"In every culture of the past, everywhere in the world, the principal source of a culture's mores—its traditional customs, its way of regarding the human condition, its principles of morality—has been religious belief" - Russell Kirk, America's British Culture
What place, if any, does the subject of morality occupy in any movement to restore our nations? I think most Christian believers (those who are more than just nominal Christians) believe that the root of our problems in this country, and in former Christendom generally, is spiritual. We can't restore the outer forms of what our countries once were without trying to fill the huge spiritual void that exists now.
This piece addresses the issue, and while it is written about Britain, it is also applicable to us. The writer alludes to the Victorian era, in which there was a great crusade to 'clean up' Britain, both outwardly and inwardly. There was a great Christian revival that occurred during that time period.
'' During the last half of the nineteenth century the crime rate declined markedly and so did the incidence of illegitimacy and drug and alcohol abuse. "It was a period of striking moral reform in personal behaviour which transformed Britain from being a violent, dishonest and addicted society into a peaceable, lawabiding, respectable and essentially moral realm...." But during the last generation or two that process reversed, and the prevalence of dysfunctional behavior has grown dramatically. [...] There seems to be no correlation with the usual materialist explanations--poverty, bad housing, urbanization and so on--and Davies shows how those explanations fall short.''
Of this widespread revival and moral restoration, we read
There was in fact a marked change in standards of morality, which could easily be misinterpreted by the young or the superficial. But a long-lived and perceptive observer like the radical Francis Place, friend of the Mills and Bentham, who remembered the bad old days understood what had happened:
The progress made in refinement of manners and morals seems to have gone on simultaneously with the improvement in arts, manufactures and commerce. It moved slowly at first, but has been constantly increasing in velocity. Some say we have refined away all our simplicity and have become artificial, hypocritical, and on the whole worse than we were half a century ago. This is a common belief, but it is a false one, we are a much better people than we were then, better instructed, more sincere and kind-hearted, less gross and brutal, and have fewer of the concomitant vices of a less civilized state. [Quoted in George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, 18. For more material on this see Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, 120f.]''
This same movement was mirrored, to some extent, in the United States.
Of course now such a movement would be marginalized from the beginning, considering what an anti-Christian media establishment we now have, and the general hostility of academia and government to any public manifestation of Christian belief.Also, bad as the condition of the Church was in the pre-revival era, it must surely be worse now, as Christian denominations everywhere seem to be given up to promoting not the Gospel of Christ, but the gospel of Marx: condoning of vice, as well as promotion of the one-world, socialistic, atheistic, Babelistic worldview, albeit in flimsy Christian guise.
Such a revival would be less likely in today's decaying environment. Libertinism and hostility to Christianity in particular is at a peak, it seems, though things always seem to get worse, even when you think they couldn't possibly be worse.
The comments on the British Resistance piece are not overall hostile to the idea of a return to Christian morality, though there is the ubiquitous and persistent skeptic or atheist who cannot abide the thought of Christian morality returning. In my opinion (based on my real life experience of atheists) the sticking point for them with Christianity is the ''thou shalt nots.'' That's what it boils down to. They never denounce Eastern religions like Buddhism or Hinduism; those religions take a more laissez- faire attitude to personal morality, and this suits the secular libertine. But oddly, this same militant secularist has few gripes about Islam, despite its many (and harsh) thou-shalt-nots. Obviously the problem is not religion per se, but Christianity, for the non-believers.
But could we rebuild our society in former Christendom without Christ? I doubt it.
And even if we could persuade the militant secular libertines that Christian morality, based on Biblical precepts, would not cramp their style or spoil their fun too much, just adopting outward forms without the inner conversion would never work.
There would have to be a sincere conversion on the part of a critical mass of people in order for things to be restored. That's apparently what happened in the 18th and 19th century, and that's why society was able to be transformed for the better during that time. Was it perfect (I hate to even have to repeat this, but someone always says 'but it wasn't that good!')? Of course it was not perfect, because of human imperfection. Even the most ardent Christian is still flawed. But things were definitely improved after the spiritual awakening that took place, as witnesses of that time testified.
Nevertheless, our society is now so mired in decadence and corruption that many of us have become quite comfortable with it, and prefer it over any alternative, even one which promised to clean up the squalor and depravity we see every day. 'Better the devil you know,' as they saying goes, and many people like the ugliness that they know so well. ''We will not have this man (Christ) to reign over us'', people have said, down through the centuries.
But we cannot just paint over the evils that have become embedded in our surroundings; we can't change the outside unless the inside is first transformed. So, short of a move of God, we will be destined to 'wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.'
And part of the problem is that in Western countries, people have had just enough of Christianity to think (mistakenly) that they know it, and therefore they reject it as having any relevance to their lives. 'Christianity? We tried that; it didn't work. It's old-fashioned. Nobody wants to live that way.' Leslie Dixon Weatherhead is quoted as saying "The trouble with some of us is that we have been inoculated with small doses of Christianity which keep us from catching the real thing."
My conclusion is that the majority will not be spiritually renewed; they are too caught up in the present system, and like living in the moral pigsty, believing it to be exciting and glamorous. But there will be the faithful remnant, always.
And again, I have to say it does not require a majority to bring about great change. We've heard the saying that 'one plus God equals a majority.' It's also demonstrably true that a relatively small group of people have driven most big changes throughout history. The 'majority', the mystical, magical majority, are inert and passive in most cases, and are followers, not leaders, not movers or shakers.
We need not get 'the majority' on our side. They will go where they are led. The question is simply who will be doing the leading?
"When a nation rises up ardent to fight for its freedom and honour, it is always a minority that really fires the multitude." - Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
