Not So Christian America
by Thomas C. Reeves
In 1988, the highly respected Gallup Organization reported that
nine Americans in ten said they never doubted the existence of
God, eight in ten said they believed they will be called before
God on Judgment day to answer for their sins, eight in ten
believed that God still works miracles, and seven in ten believed
in life after death. Moreover, 90 percent prayed, 88 percent
believed that God loved them, 78 percent said they had given "a
lot" or "a fair amount" of thought to their relationship with God
during the past two years, and 86 percent said they wanted
religious training for their children.
Natural law? Seventy-nine percent believed that "there are clear
guidelines about what's good and evil that apply to everyone
regardless of the situation." Traditional moral standards? Gallup
found 36 percent were conservative on the subject, 52 percent
moderate, and only 11 percent liberal.
A whopping 84 percent said that Jesus was God or the Son of God,
about three-quarters had at some time or other sensed Jesus'
presence in their lives, and 66 percent reported having made a
personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Even 72 percent of the
unchurched said they believed that Jesus was God or the Son of
God, up from 64 percent in 1978. Almost half of all Protestants
described themselves as born-again Christians.
How can that much faith exist in a secular society? If 84 percent
of its people believe that Jesus Christ was what he said he was,
doesn't that by definition qualify the United States as a
Christian country? Gallup concluded that "the degree of religious
Orthodoxy found among Americans is simply amazing.... Such a
nation cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as
secular in its core beliefs."
A mere 8 percent of Americans were without a religious preference,
and even they, in the words of Gallup, "express a surprising
degree of interest in religion and religious belief." (That figure
was reconfirmed in a 1994 Gallup poll.) In one survey, 69 percent
of blacks and 61 percent of all Americans expressed a "great deal"
or "quite a lot" of confidence in organized religion. Baby
boomers, while less involved in religion than other Americans,
were more likely than others to report that they were more
interested in religion than they were five years earlier.
In 1990, a poll of 113,000 people around the nation commissioned
by the Graduate School of the City University of New York found
that only 7.5 percent of those surveyed said they had no religion,
while 86.5 percent of Americans were Christians. Jews, with 1.8
percent, were the largest non-Christian faith. (Gallup polls
described Jews as highly secular. Only 30 percent called religion
"very important" and only one in five attended synagogue in the
week before being interviewed.)
Gallup polls taken in 1991 showed a modest rise in religiousness
in America over the previous three years. Christians were 82
percent of the adult population. (This figure held steady three
years later, with 58 percent of the population being Protestant
and 25 percent being Catholic.) About seven out of ten adults
reported membership in a church or synagogue (a level reached in
the 1970s that remained the same in 1994). Eighty-six percent of
teens said they believed that Jesus Christ is God or the Son of
God, and 73 percent considered regular church attendance an
important aspect of American citizenship. Fifty-nine percent of
interviewees said they agreed completely that a personal faith in
Jesus Christ was the <only> assurance of eternal life, and another
17 percent agreed "somewhat." Eighty-one percent believed the
Bible to be the literal (32 percent) or inspired (49 percent) word
of God.
In 1992, the sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney In 1992, the
sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, following a careful
analysis of data collected by the Bureau of Census and others,
concluded that on the eve of the American Revolution only about 17
percent of Americans belonged to churches. By the start of the
Civil War the figure was 37 percent, by 1906 it was slightly more
than half, and in 1926 this had increased to 56 percent. The
numbers continued to rise until by 1980 church adherence was about
62 percent. In short, America appeared to be more religious in the
year Ronald Reagan was elected President than in the days of the
Founding Fathers.
In a 1992 poll by the Barna Research Group, 79 percent of those
aged forty-six to sixty-four said that religion was "very
important to me," a statement concurred in by 65 percent of those
twenty-seven to forty-five, and 54 percent of those eighteen to
twenty-six. When asked whether they agreed that the Bible is the
"totally accurate" word of God, 80 percent of those forty-six to
sixty-four years old said yes, and so did 73 percent of those
twenty-seven to forty-five, and 65 percent who were eighteen to
twenty-six.
The Catholic sociologist Andrew Greeley, after announcing similar
data in 1993 from an international study, declared, "In some
countries, most notably Ireland and the United States, religious
devotion may be higher than it has ever been in human history."
