptance of ‘gay sex.’

The author of more than 30 books regarding faith and cultural trends, Barna said that most people sense that there is a problem but do not see themselves as contributing to it. “Most of the people we interviewed believe that they are highly moral individuals and identify other people as responsible for the nation’s moral decline. This is reflective of a nation where morality is generally defined according to one’s feelings. In a postmodern society, where people do not acknowledge any moral absolutes, if a person feels justified in engaging in a specific behavior then they do not make a connection with the immoral nature of that action. Yet, deep inside, they sense that something is wrong in our society. They simply have not been able to put two and two together to recognize their personal liability regarding the moral condition of our nation.

“Until people recognize that there are moral absolutes and attempt to live in harmony with them, we are likely to see a continued decay of our moral foundations,” the California-based researcher continued. “The generational data patterns make a compelling case for this on-going slide. Even most people associated with the Christian faith do not seem to have embraced biblical moral standards. Things are likely to get worse before they get better – and they are not likely to get better unless strong and appealing moral leadership emerges to challenge and redirect people’s thoughts and behavior. At the moment, such leadership is absent.”

Research Source and Methodology

The data described above are from telephone interviews with a nationwide random sample of 1024 adults conducted in October 2003. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3%age points at the 95% confidence level. All of the interviews were conducted from the Barna Research Group telephone interviewing facility in Ventura, CA. Adults in the 48 continental states were eligible to be interviewed and the distribution of respondents coincided with the geographic dispersion of the U.S. adult population. Multiple callbacks were used to increase the probability of including a reliable distribution of adults.

“Born again Christians” were defined in these surveys as people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Respondents were not asked to describe themselves as “born again.” Being “born again” is not dependent upon any church or denominational affiliation or involvement.

“Evangelicals” are a subset of born again Christians in Barna surveys. In addition to meeting the born again criteria, evangelicals also meet seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; contending that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; stating that Satan exists; maintaining that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; asserting that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; saying that the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Further, respondents were not asked to describe themselves as “evangelical.” Being “evangelical” is not dependent upon any church or denominational affiliation or involvement.

The Barna Research Group, Ltd. is an independent marketing research company located in southern California. Since 1984, it has been studying cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. If you would like to receive regular e-mailings of a brief overview of each new bi-weekly update on the latest research findings from the Barna Research Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna Research web site (www.barna.org).

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**The Crumbling Pillars of the Culture War (townhall.com, 100312)

Michael Gerson

WASHINGTON — Just 20 years ago, pro-life and anti-homosexual rights views seemed to overlap entirely. They appeared to be expressions of the same traditionalist moral framework, destined to succeed or fail together as twin pillars of the culture war.

But in the years since, the fortunes of these two social stands have dramatically diverged. A May 2009 Gallup poll found that more Americans, for the first time, describe themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice.” A February 2010 CNN/Time poll found that half of Americans, for the first time, believe that homosexuality is “not a moral issue.” This divergence says something about successful social movements in America.

Pro-life activists have made far less legal progress than have advocates for gay rights, in part because the courts have played an active role in discouraging democracy on abortion. But it is a remarkable achievement that 37 years after Roe v. Wade attempted to settle the abortion question, it remains unsettled. 52% of Americans believe that having an abortion is “morally wrong.” 53% oppose public funding in health reform legislation. The provision of abortion remains stigmatized within the medical profession. And the abortion rate in America has dropped significantly since the 1980s.

Part of this continuing unease results from technological innovation. Increasingly vivid sonograms have provided a window to the womb, revealing the humanity of a developing human.

But the pro-life movement also shifted its political strategy, moving away from judgmental moral arguments toward a language of civil rights aspiration. Pro-life activists and politicians, influenced by Catholic thinkers such a Richard John Neuhaus, began talking of an expanding circle of legal inclusion and protection that includes the unborn — a welcoming society that values the vulnerable. In this narrative, abortion is not only wrong but also unjust.

The advances of the homosexual rights movement have been broader. Its progress is perhaps the most pronounced social change of the last few decades. Homosexual marriage remains a two-sided debate, but two-thirds of Americans now favor civil unions for homosexual couples. The claim of basic rights for homosexuals — to be left alone, free from harassment — is conceded even by most critics of homosexual marriage. While there is serious opposition to gay nuptials, there is no serious movement for the return of sodomy laws and social discrimination.

Despite a long history of ostracism, the gay rights movement today has some advantages denied to pro-life advocates. Higher education, entertainment and advertising tend to be gay friendly in a way that they cannot be considered pro-life friendly.

But much of the progress for gay rights has been parallel to the pro-life cause. The strategy of “coming out” has personalized this debate as surely as the sonogram. A 2009 CNN poll found that 49% of Americans report having a family member or close friend who is gay — up 17 points from 1994. A human face always makes harsh judgment more difficult.

Also similar to the pro-life movement, many gay rights advocates have shifted their political argument. The activism of the 1970s was often motivated by sexual liberationism — a revolutionary rejection of sexual morality and the idea of respectability. But a generation of thoughtful gay rights advocates, exemplified by Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal, has made the argument for joining traditional institutions instead of smashing them. More radical activists have criticized this approach as assimilationist and bourgeois. But only bourgeois arguments triumph in America. And many have found this more conservative argument for gay rights — encouraging homosexual commitment through traditional institutions — less threatening than moral anarchism.

It remains possible that the gay rights movement could provoke a backlash. If the Supreme Court were to strike down restrictions on gay marriage nationally, one could expect a Roe-like reaction in parts of the country. If the advance of homosexual rights were broadly used to undermine the tax status and funding of churches and charities that hold to a different moral standard, resentment and resistance would follow.

But so far the gay rights movement has succeeded for many of the same reasons that the pro-life movement (to a lesser extent) has succeeded. Both have taken sometimes abstract, theoretical arguments and humanized them. Both have moved away from extreme-sounding moralism (or anti-moralism) and placed their cause in the context of civil rights progress. Whatever your view on the application of these arguments, this is the way social movements advance in America.

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**Seattle Needs Grace: Clean hands, sick souls. (National Review Online, 070823)

An NRO Q&A

David Klinghoffer is worried about “the atmosphere of secularism” that “rains down like nuclear fallout, spreading contamination” and offers the Ten Commandments as a “desperately needed diagnostic tool” to combat it. In Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril, Klinghoffer uses his city of Seattle as a snapshot of a ailing culture in need of a back-to-spiritual basics retreat. Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and former literary editor at National Review, recently took questions about the book, his city, and our culture from National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What’s so sick about Seattle?

David Klinghoffer: Imagine secularism as a religion without a deity. You could hardly find a city more pious in its secularism than Seattle. That’s why I use the Pacific Northwest, where just 30% of the people are religiously affiliated, as a case study. I ask what happens to a culture when it detaches ideas about right and wrong from any grounding in a belief in God. The answer is, you get a place like this where, for example, people can’t explain why murder is wrong. My friend Dan Sytman did a series of street interviews on this. Sample reply from a guy standing outside the Federal Building: “Good and evil and right and wrong are simply another way of saying ‘like’ and ‘don’t like.’ So I say, when you ask me about murder, I would say ‘I don’t like murder.’”

Lopez: Is it sicker than New York City, where you previously lived?

Klinghoffer: Yes, isn’t that amazing? I lived in New York under Dinkins and Giuliani, so I saw the moment when New Yorkers got fed up with the rule of the street by the Youths, that wonderful euphemism. In Seattle, the city government — an extension of the citizens — doesn’t believe it has a moral right to clean up the street outside the building where I work. It’s right smack in the middle of the top tourist district but it’s a gathering place of all the city’s scariest Youths, along with meth addicts, crack dealers, stumbling drunks, crazy people, and so on. This neighborhood, in terms of tourist traffic, is the New York equivalent of that stretch of Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick’s up to the museums. New York would never tolerate letting that corridor become the way Seattle’s Pike and Pine Streets are.

Lopez: What could the Ten Commandments do for Seattle?

Klinghoffer: Primarily, teach us how to order moral priorities.

Here’s a vignette of Seattle. The other morning an work-colleague of mine got off the bus at 8:15 — in the A.M., mind you. This was a couple of blocks from our office. First thing she saw was a couple having sex against the side of a fountain across from Westlake Center. She then walked a few feet and saw a huge, shaven-headed, tattoo-covered guy screaming at and threatening a man who was holding a briefcase. She walked a few more steps, and saw a cop. What was the cop doing? Writing out a parking ticket.

Lopez: On that point, explain your statement: “If you want to gauge the moral health of a society, look at its policemen.”

Klinghoffer: The Ten Commandments explain the basis for the authority we need to see, but increasingly don’t find, in politicians, parents, and police. It used to be that these people felt infused with an authority that came from a source much greater than themselves, greater than the government, greater than people. I mean God. The Chinese phrase for this is, “the mandate of Heaven.” In a secularized culture, authority figures such as cops lack confidence in their authority. It’s like a magical spell has been broken. People don’t listen to them, at least not the people who really need to be listening — the bad guys. That’s what you find in Seattle, and elsewhere too of course.

Lopez: What’s “moralesque”?

Klinghoffer: A burlesque of morality. No society can do without a code of rules to live by. It’s our nature. So when they turn away from the ancient code of the Bible, a substitute needs to be found. That’s the code of moralesque. It makes things like health and diet — which traditionally would have been left to personal discretion — into these very, very heavy moral commandments. Being fat isn’t just unwise. It’s a moral offense. Same for smoking, drinking, etc. This is the Purell culture, the peanut-free school culture. Health becomes a substitute theater of moral action, taking the place of the things that really matter.

Lopez: What’s the point of a First Commandment protest rally?

Klinghoffer: Oh, I attended one, though it wasn’t spoken of explicitly. It was a rally for Richard Dawkins, the atheist Darwinist bestseller guy, at Seattle’s town hall. The First Commandment — “I am the Lord your God…” — really sticks in the craw of materialists like Dawkins, much more so than any other of the Ten Commandments. Everyone was bundled in flannel and they were applauding him for applauding them for being such a bunch of sophisticated geniuses who can explain the existence of everything in the universe in purely material terms. This is what Darwinism, a sort of secular religion, is all about. The First Commandment is the focus of the conflict between secular dogma and the more open-minded view that’s willing to entertain the possibility that God’s hand may really have left evidence of His work in the heavens, in our bodies.

Lopez: What happened to Jason Gilson?

Klinghoffer: Gilson is the disabled 23-year-old Iraq veteran who was booed and called a “murderer” by a rabid liberal crowd at a Fourth of July parade on Bainbridge Island, an affluent Seattle suburb directly across Puget Sound. So you see what meaning that word has for some Seattlites. For whatever it’s worth, the mayor of Bainbridge subsequently apologized.

Lopez: What could the Ten Commandments do for Britney Spears?

Klinghoffer: You may wish to consult the cover story of Us Weekly for its excellent coverage on that (“Brit’s Nannies Tell All”) and other celeb dish. Or are you prompting me to discuss the culture of gossip, which falls under the heading of the Ninth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your fellow”? A great example of how people think they know what each of the Commandments means, but really don’t. Thanks for asking, Kathryn, as they say. What I show in my book is that the Ten Commandments is not only the simple list of do’s and don’ts that people assume they’ve got down flat. It’s more like a table of contents for the whole of Biblical wisdom, which in turn, according to a midrashic tradition, is nothing less than a blueprint of moral reality. So in the Ten Commandments we have the most incredibly terse and succinct picture of the universe as God sees it, of God’s mind.

What’s that I was saying about Brit’s nannies?

Lopez: Sam Harris?

Klinghoffer: The celebrity atheist who thinks that because lots of scientists are atheists, therefore nobody needs religion to be a good person. Oh for goodness sake. It’s true that plenty of atheists are perfectly nice and functional people. But the question is what an entire society would be like, hollowed out spiritually, lacking any ability to account for, in a serious way, the rightness of its morals. A famous philosopher, Jonah Goldberg, once wrote on this very website, “If I get my morality from a can of chicken-and-stars soup, you shouldn’t care until that morality drives me to commit evil.” I have no beef with chicken soup, but it’s impossible to imagine a society nourished morally on anything other than a transcendent basis for its conceptions of good and evil. That idea is represented visually by the Ten Commandments being carved on two tablets, the first describing our correct relationship with God, the other with fellow human beings. The Decalogue is put on two tablets to remind us that, in the long run, you can’t have one without the other.

Lopez: John Edwards?

Klinghoffer: He should review the Tenth Commandment, “You shall not covet.” The speech he’s best known for, the “Two Americas” oration — “One America that does the work, another America that reaps the rewards,” etc. — is nothing more than a piece of incitement to coveting.

Lopez: How is it worse for a man to gossip than a woman? I just can’t help myself?

Klinghoffer: Kathryn, I’m sure you don’t gossip. However, a point I make is that according to the oldest Biblical interpretive tradition, the two tablets are arranged to match up to each other, with one Commandment on the first tablet lining up horizontally with its mate on the second tablet. Those on the first tablet bear an if-then relationship to those on the second. So, for example, if you grasp the spiritual meanings of the Fourth Commandment, Sabbath observance, you are less like to violate the Ninth. The sabbath is about community, of which gossip is a way of creating a cheap, phony simulation. Dishing about your co-workers or friends, you feel momentarily closer to the person you gossip with. Women are better at creating real communities, real relationships, than men are. That’s why men often stop making close friends once the reach a certain age, which isn’t true of women. But the flip side of that is women’s weakness for gossip. Gossip has a feminine side to it. So in that sense, it’s even less becoming for a man to dish.

Lopez: How will it help me to give up my Blackberry on Sundays? (Did I say me? I meant “my friend”! I meant Rich Lowry!)

Klinghoffer: Oh, yes, Rich should give up that Blackberry on Sunday. I’ve wanted to tell him that and now you’ve give me the opportunity. Many a time, I’ve spied on him in Starbucks when he wasn’t looking, or I would have done so if we lived in the same city, with his head ducked in his lap continually typing away at that thing.

