The American Spectator : Poured Concrete for the Soul

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Poured Concrete for the Soul

By Dan Peterson from the February 2011 issue

Why are we now not surprised when architecture is ugly and inhuman? Nancy Pearcey offers answers to this and many other questions about our aggressively secular age.

Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning
By Nancy Pearcey
(B&H Publishing Group, 328 pages, $26.99)

The Third Church of Christ, Scientist, in the District of Columbia is one of the ugliest buildings I’ve ever seen. It’s a hulking, windowless pile of poured concrete, constructed in 1971. Over time, church members came to detest it so intensely that they wanted to tear it down, but the District government wouldn’t let them. The church, against the will of its members, had been designated as a historic landmark — an exemplar of the “brutalist” style of architecture.

Why are we now not surprised when architecture is ugly and inhuman? Why, for nearly a century, has our culture produced painting and sculpture that is meaningless and sterile? How did 20th-century academic music become so theory-ridden that it was impossible to listen to? Just before the First World War, the word “architecture” was defined authoritatively as “the art of building in such a way as to accord with principles determined, not merely by the ends the edifice is intended to serve, but by high considerations of beauty and harmony.…” In the arts as a whole, why have we descended from “high considerations of beauty and harmony” to a weary acquiescence in the degraded and absurd?

In Saving Leonardo, Nancy Pearcey illumines the answers to those questions and much more besides. Although a great portion of the book discusses the arts, in one sense that is not her real subject at all. Her subject is the intellectual underpinnings of Western society over the past 250 years, how those underpinnings have radically shifted, and how those shifts affect — well, everything, including not just the arts, but culture, morals, and even our concepts of truth and reality. Art mirrors underlying beliefs, and is a harbinger of where those beliefs are taking us. In recent times, the news has not been good.

Pearcey’s analytical framework will be familiar to those who have read Total Truth, her powerfully insightful work on “worldviews” published in 2004. Formerly, Christianity was viewed as making truth claims about the world, and those claims were nearly universally accepted in Western culture. God exists; the world is his creation; and science is an investigation into his design using the senses and reason he has given us to discover truth. Our conduct should be governed by his moral laws, which are ascertainable, immutable, and true. Beauty is not merely subjective, but is an objective perfection toward which artists can aspire, and which their works can approach more or less nearly. In short, truth was considered to be unitary and the truths of Christianity were an integral part of it.

That has changed profoundly. As Pearcey shows, a secular worldview now reigns, at least among the classes that matter. The elites in “law, education, mass media, academia, and advertising,” among others, act as society’s gatekeepers, and are in a position to control the “official definitions of reality.” And they have officially ruled out of bounds all public discourse based on Christian principles, primarily by means of what Pearcey refers to as the “fact/value split.”

Adapted from Francis Schaeffer, under whom Pearcey studied in Switzerland, the fact/value analysis holds that modern secularism has artificially separated truth into two domains. Analogizing truth to a two-story house, the first floor is the realm of “facts,” generally defined in an empiricist or materialist way. The truths of science are the paradigmatic facts that can gain admission to the first floor. Only in this realm, the secularists assert, do we find real truths about the world that are objective and verifiable, and can thus form the basis for education, government policy, and public discussion.

The second floor is the realm of “values,” such as statements about aesthetics, morality, and God. These are considered by secularists to be expressions of personal preference only, which are subjective and unverifiable, and cannot form the basis for public discourse or actions. So the second floor is where religion goes. Like an eccentric uncle shut up in the attic, Christianity can be ignored so long as it doesn’t try to come downstairs and annoy polite company.

Thus, materialist secularism becomes by definition the default worldview and the only legitimate worldview. As Pearcey notes, the fact/value split is the “main strategy used to marginalize and disempower Christians in the public arena.” Indeed, “why bother to argue that Christianity is false when it’s so much easier to take it out of the realm of true and false altogether?”

THE CONSEQUENCES OF FRACTURING TRUTH, delegitimizing Christianity, and substituting a secular worldview have been staggering. In Saving Leonardo, Pearcey first examines those effects on hot-button issues such as sexual morality, abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic research. As she shows, divisions on these issues are deeply influenced by whether one adheres to the secular view that human beings are merely biological machines, blindly evolved for no purpose, and guided by nothing but their own interests and preferences, or whether one embraces the Christian view that each of us is a divine creation, with a God-given purpose in life, and subject to immutable moral laws.