A 1994 <USA Today>/CNN/Gallup poll found that 70 percent belonged
to a church or synagogue and that 66 percent attended services at
least once a month. David Roozen of the Center for Social and
Religious Research, Hartford Seminary, said that overall
membership and attendance statistics "have remained stable over
the last ten or fifteen years." The same poll showed that nine
adults in ten believed in a heaven and that 79 percent believed in
miracles.
Gallup reported that same year that 51 percent of the public said
grace before meals either always or frequently, and that only 14
percent never did. Seventy-three percent of adults favored a
constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer in the public
schools. Sixty-two percent believed that religion could solve all
or most of the day's problems, a figure that had remained steady
for twenty years.
A Harris poll taken in July 1994 revealed that 95 percent of those
surveyed believed in God and 90 percent believed in heaven. Of the
four in five Americans who described themselves as Christians, 89
percent believed in life after death, 87 percent in miracles, and
85 percent in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Even 52 percent of
the non-Christians surveyed expressed belief in the Resurrection!
A survey of 4,809 Americans released in September 1994 by the
Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press found that nine
out of ten did not doubt the existence of God, almost eight out of
ten said that prayer was an important part of their daily life,
and almost nine of ten said they had "old-fashioned values about
family and marriage."
A <New York Times>/CBS News poll in December 1994 found that 64
percent of adults believed that "organized prayer" should be
permitted in the public schools. Six in ten public school students
agreed. Gallup reported that American confidence in and support of
organized religion reached a ten-year high mark in 1995. The index
number had risen fifteen points since 1988.
Richard John Neuhaus has declared, "Statistically at least,
America is as much a Christian nation as it ever was, and perhaps
more so." He contends that "one of the most elementary facts about
America is that its people are overwhelmingly Christian in their
own understanding, and that they and many who are not Christian
assume that the moral baseline of the society is the Judeo-
Christian ethic."
A great many politicians certainly campaign as though they lived
in a Christian country. In 1992, there were constant allusions to
America as a religious nation with a special, divinely ordained
"mission." All the major presidential candidates declared their
personal commitment to the faith. George Bush told a convention of
the National Religious Broadcasters, "I want to thank you for
helping America, as Christ ordained, to be a light upon the
world.... One cannot be America's President without a belief in
God, without a belief in prayer." Bill Clinton, interviewed on an
interdenominational religious cable network, declared, "If I
didn't believe in God, if I weren't in my view . . . a Christian,
if I didn't believe ultimately in the perfection of life after
death, my life would have been that much more different." Ross
Perot was a Presbyterian who backed traditional family values. Pat
Buchanan, a Roman Catholic, advocated an America based on
traditional Christian moral standards. Dan Quayle was the darling
of the Religious Right. And so on.
And yet Billy Graham could declare that America was no longer a
Christian or Protestant nation. It is, he said, "a secular country
in which thousands of Christians live and have substantial
influence." A prominent Roman Catholic theologian, Father Avery
Dulles, was of the same mind, arguing that the country's moral
breakdown was threatening democracy. In 1994, the Jewish medical
educator David C. Stolinsky lamented the loss of the Christian
values that dominated America in the 1950s. "The reason we fear to
go out after dark is not that we may be set upon by bands of
evangelicals and forced to read the New Testament, but that we may
be set upon by gangs of feral young people who have been taught
that nothing is superior to their own needs or feelings."
Is modern America secular or Christian? We seem to be the most
religious nation in the advanced industrialized West but at the
same time appear to be blatantly, even aggressively, secular.
Scholars, clergy, judges, journalists, and others have pondered
the paradox for years.
In the first place, the polling data declare emphatically and
unanimously that the United States continues to be a Christian
nation-at least of a sort. The level of faith in the Christian
gospel expressed by Americans is indeed, in Gallup's words,
"simply amazing."
A truly secular society would have numbers approximating those
found in, say, Great Britain, France, or Scandinavia, where
interest in God is minimal and church attendance is extremely low
(about 2.2 percent in the Church of England on an average Sunday).
The historian Alan D. Gilbert has defined a thoroughly secular
culture as "one in which norms, values, and modes of interpreting
reality, together with the symbols and rituals which express and
reinforce them, have been emancipated entirely from assumptions of
human dependence on supernatural agencies or influences." That is
not a description of American culture-at any time.