Why on Sunday? Now I don’t say this in reference to Rich or you, of course, but the Sabbath is meant to knock our hubris down a notch or two. When you don’t work on Sunday you are affirming that the world can get on without your creative contribution. The Blackberry says the exact opposite. It says, the world absolutely cannot get along without me, not for a minute. Just chuck it.

Lopez: So who needs to start a return to the Ten Commandments? Are we so bad off drastic measures are called for? Should a Mormon wage a presidential campaign based on them? What’s the plan?

Klinghoffer: The plan is for conservatives to stop feeling so shy about God talk when we discuss what’s wrong with the culture, with politics. That’s a big reason I wrote this book, to give people some courage about applying Biblical wisdom, openly, not only to our private lives — and I could use some more of that myself — but to our public lives as well. Conservatives get all nervous, like someone’s going to accuse them of being a theocrat or an extremist or a would-be mullah. Yes, we will be accused of those things. But just for a change, let’s take the offensive and change the terms of the debate, because we’re not exactly winning the argument right now.

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Poll Finds Americans Want More Religion in Public Life to Address Moral Concerns (Christian Coalition, 970421)

Large Majorities Support Return to Traditional Values, Religious Freedom Amendment, Abstinence, Content-Based TV Ratings

CHESAPEAKE, VA — An astonishing 80% of the American people see a “moral crisis” in America and large majorities of those surveyed want politicians of both parties to address moral and spiritual concerns, according to a new poll conducted by the Luntz Research Corporation and released today by the Christian Coalition.

“This survey shatters the myth that values issues are a liability to politicians and elected officials. The American people are anxious about the moral direction of America, and they are hungering for political leadership that will address their moral and spiritual concerns,” said Ralph Reed, Executive Director of the Christian Coalition.

NOTEWORTHY FINDINGS

Is there a moral crisis in America today?

80% Yes

15% No

5% Don’t know/refused

I am deeply concerned about our moral and religious well being as a nation.

83% Agree

13% Disagree

3% Don’t know/refused

Which of the following statements is closer to your opinion?

Is the involvement of religion in American politics...

45% Too Little

25% Just About Right

24% Too Much

6% Don’t know/refused

A Religious Freedom Amendment to the Constitution legalizing voluntary school prayer and

the posting of the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

68% Agree

28% Disagree

4% Don’t know/refused

Sex education classes in the schools that emphasize abstinence before marriage.

84% Agree

12% Disagree

3% Don’t know/refused

A TV ratings system that tells parents the specific content of the shows they are watching.

89% Agree

8% Disagree

3% Don’t know/refused

“The common thread that runs through these numbers is the consensus that as a country we have gone astray when it comes to moral issues. People feel religious freedom needs to be better protected, thus the support for a Religious Freedom Amendment. People are questioning institutions such as the public schools and television to the point where they are looking for specific reforms. Overall, the overwhelming desire for religion to play a much greater role in public life appears to be the consensus response to the moral crisis that four out of five Americans see,” Reed said.

The Luntz Research Companies, Arlington, VA, surveyed a nationwide sample of 900 American adults, selected randomly, on April 4-5, 1997. The overall margin of error for the survey is +/-3.3%.

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Committee votes fortify sliding standards: Scholars (Washington Times, 981219)

The House Judiciary Committee’s votes to impeach President Clinton for lying under oath addresses widespread concerns that America’s values and standards have been eroded, academic scholars say.

While the panel’s politically divided vote magnified the sharp disagreement in Congress, and the nation, about whether Mr. Clinton should be removed from office for his conduct in the sex and perjury scandal, the issues at the heart of the case against him arise from growing concern that to do nothing or to merely reprimand him would encourage further disrespect for the rule of law.

“I’m one of those who believe that there has been an erosion of values and legal standards in the country and that this is the time for the House of Representatives to stand up and say that the erosion will go no further — that we have to stand up for these principles,” said Michael Krauss, a professor of law at George Mason University.

“This is a chance for the Congress to uphold what’s left,” Mr. Krauss said. “This is in many ways an important battle in the culture wars.”

Added Theodore Olson, a Washington lawyer who was an assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration: “There has been an erosion in respect for the rule of law. If he [Mr. Clinton] succeeds [in avoiding impeachment], he teaches Americans that they can cheat, and he can cheat, and get away with it.”

Throughout the Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry, the focus by the Republican majority has been on the importance of the oath that Mr. Clinton took when he swore to uphold the nation’s laws as well as the oath he took to tell the truth when he testified in the Paula Jones civil suit and before a federal grand jury.

Judiciary Chairman Henry J. Hyde told his colleagues just before they were to vote on the first article of impeachment that Mr. Clinton’s conduct “cheapens the oath; it is a breach of promise to tell the truth; it subverts our system of government.”

Mr. Clinton has steadfastly refused to admit that he lied under oath, and in a brief statement on Dec. 11 he continued to resist any further admission of wrongdoing, saying only that his testimony was “misleading” but not an impeachable offense.

But that was not the way many legal and political experts see it. Many were bothered by the impact of the president’s admission that his testimony was consciously misleading, evasive and even deceptive. And several said the issue of being truthful in a court proceeding underscored a larger moral and ethical decline that they see going on in the country.

“There is a definite change in the public at large about the significance of moral issues. The basic moral values are under attack,” said Dr. Hafeez Malik, a professor of political science at Villanova University.

“In the culture, there is a moral relativism, and you are seeing its effect in these political deliberations among the Democrats,” Mr. Malik said.

“Perjury is an extremely important issue. The law depends on people telling the truth when they’re under oath. It would be disastrous for the legal system if the message is that it is OK to lie under oath,” said Eugene B. Meyer, executive director of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.

“There’s been some erosion” in respect for the rule of law in recent years, he said. “I’d be surprised if anyone disputed that.”

Legal experts said they were especially disturbed by polls showing the public does not share their concern about the importance of telling the truth under oath in court. Most polls show that more than 60% of Americans do not think Mr. Clinton should be impeached for his conduct.

“It shows that a majority of the country is unable to distinguish between the legal process and private behavior,” Mr. Krauss said.

“But it’s not at all about private behavior. The public does not understand why this is about a violation of a sacred oath,” he said.

“This is a flagrant disobedience of the rule of law, and the president’s attorneys are trying to market it to the American people, arguing that it is acceptable to disregard the legal rules about perjury,” Mr. Olson said.

Stephen Hess, a liberal Brookings Institution scholar, says the president “is a liar and an adulterer who happens to be shameless,” but he does not see the nation’s standards eroding as much as others do.

“I’m reluctant to say that standards are going to hell in a handbasket. But there are plenty of things to worry about. There’s more cheating going on.”

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Survey of youths shows ethics slip (Washington Times, 021023)

Children today are more likely to cheat, steal and lie than youths 10 years ago, research shows.

A Josephson Institute of Ethics report, which surveyed 12,000 high school students, showed that the number who admitted cheating on exams at least once in the past year had jumped from 61% in 1992 to 74% in 2002.

Students who admitted to shoplifting within the past 12 months rose from 31% to 38%.

Those who said they lied to their teachers and parents increased substantially.

“The evidence is that a willingness to cheat has become the norm and that parents, teachers, coaches and even religious educators have not been able to stem the tide,” said Michael Josephson, president of the institute, based in Marina del Rey, Calif.

“The scary thing is that so many kids are entering the work force to become corporate executives, politicians, airplane mechanics and nuclear inspectors with the dispositions and skills of cheaters and thieves,” he said.

The surveys underlying “Report card 2002: The Ethics of American Youth” were administered by 43 high schools throughout the country. The report was released as part of National Character Counts Week, which began Monday.

Seeking information about attitudes and affiliations affecting the moral decline, the survey examined participation in varsity sports, student leadership, attendance at private religious school and strong religious belief.

It found that a high school student’s sex was the most significant differentiating factor. Girls were significantly less likely to steal or engage in dishonest practices, although they generally cheated and lied as much as boys.

Varsity athletes were more likely to cheat on exams, but in most cases participating in varsity sports was not a differentiating factor.

Attending a private religious school failed to be a differentiating factor as well.

Those attending private religious schools were less likely to shoplift but more likely to cheat on exams and lie to teachers.

Regardless of the kind of school, students who said their religion was very important to them tended to have more positive attitudes about the importance of ethics. Even though they generally performed at the national average, they stole less and were less likely to lie to gain employment.

Honor students were less likely to steal than any other group: 30% compared with 40% of non-honor students. Still, more than one-third of students in leadership positions admitted having stolen from stores.

Students appear to have become increasingly more calculated in the past two years. In 2000, 34% of high school students said, “A person has to lie or cheat sometimes in order to succeed.” In 2002, that number jumped 9%.

Despite plummeting ethics, this generation appears to possess high self-esteem.

Seventy-six percent of the respondents said, “When it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”

Varsity athletes, student leaders and honor students had the highest self-image; more than 80 said they were better than their peers.

Despite the increase in cheating, stealing and lying, 95% of students agreed, “It’s important to me that people trust me,” and 79% agreed, “It’s not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character.”

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When Relativism Becomes Theology: The demise of Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien (NRO, 040223)

Depending on one’s view of the world, the stunning fall of Thomas J. O’Brien, erstwhile Roman Catholic bishop of the diocese of Phoenix, was either an instance of divine justice meted out promptly on earth or a truly bizarre chain of events that precipitated his resignation and, now, conviction for felony hit-and-run. Beyond interpretation are the root and broader meaning of O’Brien’s undoing. The same relativism O’Brien displayed in harboring pedophile priests for two decades governed his passions, and it was those passions that sealed his fate the night he struck a pedestrian with his vehicle and then fled. The self-service and atrocious judgment that marked O’Brien’s actions as both man and bishop are perhaps the most striking example to date of the moral confusion that characterizes so many of the leaders implicated by the pedophile-priest scandal.

Convicted by a jury last Tuesday of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, O’Brien became the first Catholic bishop in recorded U.S. history to be found guilty of a felony. The case arose from an accident that occurred on the evening of June 14, 2003. O’Brien was driving home from a church function when an intoxicated pedestrian jaywalked in front of his vehicle. O’Brien’s vehicle struck the victim, Jim Reed, with such force that Reed’s body left an enormous crater in the right side of the windshield. Reed died at the scene. Had O’Brien stopped to render assistance, he almost certainly would not have faced any legal repercussions. But he did not. Instead, by his own account, O’Brien sped on home, ate some leftover pizza, and went to bed.

To be sure, O’Brien had a lot on his mind that night. Two weeks before, news had leaked that O’Brien had cut a deal with county prosecutors to avoid criminal prosecution for knowingly shuttling pedophile priests among different parishes under his authority. A flurry of lawsuits and a grand jury investigation turned up evidence that over the prior three decades (two-thirds of which were O’Brien’s tenure), at least 50 priests, former priests, and church employees throughout the diocese had been accused of sexual misconduct with children. Just as shocking was O’Brien’s own behavior. On more than one occasion, O’Brien personally scolded victims and witnesses for telling others of the molestation they or others had suffered. One priest went to O’Brien to relate that he suspected another priest of molesting a young man he had come to know. In a response that seemed to capture impeccably the collective mindset of liberal bishops across the country then excusing the child molesters in their employ, O’Brien exploded that the complaining priest should get beyond his obsession with “gay pedophile priests.”

To avoid possible criminal charges for obstruction of justice, O’Brien signed an agreement with prosecutors that sacrificed the faithful’s mammon for his own freedom. He consented to hiring an independent ombudsman at the diocese to handle sexual misconduct complaints. The diocese also agreed to pay out over $1 million toward victim compensation and reimbursement for the cost of the criminal investigation — money from hard-working church members suddenly dedicated to shielding O’Brien from prosecution.

On June 2, 2003, the Arizona Republic reported the accord in a front-page story beneath the banner headline, “Bishop O’Brien admits cover-up in sexual abuse cases.” O’Brien, the paper reported, had admitted knowingly permitting priests accused of sexual misconduct to continue working with children. O’Brien also acknowledged transferring these predators throughout the diocese. This front-page embarrassment infuriated the prideful cleric, according to church insiders later quoted in the same paper. The next day, O’Brien denied having made any such admissions to prosecutors. By week’s end, O’Brien’s attorneys and the county’s top prosecutor were publicly sparring over the precise meaning of the agreement. A largely unscathed O’Brien continued governing as bishop.

Yet the immunity from prosecution that O’Brien so coveted would be denied him by other means. Two weeks later, O’Brien was arrested for leaving the scene of his fatal collision with Jim Reed. The details that later emerged revealed a callousness on the part of O’Brien that explained abundantly why children in his diocese had fared so poorly on his watch. Despite a collision that must have “exploded like a thunderclap,” in the later words of a prosecuting attorney, O’Brien never even hit his brakes. In the days that followed, O’Brien refused to answer half a dozen phone calls from friends. He ignored police officers who rang his doorbell. When a top diocese official told O’Brien that police were trying to question him (witnesses caught part of his license plate number, leading authorities to his doorstep), O’Brien never called police — and later claimed he did not know how to reach them. O’Brien also asked church staff to help make arrangements to have the windshield fixed.

When this double-whammy of a scandal — child-molesting priests plus a fatal hit-and-run — finally prompted Rome to call for his resignation as bishop, O’Brien cried for hours over his plight and his ignominy. Only after being reminded he would always carry the honorary title of bishop did he relent and step down.

During his trial in January 2004, O’Brien was in old form. He arrived for court every day wearing his clerical collar, and at one point ostentatiously held rosary beads in front of the jurors. After a parade of witnesses placed his car at the scene of the accident, O’Brien took the stand to explain his actions. On several occasions, he contradicted what he had told police in a recorded statement following the accident. He stuck with his story that he did not know he had hit a person (he said he thought it might have been a dog or rock). Prosecutors were not permitted to introduce into evidence the fact that O’Brien had previously committed a hit-and-run after a parking lot fender-bender.

