Appling: Religion and Family: A Double Helix

From the desk of Wisconsin Family Action president Julaine Appling:
“The decline of the family has contributed to the decline of Christianity in more ways than one. It has rendered some people less capable of understanding what life with a protective, loving father could be like. It has left others feeling annoyed and on the defensive about church teachings… And the simple ubiquity of the modern varieties of un- and anti-Christian behavior further erodes the traditional understanding of right and wrong in these matters by sheer repetition.”

So says author Mary Eberstadt in her book How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization.   In this recently released work, Eberstadt, a noted scholar and author, turns on its head conventional wisdom about the demise of Christianity in America.  Whereas most experts believe the breakdown of the traditional, natural, nuclear family preceded and was a precipitate in the collapse of Christianity, Eberstadt says no, actually, the deterioration of the family unit plays a significant role in this cultural loss.

This idea of the loss of the influence of religion in America—and the related loss of religious freedom—being related to the breakdown of the natural family has been running around in my brain for several years. I just wasn’t sure about the order—which came first.  Now I’m pretty sure the deterioration of the natural, mom-dad family was and is the igniter.

We need some historical context to understand this. In 1848, the very year Wisconsin ratified its constitution and became part of the United States of America, in Germany Marx and Engels published the revolutionary Communist Manifesto. In that document, the authors make it clear that the traditional, natural, nuclear family comprised of married moms and dads and their children must be abolished. The Communists, socialists, Saul Alinsky radicals, homosexual activists all know that in order to advance their revolutionary, dangerous, insidious agendas and beliefs, they must destroy the institution that is the primary purveyor of values, beliefs and traditions. And that social institution is the traditional family.

continue at Wisconsin Family Action