When nine out of ten Americans tell pollsters they believe in
"old-fashioned values about family and marriage," there is
widespread agreement about what that means. Most people do not
condone burglary, rape, or Nazism. Charles Manson, Charles
Keating, and Aldrich Ames are not heroes. Not many condemn
honesty, courage, or fidelity. Indeed, people yearn for
Presidents, bosses, and spouses who have such qualities.
Still, the public tells pollsters (64 percent in 1991) that there
are few moral absolutes. More people (43 percent) say they rely
upon their personal experience instead of outside authorities when
weighing issues of right and wrong. Only three persons in ten view
Scripture as the ultimate authority in matters of truth. That this
seems to contradict other polling data about faith and morals has
not escaped the attention of the pollsters themselves, who talk
about public ambiguity in distinguishing good from evil.
This ambiguity is in part a reflection of the individualism
inherent in Protestantism and the Enlightenment. Americans, among
many others, have long claimed the right to define truth as they
see it. The uncertainty also reveals the genuine difficulty facing
all of us in knowing exactly how to respond to complex issues in
the modern world. The great principles by which we live do not
always provide us with clear-cut commandments. The historian
Jacques Barzun once exclaimed, "The great difficulty of the moral
life is that our knowledge of right conduct, as embodied in the
Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Analects of Confucius,
is abstract-like the articles of a constitution." George Weigel
has written, "The suggestion that Christian orthodoxy yields a
single answer to virtually every contested issue of public policy
is an offense, not simply against political common sense, but
against Christian orthodoxy."
Abortion is the classic case. A CBS News poll taken in January
1995 showed that while 46 percent of the respondents said that
abortion was the same thing as murder, half of those said it still
was sometimes necessary. Two presidential families, the Reagans
and the Bushes, were divided over the issue. Quarrels over
economic redistribution, immigration, welfare, the legalization of
drugs, gun control, capital punishment, human embryo research, and
other issues are commonplace and inevitable.
And yet for all our disagreements, we are far from being moral
idiots-without a past, bereft of authority, and compelled to
reinvent basic truths as we go. Pre-Christian peoples, of course,
had a strong sense of right and wrong. As the Lutheran theologian
Carl E. Braaten has observed, "The idea of a law rooted in the
nature of humanity and the world and discoverable by reason has
been traced back to the 'dawn of conscience."'
No civilization has been completely at bay about right and wrong.
There have been differences about morality, to be sure, but they
have not been total. For all of the rich diversity of detail,
there is, and has always been, a vital framework written on human
hearts and minds by the Creator. C. S. Lewis has written, "Think
of a country where people were admired for running away from
battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the
people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to
imagine a country where two and two made five.... Men have
differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they
have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you
liked."
The English sociologist David Martin has cited the International
Values survey to conclude that "we are mostly agreed about good
and bad." He observed, "People are, it seems, adamantly opposed to
lying, stealing, cheating, coveting, killing, and dishonoring
their parents." Imagine responses to the following questions, says
Martin: "Grinding the faces of the poor, the widowed, and the
fatherless is reprehensible/admirable? Drinking and driving is
irresponsible/responsible? Causing a little child to stumble is
perverse/life-enhancing? Taking your share of the chores is
wicked/virtuous? Poking a sharp shard in another person's eye is
revolting/entertaining?"
Martin notes that consistent moral relativism, in practice, is
hard to find. In contemporary liberal circles, where tolerance and
moral relativism are said to reign supreme, "you are continually
confronted by a noble rage about the delinquent condition of the
world. Here is little else but moral passion for purity: pure
jokes, pure speech, pure earth, sky, and sea, pure food and pure
bodies, even undiluted equality."
Christian thinkers have long believed that the Law of Moses
reinforced and clarified natural law, and that the Savior
fulfilled it. As the <Catechism of the Catholic Church> puts it,
"The moral law finds its fullness and its unity in Christ. Jesus
Christ is in person the way of perfection. He is the end of the
law, for only he teaches and bestows the justice of God."
The existence of natural law is scriptural (although there is only
a single reference to it in the New Testament and none in the Old
Testament), and it has been official Roman Catholic teaching for
many centuries. The Protestant reformers, with the possible
exception of Zwingli, also endorsed natural law and its
consummation in the gospel. Calvin wrote in his <Institutes>, "It
is a fact that the law of God which we call the moral law is
nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that
conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men."