How could somebody so self-serving and corrupt ascend to such a position of prominence in the largest church on earth? Surely the human condition is an important part of the answer. American evangelicals have their Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts to remind them that pastoral office is no guarantee of sainthood, and that Catholics are not alone in their shame over the recent misconduct of some of their spiritual leaders.

But O’Brien also exemplified and perpetuated the moral relativism that has taken hold of so many of the other upper reaches of U.S. society, including many quarters of organized religion. O’Brien plainly equated accusations of pedophilia with gay bashing. As a result, he felt obliged to chastise the accusers: Their complaints, by his standards, were evidence of bigotry. This view was symptomatic of his broader disconnect with Catholic doctrine, a schism that rendered O’Brien’s diocese one of the most liberal in the country. O’Brien’s top lieutenants reflected this tilt. In 1999, the monsignor who served as O’Brien’s top lobbyist at the legislature worked to torpedo a piece of anti-abortion legislation by convincing two Senate Democrats to withdraw their support of the bill unless the Republican leadership agreed to repeal welfare reform (this writer was witness to those machinations, which became well-known in the Arizona right-to-life community). The same monsignor was an open backer of liberal Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano — with O’Brien’s tacit support.

Ironically, the same status and privilege that O’Brien clung to so strongly will now likely guarantee he goes to jail. A less-famous first-time offender would almost certainly be sentenced to probation. But with over 70% of Phoenix-area residents in a recent poll calling for jail time for the ex-bishop, O’Brien may soon have a chance to find out if incarceration is what the original advocates of prisons said it was: a place for lost souls to rediscover their Maker, and to reassess one’s priorities before the sands of life are poured out.

— Andrew Peyton Thomas is an attorney and author in Phoenix.

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Practical Outcomes Replace Biblical Principles As the Moral Standard (Barna Research, 010910)

(Ventura, CA) Americans remain concerned about the moral condition of the nation. However, a new survey by the Barna Research Group (Ventura, CA) suggests that a major share of the struggle pertains to the basis on which people make moral choices. The result is a patchwork of attitudes and values that enable people to feel emotionally comfortable with their choices but causes them to struggle with the consequences of their moral behavior.

Three-quarters of adults (74%) say they are concerned about the moral condition of the nation. That point of view was only slightly more pronounced among people who associate with the Christian faith than among those who affiliate with other faiths or who have no faith involvement.

When asked the basis on which they form their moral choices, nearly half of all adults (44%) cited their desire to do whatever will bring them the most pleasing or satisfying results. Roughly one-sixth of the adult public (17%) bases its moral decisions on what they believe will make other people happy or minimize interpersonal conflict. The same percentage (17%) credits the values they were taught by their family as the dominant influence on their moral considerations. About one out of four adults (24%) lean primarily upon religious principles and teaching or Bible content when making moral decisions.

While many religious leaders propose that the Bible should be the basis of people’s morality, the survey showed that only four out of every ten born again adults relies upon the Bible or church teachings as their primary source of moral guidance. The percentage who identify the Bible or religious teaching as their dominant moral influence is noticeably lower among Catholics (16%) and attenders of mainline Protestant churches (25%).

Moral Choices

Upon asking people to describe specific behaviors as either morally acceptable or unacceptable, many adults indicated attitudes that conflict with the moral positions advanced by their faith-of-choice.

For instance, on the issue of abortion, 41% of all adults stated that abortion should be legal in all or almost all circumstances and 55% said it should not be legal under any circumstances or only in a few special circumstances. Just more than one-third of the adult public (36%) contends that abortion is a morally acceptable behavior. An even higher percentage of people attending mainline Protestant churches feel this way (45%) compared to 26% of those who attend non-mainline Protestant churches and also among Catholics. Among born again adults, one out of five (19%) described abortion as morally acceptable.

Americans are more accepting of homosexuality. Nearly half of all adults (48%) believe that sexual relations between consenting adults of the same gender should be legal, although only half as many say that such relations are morally acceptable (25%). Among born again adults, one-third (34%) say that sexual relations between gay people should be legal while just 9% say that such activity is morally appropriate.

From a biblical perspective, Americans are perhaps farthest off the mark in the area of sexual fidelity. On the one hand, relatively few adults believe that having an affair with a married person is morally acceptable (5%). A higher, but still minor percentage believes that having an affair with an unmarried person is morally viable (17%). On the other hand, most adults are comfortable with behaviors that have traditionally been forbidden. Six out of ten adults (58%) say that co-habitation is morally acceptable. The same percentage (58%) stated that having sexual fantasies is morally acceptable. Although the Bible states that divorce is permissible only in the aftermath of adultery, most adults reject that view: even allowing for the exception made for adultery, nearly two-thirds of all adults incorrectly state that divorce is not a sin. Again, born again adults were somewhat less likely than others to approve of these various behaviors, but surprisingly high proportions of the born again sector condoned these acts. For instance, 36% said co-habitation is morally acceptable, 39% defined sexual fantasies as morally acceptable, and 39% incorrectly suggested that apart from reasons of adultery, divorce is not a sin.

Getting drunk is considered morally acceptable among one-third of the population. Faith commitments were evident in this regard. While almost half of all non-born again adults (46%) said drunkenness is morally acceptable, only one out of five born again individuals (20%) concurred.

The matter of integrity raised interesting contradictions. One of the most unexpected contradictions deals with people’s reporting of their financial support of churches. Among adults who said they had given ten percent or more of their income to churches and related ministries in the past year, an examination of their finances showed that two-thirds of those people were lying about their generosity. Such deceit was equally likely among born again as among non-born again individuals.

Breaking the speed limit was an action deemed morally acceptable by two-fifths of all adults (39%). That proportion was rather stable across a wide range of subgroups, including born again Christians.

The use of profanity was also deemed morally acceptable by a rather large contingent: 37%. While a smaller share of the born again population endorsed profane language (22%), majorities of atheists (64%) and people aligned with non-Christian faiths (59%) condoned such speech. A majority of young adults (53% of those under 36 years of age) and half of those with a college degree also felt no moral qualms about using profanity.

One of the key indicators of the changing values of Americans relates to the nation’s comfort with pornography. Half of all adults stated that watching a movie with explicit sexual behavior is morally acceptable. That view was shared by three out of ten born again adults. In like fashion, more than four out of ten adults (43%) claimed that reading magazines with explicit sexual pictures and nudity is morally acceptable. Half as many of the born again adults embraced that perspective (21%).

The study showed that when eight core moral attitudes were tested - the moral acceptability of co-habitation, sexual relations among people of the same sex, exposure to explicit sexual behavior in movies and videos, exposure to explicit sexual behavior and nudity in magazines, use of profanity, getting drunk, and engaging in sexual fantasies - less than one out of every four adults (23%) indicated that all eight of those behaviors are not morally acceptable, while just 9% said all are morally acceptable. The complete rejection of those eight behaviors was most common among born again adults (38%), people who attend non-mainline Protestant churches (33%), and those whose political ideology is self-described as “mostly conservative.” The segments of people most likely to embrace all eight behaviors as morally legitimate included those who have a college degree and incomes exceeding $60,000 annually (15% accepted all eight behaviors as moral), those who describe themselves as “mostly liberal” on social and political matters and people 35 or younger (16%).

Fostering Changing Values

The study showed that there are several segments of the population that are more removed from traditional Christian values than others. Among those subgroups are adults under the age of 35; men; people with college degrees and above average household income levels; and individuals attending large churches.

People in the Baby Bust generation were more inclined than any other group to support behaviors that conflict with traditional Christian morals. Among the instances in which young adults were substantially more likely than their elders to adopt a nouveau moral view were in supporting homosexuality, cohabitation, the non-medicinal use of marijuana, voluntary exposure to pornography, profane language, drunkenness, speeding and sexual fantasizing.

Reactions to America’s Moral Condition

The results of the study caused George Barna, who oversaw the research project, to remark, “Americans are correct in suggesting that the moral state of the country is in decline, but they may be looking in the wrong place to find the genesis of the problem. Almost half of the population - 47% - holds a non-biblical moral view on at least four of the eight core behaviors we tested, suggesting that perhaps the moral problems of the nation are not always attributable to other people but often relate to our own attitudes and actions.

“Religious leaders and people committed to biblical standards of living will be discouraged to realize that matters are highly likely to get worse in years to come,” Barna continued. “The emerging generation of parents is the least likely of any demographic subgroup in the nation to possess - and, therefore, to transmit - biblical moral values. They will naturally impart to their children their own beliefs, and model and reinforce behaviors that fit their own values. Within the next quarter century we will likely see a state of radical moral amnesia in America.”

Barna also pointed out that the study suggests that the very notion of what Americans consider “legal” is being significantly redefined. “Notice that in several instances there is a large gap between what people say is morally acceptable and what they say should be legal. This reflects the shift away from biblical principles and Christian values as the basis of modern law. Increasingly, Americans are looking for the law to reflect their personal preferences and desires rather than a universal set of absolutes based on God’s dictates. If this trend continues - and, especially, if the law follows public opinion rather than a standard of truth - then it stands to reason that we will inevitably experience increased instability in our laws, relationships and marketplace experiences.”

When asked why this change has occurred, Barna stated that religious institutions have failed to present a compelling case for a biblical basis for moral truth. “Most people do not believe that there is any source of absolute moral truth. Even born again individuals are abandoning the notion of law based on scriptural principles. Families, who hold a major responsibility for shaping the moral values and attitudes of children, are ill-equipped to do that job in relation to a Christian worldview or on the basis of a comprehensive and coherent notion of faith-based truth. The result is that busy people, regardless of their faith affiliation, wing it when it comes to moral decisions. Religious institutions could greatly influence people in these areas, but they’d have to substantially alter their existing strategies.”

Survey Methodology

The data on which this report is based are from telephone interviews with a nationwide random sample of 1003 adults conducted in May 2001. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3%age points at the 95% confidence level. All of the interviews were conducted from the Barna Research Group telephone interviewing facility in Ventura, CA. Adults in the 48 continental states were eligible to be interviewed and the distribution coincided with the geographic dispersion of the U.S. adult population. Multiple callbacks were used to increase the probability of including a reliable distribution of adults.

“Born again Christians” were defined in these surveys as people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Respondents were not asked to describe themselves as “born again” or if they considered themselves to be “born again.”

The Barna Research Group, Ltd. is an independent marketing research company located in southern California. Since 1984 it has been studying cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. This research was funded solely by Barna Research as part of its regular tracking of the social, religious and political state of the nation.

If you would like to receive a bi-weekly update on the latest research findings from the Barna Research Group, you may subscribe to this free service by typing your e-mail address in the field above located at the top of this page on the left-hand side.

The Moral Acceptability of Specific Behaviors (N=1003)

	all adults	mainline	not-mainline	regularly attend church	born again
Abortion
should be legal in all or most circumstances	41%	50%	29%	27%	23%
having an abortion is morally acceptable	36	45	26	22	19
Homosexuality
sexual relations between consenting adults of the same gender should be legal	48	49	35	36	34
sexual relationship with someone of the same gender is morally acceptable	25	24	13	13	9
Sexual Fidelity
divorce for any reason other than adultery is not a sin	63	70	49	54	39
having an affair with a married person, other than your spouse, is morally acceptable	5	3	5	4	4
having an affair with a single person who is not married is morally acceptable	17	14	12	12	12
co-habitation is morally acceptable	58	54	43	42	36
having sexual fantisies is morally acceptable	58	54	43	43	39
Substance Use
using marijuana for non-medicinal purposes is morally acceptable	25	21	17	15	11
getting drunk is morally acceptable	36	30	20	23	20
Integrity
lying about personal achievements on a resume is morally acceptable	9	10	8	9	6
said they tithed in past year but did not	65	67	63	63	63
using profanity is morally acceptable	37	29	25	24	22
breaking the speed limit is morally acceptable	39	39	34	33	33
Pornography
watching a movie with explicit sexual behavior is morally acceptable	49	44	33	33	29
reading a magazine with nudity or explicit sexual pictures is morally acceptable	43	42	25	26	21

number of respondents	1003	173	314	381	619

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Must-Believe TV: Christianity gets a fair shake (National Review Online, 041221)

A recent episode of House, M.D., Fox TV’s eccentric and interesting new medical drama (Tuesday nights at 9 P.M. EST), continued the current trend of more sophisticated and evenhanded treatment of religion in television fiction programs. This development first manifested itself, of course, with the surprising decision of CBS to run the explicitly religious program Touched by an Angel in the late 1990s, but what has been even more important has been how the treatment of religion has changed in programs not explicitly devoted to the topic.

From the early 1970s until the late 1990s, TV depictions of religious faith, both fiction and nonfiction, had been largely dismissive of religious faith, usually quite openly so; I will not belabor the point with examples but just note that many books have been written about the subject, such as those by social critic Michael Medved. Although there were exceptions in a couple of programs developed by the late actor Michael Landon, and some other brief points of light, in general American TV was a vast spiritual wasteland during that nearly three-decade period.

That has changed in recent years, and programs as seemingly unlikely as the USA Network’s Touching Evil and NBC’s Crossing Jordan and Law and Order: Criminal Intent have in the past year presented scenes and entire episodes explicitly approving of religious faith.

Earlier this year, the NBC program Medical Investigation provided a vivid example of this trend in an episode revolving around religious issues. A central scene shows the star of the show, the leader of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) team that investigates the most baffling disease outbreaks, entering a Catholic church. It is a rather sinister scene at first, because there appears to be a strong possibility that the church is somehow spreading a ghastly disease. One feels set up for more antireligious TV-fiction symbolism.

But no, not this time. As the team leader enters the sanctuary, he dips his fingers in the holy water, makes the sign of the cross, and begins to pray to God that He will help him find out what is causing the disease outbreak. This man is one of the most successful doctors in the world, a top scientist at the NIH. The message is obvious (as it usually is on television): Science and faith can reside quite comfortably together in the same individual.