All major American reform movements have appealed to eternal truth
to buttress their crusades. The civil rights movement is an
obvious example. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous letter
from Birmingham jail, wrote of "the most sacred values in our
Judeo-Christian heritage" and contended "that there are two types
of laws: just and unjust.... I would agree with St. Augustine that
'an unjust law is no law at all.'" The pro-life movement claims
unequivocally that it is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition,
arguing, as reformers do, that what may be legal can still be
immoral.
When 79 percent of the American people declare faith in clear
guidelines about what is right and wrong, they are expressing a
commitment to what Neuhaus calls a "moral baseline" long accepted
in our culture and elsewhere. A majority of Americans understand,
at least in general, what is expected of them by a power beyond
their own wills. They know, for example, that personal integrity,
being generous to the poor, and honoring marriage vows are virtues
that do not go out of style. (The University of Chicago's National
Opinion Research Center found in 1992 that 91 percent of the
American people think extramarital affairs are bad and that the
overwhelming percentage of married people remain faithful.) In
1994, the social scientist Robert Wuthnow published a study in
which he asked two thousand working Americans what was "absolutely
essential" or "very important" to their basic sense of worth as a
person. "Your family" ranked first, followed immediately by "Your
moral standards." Ninety-seven percent of weekly churchgoers and
93 percent of the total labor force endorsed this choice.
Simply labeling America Christian, however, is inadequate. We must
ask what sort of Christianity lives in the hearts and minds of
most Americans in the late 1990s. It is clearly something unlike
the faith practiced by third-century hermits, St. Francis of
Assisi, or Martin Luther. Christianity has always absorbed
elements of the culture of its adherents, and it is important to
consider how extensively the classic faith has been altered by a
modern, literate, prosperous, technologically driven society
undeniably absorbed with obtaining prosperity, security, and
pleasure. In short, what is the content of our Christianity?
First, our faith is not inextricably tied to our churches. Polls
show that a majority of Americans have confidence in organized
religion. But in 1988, according to Gallup, 44 percent of
Americans were unchurched (people who said they were not members
of any church or had not attended services in the previous six
months other than for special religious holidays, weddings,
funerals, or the like.) That figure amounted to about seventy-
eight million adults. Gallup found that overwhelming majorities,
churched and unchurched, agreed that people "should arrive at
their religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue"
and that one can be a good Christian or Jew without attending a
church or synagogue. Gallup discovered in polls taken in 1992 and
1995 that confidence in the clergy was at 54 percent of the
populace, down from 67 percent in 1985.
When asked why they attended church less often, very few of those
interviewed gave reasons that reflected a deep animosity toward
organized religion. Only 8 percent said they disagreed with
policies and teachings. A mere 5 percent said they were atheists
or agnostics. For many, going to church just did not seem that
important. Leading the list were 34 percent who said they were too
busy.
Religious individualism seems to be at the core of American
Christianity. This is a characteristic in harmony with our
historic sense of personal independence as well as the
considerable socioeconomic mobility we have long enjoyed. Wade
Clark Roof and William McKinney concluded, "Typically Americans
view religious congregations as gatherings of individuals who have
chosen to be together, in institutions of their own making and
over which they hold control-fostering what sometimes, in the eyes
of observers from other countries, appears as 'churchless
Christianity.'" For Americans, "religious authority lies in the
believer-not in the church, not in the Bible, despite occasional
claims of infallibility and inerrancy on the part of some."
This is true of modern American Roman Catholics as well. The
massive changes made since Vatican II, consistently celebrated by
liberal Catholics, have had unintended results. Gallup reported
that 77 percent said they relied on their consciences rather than
papal teaching in making difficult moral decisions. Polls show
Catholics lending strong support for legal abortion, artificial
birth control (they are more likely than Protestants to be
childless), "safe sex" education in schools, and the ordination of
women, all positions officially opposed by their church.
According to Gallup, Catholic church attendance (people saying
they had gone to church in the past seven days) fell from 74
percent in 1958 to an all-time low of 48 percent in 1988. A study
published in 1994 by the University of Notre Dame sociologists
Mark Chaves and James C. Cavendish found that the national average
was a mere 26.7 percent.
Some, including Humphrey Taylor, president of the Louis Harris
poll, now think that all church attendance figures reported by
pollsters have been exaggerated. In 1993, Gallup found that 41
percent of Americans went to church within the last week. That
figure had remained consistent for over a decade. But to some
there just did not seem to be that many people in church on
Sunday.
In 1993, a much publicized and controversial study conducted by
the sociologists Mark Chaves and Kirk Hadaway and the religion
professor Penny Long Marler concluded that only 19.6 percent of
Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics were in church in any
given week. Only about 16 percent of self-defined Episcopalians
attended worship during a typical week. The researchers challenged
the many telephone surveys conducted by Gallup and other
pollsters, and suggested that Americans felt a need to appear more
religious, and more respectable, than they really were.
The widely noted Catholic sociologist Andrew Greeley called the
study "a sloppy piece of work," and others were also critical. The
research was conducted among Protestants in a single rural Ohio
county and among Catholics in only eighteen dioceses. But in any
case the study again pointed to the chasm between the professed
faith of the American people and their ambivalence about churches.
Ironically, it also bolstered the belief that America remained a
Christian society, for if the nation were truly secular, why would
millions feel compelled to lie in this way to pollsters about
church attendance?
Christianity in modern America also tends to be superficial. For
one thing, its adherents are poorly educated in the faith. Gallup
refers to "a nation of biblical illiterates" and presents solid
evidence: only four in ten Americans know that Jesus delivered the
Sermon on the Mount; fewer than half of all adults can name the
four Gospels of the New Testament; only three in ten teenagers
know why Easter is celebrated. "More than half of all Americans
read the Bible less than once a month," Gallup reports, "including
24 percent who say they never read it and 6 percent who can't
recall the last time they read the Bible."
Of course, given the fervently secular nature of the media and
education at all levels, this illiteracy should not be surprising.
It will no doubt increase. The young people who leave the mainline
churches in droves are surely no exceptions. If Sunday Schools are
teaching about condoms and poverty in Rwanda, there is little time
for things like Scripture and church history. And if the clergy
present the faith merely as a branch of anthropology or social
work, there is little need for anyone to be informed.
A study by the Search Institute of Minneapolis in 1990 revealed
that large majorities of mainliners did not read the Bible when
alone. The Presbyterians headed the list (77 percent), followed by
the Lutherans (75 percent), the United Church of Christ (68
percent), the United Methodists (65 percent), and the Disciples of
Christ (62 percent).
According to Gallup, only slightly more than half of the
Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians believe in the devil,
while roughly the same numbers accept ESP. Fifty-six percent of
the Lutherans and 49 percent of the Methodists believe in UFOs. A
third of the Methodists and 31 percent of the Presbyterians
believe in astrology. While 73 percent of the American people
believe in hell, 77 percent believe their own prospects for going
to heaven are excellent or good.
An in-depth random survey of 4,001 Americans, conducted by a team
of political scientists and published in 1993, concluded that 30
percent of Americans are totally secular in outlook, 29 percent
are barely or nominally religious, 22 percent are modestly
religious, and only 19 percent-about thirty-six million people-
regularly practice their religion. In measuring mainline
Protestants (16.7 percent of those studied), for example, the
researchers considered church attendance, membership, personal
prayer, belief in life after death, and how "important"
respondents said religion was in their lives. Those who registered
some activity in all five categories were considered "committed"
and qualified as part of the 19 percent. "We're not talking about
Mother Teresas," said the political scientist John C. Green.
"We're looking at people who meet a religious minimum according to
their own traditions." In short, if this study is accurate, the
vibrant faith pollsters hear about during their telephone
interviews is exaggerated and not vitally linked with much of the
public's attitudes and actions.
The superficiality of the Christianity expressed by a large
majority of Americans can also be seen, of course, in the
destructive behavior that increasingly mars our daily lives. Pious
rhetoric is not necessarily an indication of a deep-seated, life-
changing commitment.
Consider the violence, the insensitivity, and the staggering
vulgarity we encounter-and enjoy-in the media. In 1990, 2.9
million couples lived together without marriage-up 80 percent from
1980 and 454 percent from 1970. There are 1.5 million abortions a
year, and abortion is a $450 million a year business. Venereal
diseases are rampant. African Americans are killing each other,
going to prison, and succumbing to an assortment of addictions in
record numbers. "American blacks are, by some measure," Gallup
reports, "the most religious people in the world." Drug abuse
among teenagers was reported in 1995 to be still on the rise.