Last week’s episode of House, M.D. took a somewhat different approach, as is probably appropriate to Fox’s more “edgy” programming style. The disease victim who comes in for treatment by the diagnostic team headed by Dr. Gregory House, the cranky, cynical genius doctor played by Hugh Laurie, is a nun, and immediately House is both rude toward her and dismissive of her faith. In addition, one of the team members — the handsome young Englishman Dr. Robert Chase — says explicitly, “I hate nuns.”

Having set up this open hostility toward religion, however, the program then goes about systematically demolishing it. First, the good-natured young Dr. Eric Foreman makes it clear that he disagrees with Dr. Chase. Then, it becomes evident that Dr. House has quite possibly misplaced his faith in his own powers of diagnosis. The nuns, for their part, show surprising insights into the doctors’ minds.

In this regard, the faithful women are portrayed as far more complex and intelligent than one might have expected. Both their ideas and their personal histories are quite sophisticated, and in the case of the one stricken by illness, the revelations of her many past sins show not hypocrisy but the redemptive power of religious faith. The nuns argue quite evenly with Dr. House, and though he usually wins through the sheer force of his great intellect and even greater will, the emptiness in his soul becomes increasingly clear. His doubts in his own abilities suggest that for this man, science is not enough.

Throughout all of this, Christmas is prominent in the background. It is Advent, and the hospital staff members are reacting in various ways appropriate to their characters. Dr. House, in particular, increasingly reveals a loneliness and personal despair that has been strongly hinted at in previous episodes. The context, however, points the viewer inexorably toward a spiritual explanation of his problem: Dr. House is a lost soul who desperately needs to find some transcendent meaning to his life. Though he claims to be a strict materialist, his frequent references to Dante’s Circles of Hell suggest what is really troubling him.

Most strikingly of all, young Dr. Chase reveals to the nun, whose health is rapidly failing, that he had attended seminary school for a time. At this point, one could be forgiven for thinking that Dr. Chase will tell of some scandalous reason for his bitterness. Yet the very opposite happens. Dr. Chase says that he dropped out simply because he did not have as much faith as the nun, placing all the blame on himself. He says that he failed — not God, and not the Church. Furthermore, in a quite moving moment, the nun reveals her terror of her impending death, and Dr. Chase tries to comfort her. They share a favorite Bible verse by St. Peter, and Dr. Chase offers to pray with her. They begin to pray together as the scene fades out.

At the end of the episode, we see Dr. Chase at a Catholic church service at the monastery (as it is called in the program) where the now-healed nun and her sisters in Christ live. Dr. Chase, we then see, is at home spending Christmas with Dr. James Wilson, a quite likeable married colleague who has left his wife home alone for Christmas so that he can keep Dr. House company. As if this act of Christian charity (on the part of both Wilson and his apparently long-suffering wife) were not enough, the episode ends with Dr. House playing a Christmas hymn on the piano.

It is an appropriately ambiguous but hopeful ending, and the sophisticated treatment of religious faith in the episode provides some comfort for Dr. House and for those of us who have long hoped that the American popular culture could be redeemed and become at least a little fairer in its treatment of Christianity. A few TV episodes do not a religious revival make, but they are much more than we had a decade ago. A little leavening can have great consequences.

— S. T. Karnick is senior editor of The Heartland Institute, associate fellow of the Sagamore Institute, and coeditor of The Reform Club.

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Black Evangelicals Launch Coalition to Protect America’s Moral Compass (Christian Post, 050202)

Some 70 evangelical black pastors from across California gathered at the Crenshaw Christian center in Los Angeles for the first High Impact Leadership Coalition Marriage and Moral Value Summit, on Tuesday, February 1, 2005. The summit, led by the High Impact Coalition’s president Bishop Harry S. Jackson, and the Traditional Values Coalition’s president Lou Sheldon, was the first in what is to be a wave of seminars and events that will culminate with a pro-family rally of African American Christians at the nation’s capitol next year.

Sheldon, the main organizer for the event, began the summit with political rhetoric, encouraging the pastors to let “at least twenty percent” of their congregants contact lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington to oppose gay “marriage.”

However, as the summit went on, Sheldon began focusing on the will of God and the natural law of the creator as the main reasons why pastors should lead the fight to protect the family and marriage.

“God’s creative order is so necessary. We cannot live with guilt and shame and at the same time think we could have the blessing of God,” said Sheldon.

“You need to educate your people about where we are standing,” he continued. “And as the song, “Onward Christian Soldiers” says, like the mighty army, moves the Church of God.”

The four hour summit also featured a documentary, produced by Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition, entitled “Gay Rights, Special Rights.” The video, which was distributed to all of the attendees, exposed the works of the homosexual lobbyists, who have secretly but effectively been implanting their agenda into our social, political and educational systems for 30 years. The documentary also and surveyed the tensions between the African American civil-rights movement and the gay-rights movement.

After watching the film, Samuel Barlow, a member of the Ontario Christian Center, said he was thankful to have learned so thoroughly about the current crisis facing Christians.

“I did not know what the basic agenda was when I first came here,” said Barlow. “But I’m glad I’m here because this issue raised here is rather serious – it is vital we know about this because it goes against the teachings of the Bible.”

“Finding out where we are and the kind of trouble we are in, I felt this issue should be brought up to people who are serious about religion,” said Barlow. “They should stand up for what the Bible teaches.”

The summit followed the official launch of the High Impact Coalition, a nationwide effort to unify the voice of evangelical black leaders on six critical issues: the reconstruction of the family, wealth creation in urban areas, education reform, prison reform, healthcare reform and African relief.

The coalition’s president Bishop Jackson, a national evangelical Christian leader and senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington D.C., explained that the time is “ripe” for such a movement to take form.

“Things are ripe to make a difference,” said Jackson. “Oprah Winfrey or the next chairman of AOL time Warner is more than likely to be on the pew of African American Churches right now, and these churches are not just the storefront organizations they used to be.”

“We found there is a need for something to unite this group to let them exercise their clout for the benefit of our church community,” said Jackson. “We start with the black church, but we hope that the values of the community will also impact other churches as well.”

Bishop Jackson also explained that both righteousness and justice is needed to lead the African American church community in this critical era.

“Historically, we’ve said that black churches vote their pocket books while the white evangelicals have the privilege to choose values,” said Jackson.

“However, if you look closely, there has been a justice orientation in the African American vote; It has always been issues that looked like economics in nature, but at the bottom line is social justice that is clearly represented in the Bible,” said Jackson. “White churches hold “righteousness issues” such as abortion and same-sex marriage in priority.”

“So there hasn’t been a competition of values, but more of a difference of focus. We hope to marry righteousness and justice, and trumpet these things all around the country,” he continued.

Ultimately, however, Jackson explained that the protection of the family, which includes the effort to protect marriage, is the most important undertaking of the High Impact Coalition.

“If you look at all six point, they are tied into the black family issue,” said Jackson. “Marriage is our number one in priority. Everything else, poverty, prison reform, family recreation, are all related to building stable black families.”

The reason, Jackson explained, is because issues regarding the family and moral values are related to the righteousness of God, while other social issues – as important as they are – are related to justice for the community.

“You need to have both the justice and righteousness factor,” said Jackson. “But in priority, righteousness has to be first since your personal integrity and moment with God becomes a stepping stone to justice. You got to prioritize those things you are personally in step with God, and then move toward creating opportunities for justice.”

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Teaching Tradition: When it comes to traditional morality, President Bush — not John Paul II — has it right. (National Review Online, 050503)

In the wave of well-deserved adulation and admiration that has swept the world since the death of John Paul II, one observation has continually been made as a characterization of his pontificate. Love him or hate him, agree with or oppose him, one thing is universally accepted as true: John Paul II stood up for “traditional morality.” In a world obsessed with the “culture of death,” John Paul stood resolutely for traditional ethics and for the “culture of life” that made him such a sign of opposition to the prevailing drift of people and governments.

But just how traditional was his morality? He opposed contraception — that, to be sure, is traditional. Until the 20th century, no one endorsed contraceptive use; and even then, among people of all classes — except a handful in the intelligentsia — no one believed in it until the 1960s. Not only did every religion condemn it, but even the Anglicans didn’t approve it until 1931. So on that score, John Paul II taught traditional morality.

The same, of course, goes for abortion. Pagan aberrations aside (though we must sometimes remember to distinguish between what people do and what they believe), the previous paragraph applies to this practice as well. When it comes to euthanasia, ancient history can be discordant, but it’s pretty safe to say that opposition to it is also a part of traditional morality. No problem on that score for John Paul II.

But once we get past contraception, abortion, and euthanasia, things start to get sticky. For belief in the permissibility of the death penalty is a part of traditional morality, as is belief in the justifiability of war. And yet whilst the president of the United States, for one, steadfastly supports both capital punishment and the concept of just war, John Paul II seemed resolute in his virtual opposition to both. I say “virtual” because, though he never condemned either explicitly, everything he said and did made clear that he regarded them as all but unreasonable and inapplicable in the modern age. Here it looks like George W. Bush’s morality is far more traditional — and I would argue more defensible — than John Paul’s.

Defenders of the latter, however, will respond than the late pontiff never taught that war or capital punishment were wrong per se. Indeed, to take war first, some have said that John Paul II never even explicitly opposed the 2003 Iraq war. This is contentious, however, since in an interview with the Catholic news agency Zenit on May 2, 2003, then Cardinal Ratzinger made it quite plain that John Paul opposed the invasion: “The Pope expressed his thought with great clarity [that] there were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq.” The more important matter of principle, however, is that John Paul did allow that sufficient reasons to go to war might exist.

How traditional is this position? Official teaching such as the Catechism of 1992/1997 allows the possibility of war justified by the right of self-defence or perhaps the defence of another country. But the traditional view has always been broader than this: Actual physical aggression or the threat thereof is one potential jus ad bellum (ground for war), but so, according to the standard moral theology manuals of the 1950s, are freedom from tyranny and liberation from religious oppression whereby a nation is prevented from worshipping God. Even a grave dishonor to a country can be a good reason for going to war. And the standard pre-1960s theology books also teach that it might be an act of charity for a nation to go to war to bring orderly government to a country in chaos.

These textbooks are merely echoing the centuries-old teaching of the Catholic Church as embodied in its greatest minds, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. To be sure, the textbooks agree that war is a horrendous thing, only to be justified in serious circumstances. But they are at some remove from John Paul, who never seems to have met a war he didn’t abhor.

The same goes for capital punishment, where, even more egregiously, John Paul denounced what the Church has taught for centuries. Lest there be any doubt, the 1992 version of the new Catechism, at para. 2266, includes the death penalty as legitimate punishment “in cases of extreme gravity.” In the 1997 revised version, however, this has been replaced in para. 2267 by the statement that capital punishment may be inflicted as “the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” But then it goes on to say that any such case, in contemporary society, would be “very rare, if not practically non-existent,” repeating what John Paul said in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

Again, traditional teaching, which is quite some way from this highly restrictive position, is summed up by Aquinas: He says, “if any man is dangerous to the community and is subverting it by some sin, the treatment to be commended is his execution in order to preserve the common good, for a little leaven sours the whole lump.” Far less restrictive, one can see, unless “some sin” is distorted to mean “the worst possible sin in the world” or some such.

Indeed it is somewhat amazing that John Paul seems to have remained so unmoved by the unrelenting violence, sexual decadence, and drug-fuelled vice of modern materialist society (the very society he chastised over and over for its naked greed) as never once to have advocated executing some of the criminals who make contemporary life such a misery for so many people.

The plain fact is that John Paul II’s moral teaching (at least on life-and-death issues) is far less traditional than George Bush’s. For traditional ethics relies on the fundamental distinction between guilt and innocence: It is at the heart of the traditional support for just war and capital punishment and opposition to abortion and euthanasia. The president clearly recognizes this; all he is doing is reflecting a moral position that only a few decades ago, and for millennia before that, people used to drink in with their mothers’ milk.

Without the distinction between guilt and innocence there can be no conceptual basis for distinguishing punishment from protection. And without that, morality collapses into incoherence.

Opposition to abortion and euthanasia on the one hand, and support for just war and the death penalty on the other, are not conceptual enemies. They aren’t even uneasy bedfellows. They belong together, and in a way each side justifies the other. Together they provide the traditional ethics at the heart of all mainstream moral thinking until the 1960s cultural revolution. It is clear that George W. Bush has made that thinking his own. It is the late pontiff, on the other hand, who struck off in a novel direction. When it comes to applying tradition to life-and-death moral issues, Bush 43 wins hands down over John Paul II.

— David S. Oderberg is professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, England, and the author of books and articles on moral philosophy, such as Moral Theory (Blackwell, 2000) and Applied Ethics (Blackwell, 2000).

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Symptom of Moral Crisis (Christian Post, 050430)

Richard Land

The Baghdad prison abuse scandal should serve as a warning to Americans that something has gone terribly awry in our society. Political talk shows and news columns this week are all about whether or not the top commanders—perhaps even all the way up to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—should be fired. These are important conversations, but they avoid a sickening fact: As a society, we are raising too many children who don’t understand the difference between plain right and wrong. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have U.S. soldiers committing such crimes.When I first saw the photos, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, I was shocked and horrified. The feelings of outrage were intensified by the fact that the perpetrators were American soldiers. How could American boys and girls do things so contrary for all we stand for in the world?

As I struggled to answer that question in my own mind and heart, I was reminded of a little book called The Abolition of Man written in 1947 by C.S. Lewis, the British author and social commentator. Responding to a textbook that introduced subjective and relativist values into post-war British schools, Lewis defended traditional Judeo-Christian morality.

Lewis explained that in the properly ordered composition of a human being, the head (the intellect) ruled the belly (the visceral appetites) through the chest. Lewis defined the chest as the “higher emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments or character.” Lewis went on to argue that the higher emotions of the chest—in essence, the workings of the heart—were the essential liaison between the cerebral and the sensual. Without the chest, human beings become self-idolatrous worshipers of their own minds and their own appetites.