Between 1992 and 1995, the proportion of eighth graders using
illicit drugs almost doubled; among tenth graders it jumped by
nearly two-thirds; among seniors it escalated by nearly half. "We
have become," said William Bennett, "the kind of society that
civilized countries used to send missionaries to."
Then, too, there are priorities. It is one thing to tell a
pollster, perhaps in complete sincerity, that family and personal
moral values are our chief concerns. But most of us, it seems
clear, expend the great bulk of our time and energies fulfilling
the American dream. We are consumed by our jobs, as psychiatrists,
divorce lawyers, and millions of latchkey children know all too
well, and are locked into an endless pursuit of the power, cash,
status, and pleasure that promise "personal fulfillment" and
happiness. Probably few clergy address this issue (there is the
budget to meet and the new parish hall to be built), and, as
Robert Wuthnow puts it, "we therefore go about our lives pretty
much the same as those who have no faith at all."
At the same time we are slaving away to obtain the "finer" things
in life, we publicly profess a strong distaste for materialism. We
are able, following a long tradition in Western civilization, to
divide the spiritual from the material realms of existence. The
dichotomy makes us somewhat uneasy, but we persist nonetheless.
People who do not know who gave the Sermon on the Mount may not
have read about the rich man and the eye of the needle. More than
likely they do know about the warning and have chosen either to
ignore it or explain it away-an endeavor long perfected by the
wealthy and their minions. In any case, earthly comfort and
security, Scripture tells us, are perilous goals for Christians.
Christianity in modern America is, in large part, innocuous. It
tends to be easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not
require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, an otherworldly
outlook, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love of God. There is
little guilt and no punishment, and the payoff in heaven is
virtually certain.
The faith has been overwhelmed by the culture, producing what is
rightly called cultural Christianity. This is not a question of
mere influence; acculturation takes place at all times and in all
places. Christianity becomes cultural Christianity when the faith
is dominated by a culture to the point that it loses much or most
of its authenticity.
What we now have might best be labeled consumer Christianity. The
psychologist Paul C. Vitz has observed, "The 'divine right' of the
consumer to choose as he or she pleases has become so common an
idea that it operates in millions of Americans like an unconscious
tropism." Millions of Americans today feel free to buy as much of
the full Christian faith as seems desirable. The cost is low and
customer satisfaction seems guaranteed.
America is not-not yet, anyway-a thoroughly secular society. But
its Christianity, in large part, has been watered down and is at
ease with basic secular premises about personal conduct and the
meaning of life. Such a religion has an uncertain future, for it
has absorbed ideas and attitudes that may well lead to its demise.
Authentic Christianity and the world are by definition at odds.
That was decreed repeatedly and unequivocally by the Founder. The
"disciple whom Jesus loved" made the truth crystal clear when he
wrote: "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not
in him.... We know that we are children of God, and that the whole
world is under the control of the evil one."
There are still millions of Christians in this country, in many
denominations, who cling to the scriptural and traditional faith
and the morality that comes with it. They may ingest more than a
bit of the worst parts of their culture; it is virtually
impossible not to. But their primary allegiance is to the
supernatural and living faith embraced by orthodox Christians for
almost two thousand years.
In our time, a great many such people are worried and angry about
the secularism, violence, cynicism, and despair they see welling
up about them. One Wisconsin evangelical exclaimed in 1994, "The
once-unthinkable is now almost commonplace, and we feel as though
we are riding on a wagon out of control, careening down a hill. It
is no progress to continue on the wrong path which our culture has
already traveled so far." The evidence strongly suggests that the
simile is on target. How we got into that wagon and began our wild
ride downhill requires much attention.
THOMAS C. REEVES is Professor of History at the University of
Wisconsin-Parkside and author of A Question of Character: A Life
of John F. Kennedy (1991). This article is excerpted from The
Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity, published this
month by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Copyright c 1996 by Thomas C. Reeves.
This article appeared in the October 1996 issue of "First Things."
To subscribe write First Things, Dept. FT, P. O. Box 3000,
Denville, NJ 07834-9847, 1-800-783-4903. Published monthly except
bimonthly June/July and August/September for $29.00 per year.
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