C. S. Lewis understood that moral relativism eventually eviscerates moral character. When schools train students to “clarify” their own values, tell them they have the right to question parental or societal values, and that each person’s values are as valid as any other person’s values, then you have made all morals relative and each person becomes the final arbiter of what is “right” or “wrong” for them.

When such thinking permeates society, there are no agreed-upon absolute Truths (with a capital “T”) where some things are always right and some things are always wrong. Instead, you are left with an almost endless number of personal idiosyncratic “truths;” nothing is always right or wrong but entirely dependent upon the situation, circumstance, or personal opinion. Additionally, no one has the right to assert that anyone else’s values are wrong. In such a society, where nothing is always objectively wrong, anything is possible.

Post-modern relativism tears out the “chest” so necessary for stable moral character. As Lewis put it so poignantly: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked when we find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then we bid the geldings to be fruitful.”

Having subjected too many of our children to more than a generation of “values clarification” and societal moral relativism, we have produced ever larger numbers of “chestless” men and women. And this is far more than a religious vs. secular issue. It is a traditional morality vs. post-modernist issue. Going to church, synagogue, temple, or mosque, doesn’t guarantee Lewis’ “chest” or heart. We know that some of the accused soldiers attended church regularly. Perhaps some of these churches have been heavily influenced by moral relativism. Perhaps these soldiers were taught by precept or example, or both, to view the Ten Commandments as the Ten Suggestions to be affirmed or rejected by personal choice. Examples abound in our society of Buffet Baptists and Cafeteria Catholics who believe they have the right to pick or choose which parts of their religious tradition to affirm or reject and that the moral imperatives of their religious traditions are mere suggestions until personally affirmed by themselves, the final arbiter of right and wrong. Both The Barna Group and the Pew Forum have done surveys which show a remarkable disconnect between the teachings of various religious traditions and the personal beliefs and practices of those tradition’s adherents.

Dennis Prager, a popular social commentator and Jewish ethicist, tells a story that illustrates the impact this moral relativism has had on our children. He says that for more than a decade now he has been asking young people in various forums this question: “If your pet dog and a stranger were both drowning and you could only save one, which would you choose?” Consistently, one-third answer their dog, one-third answer the stranger, and one-third say it’s too hard a question and they can’t answer it.

And for many of these young people, the one thing about which they are certain is that their answer is not normative or morally binding on anyone else. They believe each person must decide for himself and that makes the answer “right” for them.

Bad ideas have bad consequences. Moral relativism has produced more and more moral “geldings.” Eventually, some of them found their way into our military. What is particularly upsetting is that a few soldiers have besmirched the reputation of the American military, the societal institution least impacted by moral relativism. The American military has continued to teach, affirm, and honor, objective concepts of “duty, honor, country” long after civilian society made these ideals far more relative and subjective.

When society produces citizens without an internal moral compass, the military cannot manufacture soldiers who possess such a compass. The military system can punish scandals like Abu Ghraib prison, but when the nation gives them men and women without chests, without hearts, they can’t prevent them.

The Baghdad prison scandal should send alarm bells clanging throughout our society. Like the dead canary in a coal mine, it is a warning that a lethally poisonous moral gas is loose among us.

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An Adult Approach...to life and death. (National Review Online, 050504)

Kathryn Jean Lopez

These days it’s common to hear that “conservative” or “pro-life” policy toward stem cells is a disservice to folks like the late President Ronald Reagan who suffered from Alzheimer’s. Quite a bit of the media coverage about the new pope, Benedict XVI, has emphasized that he’s against stem-cell research. In a recent Washington Post article, Ivy Reyes, who had stopped by a Manhattan church to say a prayer for pontiff, emphasized to a reporter: “I’m hoping he can find a balance with the science.”

If you follow the media’s lead, we are to believe that the pope, like President Bush, is against stem-cell research. But neither of them is against stem-cell research. Actually, I don’t know anyone who is against stem-cell research. And I would know, because I agree with the Vatican and the U.S. president on this topic.

My posse is against embryonic-stem-cell research, and against cloning to create embryos for use in stem-cell research (or any research). But we’re not against stem-cell research.

Embryonic-stem-cell research is not the only hope for mankind, as we are typically led to believe. The prospects of adult-stem-cell and umbilical-cord stem-cell research are repeatedly ignored by media and activists who could use both to promote funding of and research in stem-cell projects and totally avoid the ethical chaos that comes with working with human embryos.

Earlier this year, Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh, put his Church’s view clearly in a pastoral letter on human life: “Adult stem cell research ... has been described as the most promising advance in medical science in the last decades. The Catholic Church is not opposed to the development of these therapies and remedies for a host of ailments and deficiencies that afflict the body. Stem cell research using stem cells from ethical sources is a continuation of the work that has been done for millennia by physicians and researchers seeking cures for illness and healing for the sick.”

Adult stem cells made a memorable appearance in the presidential elections last fall, when, during the second prime-time debate, questioner Elizabeth Long asked: “Senator Kerry, thousands of people have already been cured or treated by the use of adult stem cells or umbilical cord stem cells. However, no one has been cured by using embryonic stem cells. Wouldn’t it be wise to use stem cells obtained without the destruction of an embryo?”

Senator Kerry didn’t have much of a response, and most folks glossed over it and moved on. His running mate, meanwhile, would later shamelessly use the death of Christopher Reeve to play snake-oil salesman: “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

But Long was right-on with her question. And the Democratic ticket was painfully and dangerously deaf and dumb.

After a nation watched Ronald Reagan’s son praise the medical promise of embryonic stem cells at the Democratic convention, Ronald D. G. McKay, a stem-cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, called the contention that embryonic-stem cells will cure Alzheimer’s “a fairy tale.”

As Michael Fumento, author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World, one of the few commentators who’ve shone a light on adult stem cells, has written: “Scientists have already discovered at least 14 types of ASCs that ... could perhaps be ‘trans-differentiated’ into all the types of cells we need.”

And adult stem cells are not mere pie-in-the-sky hopes of potential medical progress. Adult stem cells are cells at work today. Dr. Scott Gottlieb has written, “Adult stem cells have already been used for more than 20 years as bone marrow transplants to reconstitute the immune systems of patients with cancer and to treat blood cancers such as leukemia.”

Umbilical-cord stem cells are another potentially fertile opportunity for medical progress. Cord blood is rich in stem cells. A mid-April report from the Institute of Medicine, the results of a yearlong study, recommended the establishment of a national network of cord-blood stem-cell banks for just this reason. Congress, which has a cord-blood bill on the table, should focus on this concrete alternative to endless yapping.

As the report notes, four million babies are born every year in the United States and the majority of their umbilical cords are thrown away. They could be used to treat some 11,700 Americans annually, according to the Institute of Medicine. That’d be a concrete start.

We’re all adults here — and adult and umbilical-cord stem cells make sense for new medical research. How about a mature discussion, free of some of the hollow hype? Lives depend on it.

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Gallup Organization Refutes Story Saying “Societies Worse Off ‘When They Have God On Their Side” (Christian Coalition, 051016)

By David W. Virtue (virtueonline.org)

George Gallup, founding chairman of The George H. Gallup International Institute, has written a letter to The London Times in response to a recent article by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent which says that “Societies are worse off ‘when they have God on their side.”

In a letter to VirtueOnline, Gallup said that Gregory S. Paul, author of an article based on an 18-nation survey, and published in the US based Journal of Religion and Society, makes an outrageous assertion concluding that because the US has a high level of religiosity and, at the same time, a high level of murders, abortions, sexual promiscuity and suicide, that religious belief can contribute to such problems, and even cause them.

“It is important to challenge Paul’s assertion forthrightly, because the casual, non-research minded reader, might easily accept his conclusion as entirely plausible on the face of it,” writes Gallup.

“Gregory Paul’s conclusion is based on a flawed analysis according to my research associate, D Michael Lindsay, an expert in the department of sociology at Princeton University. After carefully examining Paul’s international study, Mr. Lindsay maintains that it does not pass scholarly muster.”

He makes two points, says Gallup:

First. Paul claims that regressions and multivariate analyses were not used because ‘causal factors for rates of societal function are complex,’ and because he finds enough uniformity across the cases of 18 of the world’s most powerful societies to consider them basically consistent and not in need of control variables. Can he identify a single other study published in a major social scientific journal that compared results across countries that did not employ multivariate analysis to control for differences among nations? No, because multivariate analysis is required for cross-national comparisons of this sort.

Secondly. In order for the author’s bold claims against religious commitment contributing to society to hold true, he would have to refute the hundreds of volumes that have proven otherwise. From discussions on parenting and fatherhood, to mental and physical health, the weight of empirical evidence is against Paul’s assertions: religious commitment has notably positive effects on the individual and collective levels of human society.

Gallup says that to draw conclusions about the effect of religion on a society, it is vital to look beneath the surface manifestations of religion, (such as, broad belief in God and attachment to religious traditions) and examine religious and spiritual belief and practice in depth. Deep spiritual commitment (as measured by a battery of carefully tested and penetrating questions) contributes to a far healthier nation that would likely otherwise be the case.

“A mountain of survey data (from Gallup and other survey organizations) supports this statement. Controlling for education and other variables, persons who fit the category of “highly spiritually committed” are far less likely to engage in antisocial and irresponsible behaviour than those less committed, and there are lower rates of crime, drinking and using drugs among this group. They are more hopeful about the future and experience greater joy in life. They contribute more time in helping people who are burdened with physical and emotional needs. They are less likely to be prejudiced against people of other races, and are more giving and forgiving. They have bucked the trend of many in society toward narcissism and hedonism.”

“Teens with deep spiritual commitment are far more likely than their counterparts to be happy, goal-oriented, hopeful about the future, to see a reason for their existence, to do better in school work, to be less likely to get into trouble, and more likely to serve others,” wrote Gallup.

“The percentage of persons who are deeply spiritually committed is small according to certain measurements...perhaps only a sixth of the population, or less...but their impact on life around them is profound. Clearly, then, the challenge to churches and other faith communities is to encourage deeper spiritual and religious commitment among the US populace.”

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Study: Sleep Deprivation Can Affect Moral Decisions (Christian Post, 070315)

A recent study that was published in this month’s edition of Sleep, the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, recorded findings that suggest that lack of sleep can impair a person’s ability to make moral decisions.

The research, which was conducted by William D.S. Killgore, PhD, and his colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, showed that individuals who were kept awake for 53 hours had more difficulty acting upon “moral” situations due to their impaired ability to integrate emotion and cognition. Individuals that had high levels of “emotional intelligence,” however, were less or not at all affected by sleep deprivation.

The findings advocate individuals to get adequate sleep to ensure proper judgment, but it also brings up questions about how to increase one’s emotional intelligence, which would increase one’s ability to make moral choices.

“Most of us are confronted with moral dilemmas nearly every day, although the majority of these choices are minor and of little consequence,” said Killgore in the report. “Although such decisions are inextricably steeped in social, emotional, religious and moral values, and their correct courses of action cannot be determined through scientific inquiry, it is well within the realm of science to ask how the brain goes about solving such dilemmas and what factors, whether internal or external to the individual, contribute to the judgments and decisions that are ultimately reached.”

The study examined 26 test subjects - 21 men and 5 women - at the in-residence sleep laboratory at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Each of these subjects were kept awake over two nights (53 hours), which was followed by three types of dilemmas where each individual had to make a judgment about the “appropriateness” of an action. This test was also performed at the start of the study (rested baseline), which was compared to the concluding result.

Compared to the baseline, sleep deprived participants had more difficulty in deciding a course of action for “Moral Personal” dilemmas, those that are emotionally evocative. They also were more likely to agree with solutions that had previously violated their personal moral beliefs. When subjected to “Non Moral” dilemmas and less emotional “Moral Impersonal” dilemmas, individuals generally made the same decision as if they had not been sleep deprived.

Based on the findings, one can conclude that sleep adversely affects moral decisions.

Those that have a high level of emotional intelligence, as measured by the Bar-On EQ-i – which has been argued as a better predictor of “success” than the more traditional measures of cognitive intelligence (IQ) - were less likely to change their judgments, however, even after sufficient sleep loss.

Those that have sleep disorders should consult a physician, and people who have occupations that require them to stay awake for long hours should be cautious.

Doctors recommend seven to eight hours of sleep a night.

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The Moral Decline of America (townhall.com, 070319)

By Armstrong Williams

The answer to the “moral decline of America” question will always illicit an array of arguments. Some people will point out American progress over the last fifty years and wholeheartedly claim that America is on the rise. Likewise, some people will point to America’s problems over the last fifty years and vehemently claim that it is falling from grace. Wherever you come down on this issue, the fact is that you most likely have an opinion on whether or not America is in moral decline. Sadly, I believe it is.

Here we are just coming out of Black History month and instead of celebrating Women’s History Month by honoring the progress of women around the world, Americans are glorifying the lives of several women who actually deserve no attention at all. Anna Nicole Smith, a woman who became famous by milking a dying millionaire out of his estate, received more media attention after her death than any mother in the world. Her peer, Brittany Spears, shaved her head (most likely to avoid a drug testing dilemma), checked herself into rehab, got a tattoo, and leapt to the front page of our newspapers and the opening story on our nightly news. Examples of moral disintegration in this country are not merely limited to the rich and famous. Everyday on our streets, in our schools, and at our workplaces we see people breaking the law, cheating the system, and living without any moral compass and we dwell on tiffs between the likes of Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump. The divorce rate is climbing; adultery is on the rise; there are few stable marriages in Hollywood and our politicians are not far off the list of statistics.

I was at Union Station’s book store in Washington, DC, and witnessed firsthand the shooting of a high school boy. The victim was shot by another high schooler who was upset this boy was checking out his girlfriend. After arguing and fighting in front of dozens of cheering onlookers, the teenage killer pulled out a gun and shot the other boy. The Union Station shooting (other than my watching television) was the first time in my life I’ve ever witnessed someone shot. It truly forced me to face the reality of what path our country is headed down and how casual our youngsters will resort to violence. There’s no doubt that this aggressive behavior is being reinforced by the shameless media and entertainment industry that constantly barrage us with these images.

As most of you know, I am a staunch defender of free speech and I believe censorship in most forms is a bad idea. I agree with Mark Twain when he said, “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” I also believe that the American audience will eventually wise up and stop buying what the media is currently selling. At some point, the American audience will tire of the endless killings shown in action movies, the casual sex portrayed in sit-coms, and the downright shameful behavior seen in tabloids and magazines. But until we stop talking about these silly stories and watching these shameful shows, the media and the networks will continue to give them to us. Although it is probably time for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce stricter laws, I think it would be vastly more effective to have the people boycott than the politicians legislate.

Currently America is the most hated country in the world. And sadly, with every passing day, we become the most disrespected country in the world. We are seen overseas as a rich, pompous, egotistical, wasteful, shameful, and sinful society. We are accused of embracing a double standard that allows us to do one thing, while saying another. Examples of this include our insistence to expand the military while asking Middle Eastern countries to disarm; Polluting the environment more than any other country, yet refusing to join international programs to save the planet and expecting the rest of the world to abide by international laws but getting immunity from the International Criminal Court.

The United States is surrounded by legal issues revolving around same-sex marriages which are further complicated by the nation’s federal system of government. We are living in a time that we must deal with child sexual abuse in the priesthood and in society at large as well as kidnapping. Our children are our future and we must protect them. Unfortunately, there are no simplistic solutions to getting rid of pedophiles. We must deal with the painful truth that sexual abuse of children is a crime that not only occurs in the priesthood, but most of the time is committed in our own families. Obviously there are many more examples of Americans living a double standard and each of us must admit our role in perpetuating this.

Whether we’re talking about the media, the environment, the war, or local crime, it is all the same – we must stop the moral decline of America if we wish to avoid the fate of other past empires.

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Poll: 4 in 5 Britons Say U.K. in ‘Moral Decline’ (Christian Post, 070908)

LONDON – A poll conducted for the British Broadcasting Corp.’s new The Big Questions show found that four in five people believe Britain is in moral decline.

According to the survey of 1,000 people, only nine percent disagreed that moral standards were falling, reports the BBC.

Religion still kept its place of importance, however, with 62% agreeing that religion was an important moral guide for the nation.

Only 29% disagreed that faith was important in shaping a nation’s morals.

The survey also tapped into people’s beliefs about anti-social behavior. It found that people were less likely to intervene if they saw someone behaving antisocially than if they saw a stranger who had collapsed.

While 93% of people said they would help a person who had collapsed in the street, only 61% said they would try to break up two children fighting, and only 32% said they would intervene if they saw teenagers spraying graffiti.

The survey was carried out by polling company ComRes on behalf of the BBC between Aug. 31 and Sept. 2.

It also found a generation difference in attitudes to religion. People between the ages of 16 and 24 were more likely than those in older age categories to agree that religion had a key role to play in guiding the nation’s morals, the survey found.

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Study: Behaviors Americans Consider ‘Sinful’ (Christian Post, 080312)

Americans overwhelmingly believe in the concept of sin whether they are religiously involved or not, according to a new Ellison Research study released Tuesday.

“Sin,” as defined by the research organization, is “something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective.” The study questioned more than 1,000 American adult respondents whether they believe in such a thing as “sin” and then asked them whether 30 different behaviors were sinful.

Out the list of 30 behaviors, adultery was most often described as a sinful behavior by American respondents (81%).

Following adultery was racism (74%); using “hard” drugs such as cocaine, heroine, meth, LSD, etc. (65%); not saying anything if a cashier gives you too much change (63%); abortion (56%); and homosexual activity or sex (52%) rounded out the top five behaviors most often considered sinful by Americans.

Other behaviors with significant moral objections included reading or watching pornography (50%); swearing (46%); sex before marriage (45%); harming the environment as a consumer (41%); smoking marijuana (41%); getting drunk (41%); and not taking proper care of your body (35%).

Not surprisingly, religious people are much more likely to believe in sin, with 94% of Americans who regularly attend religious worship services saying they believe in the concept of sin. The number drops to 80% among those who do not attend service, although the percentage is still a large majority.

But perhaps more surprising is the differences in the belief of sin between political divides. Political conservatives (94%) believe there is such a thing as sin. The number remains high among moderates (89%) but then drops to 77% among political liberals.

Among Christian traditions, Protestants are more likely than Roman Catholics to include most of the 30 different behaviors as sin. The biggest differences included gambling (50% of Protestants compared to 15% of Catholics); failing to tithe 10% or more of one’s income (32% to 9%); getting drunk (63% to 28%); gossip (70% to 45%); and homosexual activity or sex (72% to 42%).

[KH: probably reflecting the lack of familiarity with the Bible among Catholics.]

However, Catholics are more likely than Protestants to believe that not attending church is a sin (39% to 23%).

The percentage gap widens when evangelical Christians are stacked against the general American population. 90% of evangelicals believe getting drunk is a sin, compared to 35% of all other Americans. Likewise, 92% of evangelicals believe sex before marriage is sinful, compared to 39% of the general U.S. population.

But only a minority of evangelicals believes it is sin to work on the Sabbath, not attend church, drink alcohol, dance, play the lottery, watch an R-rated movie, or not tithe 10% of their income to church or charity, according to Ellison Research.

Furthermore, the study reveals how Americans weigh sinful behaviors differently. While 81% feel adultery is sinful, only 43% say that having sexual thoughts about someone to whom they are not married is sinful.

Although 41% of Americans believe getting drunk is sinful, only 14% believe drinking even a little alcohol is a sin. Gambling is a sin to 30% of Americans, but only 18% feel this way about playing the lottery. And while 65% feel doing hard drugs are a sin, only 41% say this about marijuana.

“We can see numerous inconsistent patterns of thought and belief throughout the responses,” Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, stated. “For instance, over a third of all Americans believe failing to take proper care of their bodies is sinful. Yet far fewer believe tobacco or obesity are sins – even though medical science consistently shows using tobacco and being overweight are two of the most harmful things they can do to their bodies.”

Other inconsistencies highlighted by Sellers include:

• Over four out of 10 evangelicals believe it is a sin not to tithe, but other studies show relatively few evangelicals actually do so

• The Roman Catholic church consistently teaches that sex before marriage, abortion, pornography, and homosexual activity are sins, yet as many as half of all practicing Catholics do not personally define each of these as sinful.

Sellers suggests that religious leaders look at the findings of the study and compare it to their own teachings.

“If your church is teaching that working on the Sabbath is sinful, or that drinking or abortion or gossip are sinful, it’s likely that many of your own people don’t agree with you,” Sellers said.

“Leaders need to understand why this is, so they can figure out how to respond. Rather than just teaching, they need to discuss these issues with people – getting feedback on why so many of their own people differ with them may help them understand how to reach those people more effectively with their teaching,” the Ellison Research president commented.

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Poll: Most Americans Say Moral Climate is Getting Worse (Christian Post, 080613)

Few Americans give the country’s moral climate high marks, and the latest survey revealed that they feel it’s only getting worse.

According to a Gallup Poll released Thursday, 81% of Americans say the state of moral values in the country as a whole is getting worse while only 11% believe it’s getting better.

Currently, only 15% of Americans overall consider moral values to be “excellent” or “good;” 41% say the moral climate is “only fair;” and 44% consider the moral state to be “poor.”

Republicans, compared to Democrats and independents, feel more strongly that there’s a moral decline in America. In 2006, 36% of both Republicans and Democrats said the overall state of moral values is poor. But over the last two years, Republicans have grown to feel significantly more negative with 51% calling the country’s current moral state poor compared to 40% of Democrats.

Although the report by Gallup pointed to issues of gay “marriage,” pop-star misbehavior and sex scandals as possible reasons for why Republicans have become so critical of the moral state in recent years, it did not confirm whether any of those issues contributed to Republicans’ views.

“Whatever the cause, this may signal that Republicans will be particularly anxious to elect a new president this November who will help to uphold or restore the values they now find lacking in the country,” the report stated.

Nonetheless, a majority of Americans, across party lines, aren’t optimistic about the future of their country’s moral climate.

Among Republicans, the percentage of those saying the state of moral values in the country is getting worse rose from 64% in 2003 to 87% in 2008. Among independents and Democrats, a similar pattern is seen but both these groups show a bit less pessimism than the Republicans.

The Gallup Poll also found that Americans with lower income are significantly more pessimistic about the moral state in the country compared to upper-income Americans. Results from the poll show that 51% of Americans with a household income of less than $30,000 consider the moral state “poor” while only 35% of those with an income of $75,000 and more say so.

Since 2002 a majority of Americans have consistently said the moral climate is less than good and getting worse, according to the report.

Results from the recent Gallup Poll are based on telephone interviews with 1,017 adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 8-11, 2008.

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Survey: American Dream Centers on Family Values (Christian Post, 080624)

Given the popular perception that Americans have become more liberal, it may be of surprise to hear that most people still embrace traditional family values as the foundation of the American dream.

More than 75% of all American adults said their ideal life includes having good physical health (listed by 85%), living with a high degree of integrity (85%), having one marriage partner for life (80%), having a clear purpose for living (77%), having a close relationship with God (75%), and having close, personal friendships (74%), according to a Barna report released Monday.

Interestingly, these top six factors of an American dream life have remained relatively unchanged over the years that the Barna Group has conducted such a survey.

“Stability rules,” George Barna, who has overseen this research since 1991, noted. “Out of nineteen factors, only two have seen even a ten-point shift in nearly two decades. That’s rather remarkable consistency.”

He further commented that while the nation has experienced significant changes in laws in the last quarter-century, what Americans seek are “traditional family values: a single marriage for life, a solid family experience, displaying good character, living a life that has meaning and impact, and having an active faith.”

Additional popular conditions of the American dream include having a comfortable lifestyle (70%), having a satisfying sex life with their marriage partner (66%), having children (66%), living close to family and relatives (63%), being deeply committed to the Christian faith (59%), and making a difference in the world (56%).

Several factors have increased in importance to Americans, including their commitment to their Christian faith (up six points since 2000), making a difference in the world (up nine points since 2000), living with a high degree of integrity (up nine points since 1991), having children (up 11 points since 2000), and having a comfortable lifestyle (up 11 points since 1991).

Factors that fell in importance included having good physical health (down eight points since 1991); having a college degree (downg five points since 2000), and working at a high-paying job (down 15 points since 1993).

Barna observes, “Sometimes the abundant opportunities and challenges of daily life distract or divert people from their commitment to these outcomes, but in their hearts they have retained some pretty basic and traditional hope and dreams.”

“Leaders might take note of this and compare their own vision and plans for the future with the ideal life that Americans hope to experience,” he added.

The survey is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,003 adults , age 18 and older, in May 2008.

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God Speaks (BreakPoint, 080521)

By Chuck Colson

Neuroscience and God

In a recent issue of the New York Times, respected columnist David Brooks described how what he calls a “revolution in neuroscience” is shaping “how people see the world.” I agree with him—up to a point.

What Brooks calls the “revolution in neuroscience” is the rapidly growing body of research into phenomena such as religious experience and shared moral intuitions.

In one such experiment, volunteers are asked to imagine the following scenario: A village is under attack, and its residents are in hiding. Suddenly, a baby begins to cry. Its crying threatens to reveal their location.

Volunteers are asked whether killing the child to save the others is justified. Not only does the vast majority say “no”—thankfully—but CAT scans and EEGs reveal that the same part of their brains is active when they react to the question.

This and similar studies have, as Brooks put it, “shifted away the momentum” from seeing our minds in purely materialistic terms. Our brains are not “cold machines.” Rather, “meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings.”

And Brooks is right when he says that research like this will turn the recent debates over atheism into a “sideshow.” There is simply no way to sustain a “hard-core” materialistic understanding of human consciousness and morality in light of the new research. Where does the consciousness and moral decision-making come from?

However, I disagree with him when he writes that this research will pose a challenge to “faith in the Bible” and, instead, lead to what he calls “neural Buddhism.”

If anything, the opposite is true. This rebuttal of modern materialistic reductionism is a confirmation of what the Scriptures teach us about being created in the image of God.

It corroborates the biblical idea that we are, to use a modern phrase, “hard-wired” for spirituality and God. It suggests that we are irresistibly religious, as philosophers have always argued.

Now, Brooks goes on to say that this will lead to a form of vague spiritual mysticism. This will happen, he says, because Orthodox believers will have trouble defending “particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings.”

Well, Brooks is wrong. The evidence from neuroscience is only part of the picture. While the mystical religious experiences and moral intuitions he writes about are shared by many religious traditions, there is no comparable evidence for Buddhism’s other claims: Its tenets about reincarnation and the illusory nature of physical existence cannot be substantiated.

In contrast, as I point out in my book The Faith, the Bible’s claims can be substantiated. It makes the very same claims about universal moral intuitions that neuroscientists are now proving.

It is not only the Bible’s moral and anthropological claims that are being proven: Archeology is increasingly proving Scripture’s historical claims, as well.

In many ways, see, the Bible anticipates contemporary scientific discoveries—as in Romans 2. It is not because the writers of Scripture were lucky—it is because the Bible is the revealed Word of God.

As I wrote in The Faith, the two great propositions Christians believe are that “God is” and “God has spoken.” The discoveries Brooks describes validate both, which should not surprise any of us.

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Groups: Calif. Bills ‘Squash’ Moral Values, Religious Freedom (Christian Post, 081008)

Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed three bills last week that some conservatives say will squash moral values and religious freedom.

“Under these new laws, foster parents, nurses, doctors, health insurance plans, city and county commissions, and court-appointed children’s advocates must abandon their moral, social or financial values at the altar of the homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda,” stated Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, on Friday.

“This crate load of homosexual-bisexual-transsexual laws embodies the same intolerant spirit of the recent California Supreme Court ruling that trampled the religious freedom of doctors at the behest of homosexual ‘rights,’” he added.

The contested bills include SB 1729, which requires physicians, surgeons, nurses and assistants working in skilled nursing or congregate living health facilities to participate in training programs focusing on sensitivity to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues; AB 3015, which requires foster care youth and their caregivers to be educated about existing California laws that protect students against bias; and AB 2747, which requires doctors to facilitate death by dehydration on demand for terminally ill patients – even those having up to one more year to live.

The three bills, which have drawn protest from groups including Concerned Women for America and California Right to Life, were signed over the course of three days – the first two on Sept. 28 and the third on the evening of Sept. 30.

Regarding the first two bills, Thomasson argued that creation of new laws, “which make homosexual-bisexual-transsexual ‘rights’ superior to everyone else’s rights,” is wrong and unfair.

“The words ‘discrimination,’ ‘harassment,’ and ‘tolerance’ have been redefined and are actually resulting in reverse discrimination and intolerance against people with moral values,” Thomasson expressed in a public announcement.

He also rebuked Schwarzenegger for giving California “something worse than physician-assisted suicide.”

“AB 2747 actually allows people who aren’t doctors to claim that you’re ‘terminal’ and hopeless, thus triggering the new mandate requiring patients to be offered ways to kill themselves,” he explained.

“Dr. Jack Kevorkian would be proud. So would HMOs that tend to regard people as dollar bills and consider you more expensive alive than dead.”

In addition to CCF, AB 247 has been opposed by the California Disability Alliance, California Foundation for Independent Living Centers, California League of United Latin American Citizens, La Raza Roundtable de California, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, California Right to Life among others.

According to Alex Schadenberg, the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition – Canada and the chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition – International, AB 2747 represents a new strategy for the euthanasia lobby in the United States.

“AB 2747 is an unnecessary bill because it codifies into law practices that are already regulated by medical bodies,” Schadenberg wrote in his personal blog before the bill’s signing. “It also defines ‘palliative care’ in terminology that is too broad. Finally, it continues to make terminal sedation and dehydration a medical act for people who are not yet dying, who would otherwise not be considered for such an act.”

Schadenberg encouraged those who might overlook the bill as a local issue not to.

“We need to be concerned if AB 2747 passes in California because this new strategy is sure to be deployed everywhere,” he wrote.

AB 2747 was sponsored by Compassion & Choices, the new name of the pro-euthanasia Hemlock Society.

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Combating the Coarsening of Culture: Etiquette Arising (Christian Post, 100306)

By Chuck Colson

Cord Ivanyi, a Latin teacher at a Phoenix high school, was tired seeing the boys in his class subject the girls to vulgar words and behavior. The behavior was disrespectful, and disrupting to his classes. So Ivanyi decided to give the boys an example in chivalry. When a girl got up to go to the restroom, Ivanyi stood as a sign of respect. When she came back to class, Ivanyi held the door for her.

As he told AOL News writer David Knowles, “She had this funny look on her face, and the other kids giggled a little.” But it wasn’t long before Ivanyi was teaching the boys to do things like pull out the girls’ chairs when they sat down. Now, he says, “Ninety-eight percent of the boys stand now when a girl enters the room, and the girls love it.”

This now-routine show of respect has led to a difference in the way the boys behave around the girls. Being taught to show respect for them leads them to feel more respectful toward them.

It doesn’t please the feminists, of course. One recently told me that she’d kick me if I held a door open for her. But that’s ok-they need to learn as well.

Ivanyi is not the only one who understands the link between etiquette, attitudes, and behavior. In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, journalist Meghan Cox Gurdon notes that while proms retain old traditions like corsages and chaperones, student behavior is often vulgar. Gurdon quotes etiquette expert Emily Post, who wrote in the 1920s that, at public dances, couples were expected to demonstrate modesty and decorum because they were in public.

And Mrs. Post had no illusions about how teenagers would behave if chaperones were absent: Young men would try to paw their dates, or worse, she wrote. Today, it’s not unusual for girls to plan to lose their virginity on prom night.

Modern girls get no help from Peggy Post, a descendent of Emily Post. In her new book, Prom and Party Etiquette, Post says that when it comes to sex on prom night, she “made a conscience decision not to try to lecture teens or tell them what to do.”

This is sheer insanity. Eve Grimaldi, dean of students at a girls’ high school in Washington, D.C., understands that you cannot deal with moral issues without moral instruction. Moral neutrality is not neutral in a fallen world. Refusing to take a stand just allows kids to pander to their worst instincts.

This is why, on prom night, Grimaldi brings an armload of sweatshirts with her. Girls wearing immodest gowns are forced to put one on. Grimaldi also keeps a sharp eye on the way dancers behave. Good for her.

In an article in Christianity Today, I once quoted the great historian Arnold Toynbee. He contended that one clear sign of a civilization’s decline is when the elites-people he describes as the “dominant minority”-begin mimicking the vulgarity and promiscuity exhibited by society’s bottom-dwellers. The result: The entire culture is vulgarized.

Christians need to resist the slide into vulgarity by creating strong countercultural influences. We can start by elevating our own standards in speech and dress, if we need to.

And we should applaud teachers who are teaching good manners and decorous behavior to the young-manners and behavior that teach kids to view one another and treat one another with the respect they deserve.

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Evangelicals: Abortion, Moral Relativism Top Moral Issues List (Christian Post, 100105)

Evangelical leaders have identified the greatest moral issues facing America today and topping the list is abortion.

“The moral scandal of abortion tops my list…not because murder is worse than other moral evils, but because of the massive numbers of this killing field and intentionality of so many to put self-gratification, greed and political advantage above life itself,” said Jeff Farmer of the Open Bible Churches in Des Moines, Iowa.

Abortion, moral relativism and mistreatment of others almost came in a three-way tie as the top concerns among America’s evangelical leaders, according to the survey released Monday by the National Association of Evangelicals.

While abortion has traditionally remained a major moral concern, the recent push by Congress for health care reform and the possible coverage of abortions with federal dollars have prompted new opposing efforts and louder voices among prominent evangelical leaders.

Pastors such as Joel C. Hunter from Florida and groups like the Evangelical Church Alliance have released statements urging members of Congress not to violate the sanctity of human life in allowing abortion to be funded by tax dollars.

Following abortion, moral relativism was listed as the second greatest moral issue facing America. NAE board member Ron Carpenter said the problem is “a non-belief in Absolute Truth which permeates every other arena of our society.”

Many of the surveyed evangelical leaders cited the Old Testament passage Judges 17:6 (“every man did that which was right in his own eyes”) as they identified moral relativism as a major concern.

Mistreatment of others was third on the list.

“The greatest moral issue in America today is our blindness and silence to injustices here and around the world,” said Sammy Mah, president of World Relief, according to the report on the survey. “Social ills like poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, human trafficking, and so many more are rooted in injustices that must be fought.”

Other moral issues named by evangelical leaders included secularization, homosexuality and pornography.

The Evangelical Leaders Survey is a monthly poll of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals. They include the CEOs of denominations and representatives of a broad array of evangelical organizations including missions, universities, publishers and churches.

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Avoid Being Culturally Relaxed (Christian Post, 100525)

By Tullian Tchividjian

Becoming “all things to all people” does not mean fitting in with the fallen patterns of this world so that there is no distinguishable difference between Christians and non-Christians. While rightly living “in the world,” we must avoid the extreme of accommodation-being “of the world.” It happens when Christians, in their attempt to make proper contact with the world, go out of their way to adopt worldly styles, standards, and strategies.

When Christians try to eliminate the counter-cultural, unfashionable features of the biblical message because those features are unpopular in the wider culture-for example, when we reduce sin to a lack of self-esteem, deny the exclusivity of Christ, or downplay the reality of knowable absolute truth-we’ve moved from contextualization to compromise. When we accommodate our culture by jettisoning key themes of the gospel, such as suffering, humility, persecution, service, and self-sacrifice, we actually do our world more harm than good. For love’s sake, compromise is to be avoided at all costs.

As we have already seen, the Lordship of Christ has a sense of totality: Christ’s truth covers everything, not just “spiritual” or “religious” things. But it also has a sense of tension. As Lord, Jesus not only calls us to himself, he also calls us to break with everything which conflicts with his Lordship.

In an article titled “Calling Christian Rebels,” journalist Marcia Segelstein describes the cost of being a Christian in our current culture: “It means taking unpopular stands on highly charged issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and divorce. It means risking derision, humiliation, and scorn. It means looking at the way things are and—when they undermine the Word of God—challenging them.”

In this sense Christians will often be troublesome to our culture. Devotion to God’s authority will bring us into conflict with any authority that challenges his. Loyalty to God’s standards will inevitably cause us to clash with the standards of this world.

In seeking to “engage” and “connect,” Christians must remember that God hasn’t called his people to be popular. He has commanded us to be faithful, even in the face of mockery, criticism, and persecution. The truth is, many in this world will not take kindly to those who follow Jesus, as Jesus himself pointed out (Matthew 5:11). Since he told us the world would hate us, something’s dangerously wrong if we achieve popularity with the world. Contextualization without compromise must be our goal.

The greatest model for this is, of course, the incarnation of Christ. Here God “contextualized” himself by taking on human flesh. Jesus Christ became fully human-one of us. He entered our world, spoke our language, and met us where we are, making deep contact. Jesus completely “engaged” us. But because he was without sin, his contact resulted in collision. His refusal to “fit in” eventually led to his execution. He contextualized without compromise right to the bitter end.

As we come in contact with the world, we, too, must always resist its ways. The ideas, values, and passions of the kingdom of God will always collide with the ideas, values, and passions of the kingdom of this world. And where this collision happens, we need to stand our ground.

We could summarize it this way: instead of being culturally removed on the one hand or culturally relaxed on the other, we should seek to be culturally resistant. We’re making contact with the world while colliding with its ways. We’re culturally engaged without being culturally absorbed. We’re to maintain a dissonant relationship to the world without isolating ourselves from it.

Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute outlines the tragic results when we fail to maintain the tension between purity and proximity:

Being salt and light demands two things: We practice purity in the midst of a fallen world and yet we live in proximity to this fallen world. If you don’t hold up both truths in tension, you invariably become useless and separated from the world God loves. For example, if you only practice purity apart from proximity to the culture, you inevitably become pietistic, separatist, and conceited. If you live in close proximity to the culture without also living in a holy manner, you become indistinguishable from fallen culture and useless in God’s kingdom.

We must not fear being different. If we do, we’ll never make a difference. It’s only as we faithfully refuse to “fit in” that we unleash God’s renewing power in this world. So, in our attempt to make contact, we must always beware of leaning over so far that we fall in.

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The Briefing: From Young, Restless, and Jewish, to Peter Singer and the Pope (Christian Post, 100614)

By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

The news rushes at us fast and furiously, as do so many worthy articles, books, and essays that call out for attention. Some of these items clearly deserve a closer look. What follows is a briefing of writings that should not escape your review.

Young, Restless, and Jewish?

Peter Beinart has ignited a firestorm in the American Jewish community. A former editor of The New Republic, Beinart wrote an essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” in the June 10, 2010 edition of The New York Review of Books. Within days, a heated conversation had erupted among Jewish leaders and intellectuals, and a reading of his article reveals why this is so.

The thrust of Beinart’s essay is that the American Jewish establishment has failed to maintain a credible form of Zionism. American Judaism is forfeiting its commitments to Israel because, he argues, American Jews are overwhelmingly committed to a secular liberalism that is no longer represented by the state of Israel. In failing to criticize Israel for its illiberalism, Beinart argues that these Jewish leaders have undermined the case for American Jewish support.

That is an interesting argument, and one that has drawn fierce criticism from Jewish leaders and intellectuals such as Abraham Foxman and Alan Dershowitz. But what many readers may miss in the controversy is what makes Beinart’s essay of particular interest.

As Peter Beinart makes clear, the old-line mainstream of American Jewish life is giving way to polarization among younger Jews. The same polarization, it turns out, is happening within Israel itself. What we might call the older “mainline” of moderate Judaism is giving way to younger Jews who tend to be divided between the deeply Orthodox and the ardently secular. The middle ground is disappearing fast.

In both the U.S. and in Israel, the fastest growth is among the Orthodox. Beinart reports that “while Orthodox Jews make up only 12% of American Jewry over the age of sixty, they constitute 34% between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.” The same pattern is evident within Israel, where the younger population is also trending into a polarization between the fast-growing Orthodox and the avowedly secular.

The secular Zionists “aren’t reproducing themselves,” Beinart reports - and he appears to mean this in both biological and ideological terms.

What makes this especially interesting is how this essay appears to describe a phenomenon well documented in the U.S. with respect to younger evangelicals. The “young, restless, and reformed” trajectory traced by Collin Hansen and others documents how, against the challenges posed to faith in late modernity and the larger secularizing trends, younger evangelicals are drawn to robust theological foundations and beliefs, and are decreasingly attracted to more moderate (and thus less compelling) beliefs.

In other words, the distinction between belief and unbelief is made simultaneously more clear and pressing when defined over against the increasingly secular intellectual culture the young know all too well. It is more than slightly interesting to see the parallel development in Judaism.

Pope Benedict XVI and Words from the Past

The June 3, 2010 edition of TIME magazine featured a cover story entitled, “Why Being Pope Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry,” written by Jeff Israely and Howard Chua-Eoan. The article discusses what the magazine describes as the central difficulty faced by the Roman Catholic Church in the sex abuse scandal. As they write, “The word reformation is a sensitive one for Catholics, raising the specter of one of the church’s great historical challenges.” That, we might assume, is something of an understatement.

What makes this article of particular interest is a statement from the Pope, spoken on radio in 1969 when he was a young theologian of age 42. Given the current crisis faced by the Roman Catholic Church, this statement is both striking and hauntingly prophetic:

“From today’s crisis, a church will emerge tomorrow that will have lost a great deal. . . . She will be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning. She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of great splendor. Because of the smaller number of her followers, she will lose many of her privileges in society. Contrary to what has happened until now, she will present herself much more as a community of volunteers … As a small community, she will demand much more from the initiative of each of her members and she will certainly also acknowledge new forms of ministry and will raise up to the priesthood proven Christians who have other jobs … It will make her poor and a church of the little people … All this will require time. The process will be slow and painful.”

Peter Singer and the End of the Human Race

Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Peter Singer is one of the most reprehensible intellectual forces alive today. He has advocated the morality of human infanticide, for the greater value of animal life over some human life, and for a radical vision of animal rights that is based in his purely evolutionary view of life.

Now, in an “Opinionator” column for The New York Times, Singer considers whether the current generation of human beings should be the last. He cites the work of David Benatar, who has argued that it is immoral for human beings to reproduce, given the probability of some pain experienced as a consequence of life.

“So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth?”, Singer asks. In the end, his only argument is that in his own personal judgment, “for most people, life is worth living.” If this is not yet so, Singer predicts that future developments for human happiness are likely to make it so. That is all he has to offer.

Behind all this is purely materialistic view of all life. In an article published in The Guardian [London] just two days later, Singer made that position clear:

The belief that the animals exist because God created them – and that he created them so we can better meet our needs – is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.

In the end, everything Peter Singer believes about life can be traced back to that kind of statement. If life is an accident, it just might be conceivable that life is not worth living.

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The meaning of wrong (National Post, 101127)

A recent blockbuster scandal at Harvard University, in which a top researcher in animal cognition was found to have committed scientific misconduct, did far-reaching damage in Massachusetts and beyond.

It sullied the reputation of Marc Hauser, once a rock star scientist, now on leave with his courses cancelled, research retracted, and his bustling laboratory on America’s most elite campus all but shuttered.

The whole mess — ongoing for three years but publicly revealed by the Boston Globe in August and now under investigation by the National Science Foundation — even seemed to cast a shadow of doubt on the entire field of evolutionary psychology, a newish discipline that seeks to explain human behaviour through the history of our genes, and occasionally succeeds.

One of the scandal’s lesser-known casualties, though, is a ground-breaking online experiment that marks a key moment in a major historical trend — the slow reconciliation of psychology and philosophy.

Professor Hauser’s Moral Sense Test, linked from his Harvard webpage, tests people’s intuitions about right and wrong by asking them to suggest punishments for people behaving immorally.

It is aimed at one of his main interests, the evolution of human morality, and it reflects a newly scientific view of right and wrong, in which data are replacing pure, abstract philosophizing.

Right and wrong are not revealed in abstract reflection, according to this theory. They are not based in universal principles, or utilitarian benefit, or religious doctrine, like just about every other moral theory ever conceived. Rather, true insight into human morality comes from asking people what they think, and pointing out how their moral judgments can be reliably and repeatedly skewed in the laboratory.

As it turns out, what they think is quite peculiar.

New research out of the University of Toronto Scarborough nicely illustrates this idea. It shows that people are more likely to behave immorally if to do so does not involve a deliberate action, such as cheating on a test if the answers are readily available.

The difference, the researchers suggest, is intention. To do wrong, you must mean to, regardless of what actually happens. This is why a doctor can morally withhold lifesaving treatment from a dying patient, but he cannot do so in order to save someone else with their organs, even though the outcome is the same.

What Prof. Hauser was doing, by putting similar scenarios to his online participants, is a variation on the Trolley Problem, which is not so much a problem as a thought experiment — an imaginary scenario in a rich philosophical tradition of zombie doppelgangers, swampmen created in bolts of lightning, brains in vats, twin earths and deceptive demons, all invented to argue some point or other.

The Trolley Problem was more or less invented by Philippa Foot, a British philosopher who died last month, and whose illustrious career at Oxford was overshadowed in her memorials by this funny little brainteaser that is not complicated, but very deep.

A powerful authority in the postwar upheaval in moral philosophy, Foot distilled her thinking about the principle of double effect (that is, a single action can have simultaneous good and bad outcomes) to the problem of the “trolley,” in which a runaway train is heading for five people working on the track, and you can save them by diverting the train onto a spur where a single man is working, killing him but saving the five.

Should you divert it? Most people say yes, because you do not intend to kill the man. He is just collateral damage to the greater good of saving the five, and his death is morally neutral.

But what if the same train is approaching, and you are standing on a bridge over the tracks with a fat man. If you push him off onto the tracks, his weight will stop the train and he will be killed, but the five workers will be saved. Do you push him? Most people say no. Deliberate killing, even with the same utilitarian costs and benefits, is a step too far.

That is the classical formulation of the Trolley Problem, but there are many variations, including more complicated ones involving rotating Lazy Susans and looping tracks. At root, it is about intention, and the assignation of blame in a messy world.

Casually known as Trolleyology, this field of experimental philosophy (or X-Phi, as the uber-nerdy shorthand has it) has been around for a while but is enjoying a resurgence partly because of its use in American soldier training, where “double effect” is staggeringly relevant, and measured in real civilian lives.

Trolleyology is the tool offered to prepare them for the battlefield. It allows them to understand the real-world difference between NATO killing civilians by accident, and al-Qaeda killing them on purpose.

By teasing out the differences between scenarios that seem morally identical, Trolleyology reveals the quirks of cognition that can skew our judgment this way or that. As such, it is pure psychology.

But it also purports to reveal something like a universal moral instinct, with its own peculiar logic, and this begins to tread on philosophy.

It makes morality seem rule-based and consistent, like language, and it offers the alluring opportunity to test philosophical ideas by scientific standards, with repeatable data.

As the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, Prof. Hauser’s even more illustrious colleague at Harvard, once put it, “Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend.”

For modern psychology, which is more comfortable in the objective pose of medicine than in the ethereal mists of philosophy, this experimentalism is standard operating procedure.

But for moral philosophers, it is new and foreign. Using data to resolve philosophical disputes is especially weird, and should not make sense.

Philosophers generally do not care about data, and they do not care what you think, or if they do it is only to show why you are wrong. In many cases, what you think is irrelevant to the question of what is right or true. The rules of morality are traditionally deduced from first principles, not discovered in the survey answers of a few people on the Internet.

But if what is right or true is, by its very nature, dependent on what people say in surveys, then philosophy has had its nose buried in the books for far too long.

If morality is as Prof. Hauser and others envision it — a natural system with biological origins and an evolutionary history — then philosophy, the love of wisdom, starts to blur with psychology, the science of mind.

The roots of morality is not a new question. Plato and Socrates pondered the eternal Good. Nietszche’s masterwork is On The Genealogy of Morals. But something happened in the middle of the middle of the twentieth century that set in motion a trend that is still evident today.

Not only had the Second World War made these questions of morality seem desperately important, but also, in universities, psychology had split from philosophy to become a field of its own.

Questions of the mind were divided into the practical and the abstract, but the cut was not entirely clean. With Trolleyology and X-Phi, it is starting to heal.

Universal moral rules are problematic from the get-go. Rule-based behaviour can be misleading, as best illustrated in the best-known of modern philosophical thought experiments, John Searle’s Chinese Room, in which a man who does not speak Chinese sits in a locked room as Chinese writing is passed to him under the door. He uses a rule book to compose replies, which he slips back out, appearing to conduct a conversation and showing that intelligent behaviour does not require true understanding.

Trolleyology is vulnerable to the same criticism as the Chinese Room, best formulated by the cognitive scientist and arch-humanist Daniel Dennett, who derisively called it an “intuition pump,” meaning it sets you up to draw a certain kind of conclusion and ignore other possibilities, which is a pretty good description of the Moral Sense Test.

The MST remains active, to a degree, in Prof. Hauser’s absence. Fiery Cushman, a psychologist in Harvard’s Moral Cognition Laboratory who is not affiliated with Prof. Hauser but once studied under him, continues to monitor much of the traffic through the webpage, and is using it for various experiments. He said it is still an active research tool and has been used in a dozen research papers.

There is “something of a rapprochement” going on between philosophy and psychology, he said, as they increasingly share investigatory techniques like the MST.

“What’s certainly happening, especially in moral philosophy, is there’s a renewed excitement about making moral theories responsive to what we know about human minds and behaviour,” he said. “But at the end of the day, psychologists and philosophers are still after answers to different questions.”

As ever, those questions boil down to what is right, what is wrong, and what to do about it.

For his part, Prof. Hauser has decided, like so many big-name scientists, to write a book for a general audience. It is to be called Evilicious: Why We Evolved A Taste For Being Bad. One imagines he has plenty to say.

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America in an Ethical Free Fall: Doing the Right Thing (Christian Post, 110612)

By Chuck Colson

I find it ironic that we have released our new series on ethics, “Doing the Right Thing,” at the very moment we are seeing a wave of egregious ethical failures, right in the capital of the United States.

I’ve refrained from commenting on Congressman Weiner’s Twitter episode on the basis of res ipsa loquitor — the legal doctrine that says a thing speaks for itself. What can you say about something so obviously disgusting and repulsive?

Then I read a New York Times piece yesterday about Weiner’s relationship with a young college activist in Washington State. The woman had exchanged messages with Weiner about politics. She admired his views and how he battled with his conservative critics. As a reward, he sent her a lewd photo of himself. Unbelievable. I imagine Weiner’s behavior has changed the young woman’s view of political leaders.

But that wasn’t all I saw in the Times. A few pages over is an article about the case of former Senator John Edwards. The episode is so distasteful, I don’t want to dignify it with any more comment.

But it doesn’t stop there. John Ensign, a friend of mine and a Christian, resigned his Senate seat from Nevada because he is being investigated for using campaign money to cover up an extra-marital affair.

Cases like these just keep on coming. But don’t focus solely on the congressmen and senators. They’re just the ones who happen to be in the papers this week.

Instead, look at our society as a whole. Why do we see ethical failures all around us — in our schools, businesses, churches, in every walk of life?

As I wrote this week in National Review online, we are in an ethical mess today because we as a society have embraced relativism and abandoned truth and moral certitude. We have bought the modern myth that life is all about us and our desires. We’ve lost the restraints of conscience and have abandoned the understanding of right and wrong that has been the foundation of Western ethics.

This is why I have spent the last two years producing the “Doing the Right Thing,” a six-part DVD series. It’s one of the most important things I’ve worked on in 36 years of ministry.

Not only do I hope you will order a copy for yourself, I would love it if you would help promote this powerful and very timely series. You can start by writing your Congressman and recommend he watch the series. I’ve already sent a copy myself to the chairman of the House Ethics Committee.

And in September, we’re holding a simulcast on “Doing the Right Thing” for churches all across the country. Please, come to www.Doingtherightthing.com to find out how you can get churches in your community to participate.

“Doing the Right Thing” doesn’t merely critique the collapse of ethical behavior in this country, it provides a roadmap for restoring a culture of ethics. Using natural law arguments accessible to non-believers, we make the case that there is such a thing as truth and that it’s knowable. We talk about the formation of conscience, how we build character in the context of family and community. We deal with the medical care and human life issues, the marketplace and how responsible citizens should view their business obligations.

Again, come to www.Doingtherightthing.com and find out how you can get a copy of “Doing the Right Thing” and how you can get your church involved in the September 24th simulcast, and maybe in the process, even straighten out your congressman.

Timing is everything. And given the ethical chaos all around us, there’s no better time than now to start doing the right thing.

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Poll: Most Americans No Longer Want Government Promoting ‘Traditional Values’ (Christianity Today, 110618)

The recent recession and a movement favoring less government may contribute to recent poll numbers.

Tobin Grant

A new CNN-Opinion Research poll finds that a majority of Americans think government should not promote “traditional values,” the first time in the past two decades that support for promotion of traditional values has been below 50%. The June poll finds that more Americans now believe that the government should stay out of the values business.

Since 1993, Gallup, CNN, and USA Today have occasionally asked whether people think “the government should promote traditional values in our society” or “the government should not favor any particular set of values.” Just three years ago, only four-in-ten polled said government should not support any one set of values. In this month’s poll, 50% said this. For the first time, a minority (46%) wanted government to push traditional values.

One possible explanation is the state of the economy. Those hit hardest by the recession showed a change in their support for traditional values. CNN’s polling director Keating Holland noted that rural and blue-collar Americans may be a bellwether for the presidential election.

“Change among these particular groups suggests that economic worries are crowding out social issues,” Holland said.

The recent recession is unlikely to be the only explanation, however. The economy has had many ups and downs over the past 18 years, but support for government promoting traditional values has remained consistently high.

The turn away from values-promotion may be part of a more general movement favoring less government. The poll found that for the past two years the public increasingly think “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”; a shrinking number think “government should do more to solve our country’s problems.” Sixty three percent said government was doing too much, up from 52% when Obama was elected President. The current support for less government is the highest in the past two decades.

The shift in opinion does not mean that Americans like the current values in society. A January Gallup poll found that seven in ten Americans were dissatisfied with “the moral and ethical climate” in America. This was up from 62% a decade ago.

Another Gallup poll offers a glimpse at one reason some people may be less than thrilled at the idea of government promoting any values. In 2010, before the latest sex scandals, Gallup asked the public to rate the “honesty and ethical standards” of different types of people. Only nine percent said Members of Congress had “very high” or “high” ethical standards. Just 12% said the same for state officeholders, less than the percentage for lawyers (17%) and just slightly above car salespeople and lobbyists, each of whom received just seven percent.

Regardless of the latest public opinions, it remains to be seen if traditional values will remain important the upcoming presidential race. At Monday’s Republican debate, candidates for the GOP nomination discussed their bona fides on abortion, marriage, and religion. Yet, not once in the whole debate did anyone mention the word “values.”

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