The central part of the book then traces the development of the two main streams of thought that have produced most of the modern and postmodern worldviews, in which secularism has now come to predominate. Enlightenment rationalism was the spring of the first stream, while the second was fed by the romantic reaction against rationalism.

Pearcey often turns to philosophers and thinkers for the explicit intellectual articulation of those two currents. But her major task is to track the continuing courses of rationalism and romanticism as they shaped artistic expression in the 19th and 20th centuries. In doing so, she lays bare the secular pre- suppositions that have increasingly come to underlie literature, the dramatic arts, the plastic arts, and music, with generally baneful effects.

That is an ambitious, synoptic undertaking, but Pearcey traces cause and effect deftly and clearly, without any sacrifice of nuance or accuracy. The breadth of learning that she brings to bear is formidable. How does materialism deeply inform the novels of Jack London and Theodore Dreiser? What is the philosophic foundation for the (unlistenable) musical serialism of Boulez and Babbitt? How do three paintings depicting executions by firing squad, one by Gamborino, one by Goya, and one by Manet, reveal different underlying worldviews? Pearcey marshals hundreds of examples to elucidate how worldviews play out in works of art. (I’ll also note here that the book has more than 100 color images interspersed with the text, so her intellectual points are vividly and graphically reinforced as the reader progresses.)

The effects of the precepts of secularism, which destroy the unity of truth, and deny any objective meaning and purpose in life, have necessarily been dismal in the arts. The romantic strain, focusing on the individual’s quest for liberation and meaning, ultimately degenerates into paintings in which paint is flung on canvases, and plays in which noth- ing occurs but banal, meaningless dialogue. The rationalist strain, which has tended to devolve into materialism and determinism, produces barren geometrical abstraction in painting and hideous Corbusian “machines for living” in architecture. An author who actually bases a novel or a play on materialist principles, as the turn of the century “naturalists” tried to do, runs the risk that his work will be utterly boring. Who cares what characters might do, if they are mere “puppets of fate,” and lacking free will? As Pearcey shows, human freedom and the responsibility to make moral choices, which are central to the Christian worldview, are also essential for artistic meaning.

Saving Leonardo’s final chapter is an exercise in how to tease out the hidden moral (or amoral or immoral) assumptions in popular movies. It concludes with an epilogue entitled “Bach School of Apologetics,” which notes the inadequacy of the saccharine sentimentalism that sometimes afflicts “Christian art,” and is a call for serious, committed Christian engagement in the arts and culture.

The book is in no sense a dispassionate history of the rise of secularism in society or in the arts. In an age drenched in false ideas, Pearcey’s avowed goal is to help her readers “recognize and resist secular ideas in science, philosophy, ethics, the arts and humanities.” Thinkers and artists have in recent times created “worldviews that undermine human dignity and liberty,” and the only hope, she argues, lies in a worldview that is “rationally defensible, life affirming, and rooted in creation itself.”

A postscript on the Third Church of Christ, Scientist: After a legal struggle, the congregation has now received permission to demolish the poured concrete, brutalist building that has burdened their souls for so long — but only after they put plans in place to construct a new church in its stead. I hope they will build a magnificent church of profound beauty. There is room for hope that, after a long struggle, we can build a renewed culture of profound beauty, too.

About the Author

Dan Peterson is an attorney who practices firearms law in Northern Virginia.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (49) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

Appleby| 2.4.11 @ 7:16AM

Most downtown buildings here are hives -- warrens of tiny cells designed only for sleep and storage; the advertising makes much of the communal spaces for the masses of residents to eat, play and house visitors that used to be our pleasure to perform in our homes. Very suitable for those who consider themselves only interchangeable plastic parts in the giant machine that sprang into being spontaneously and whose wheels and gears continue to turn somehow...and for this privilege they pay six figures and never think what will happen when, like today, the power fails and the water mains burst and leave them stranded on the 66th floor of an airless, waterless, heatless box with no way down but the stairs.

FakeEagle| 2.4.11 @ 7:40AM

It appears that Pearcey is quite an adept student of Schaefer. Her arguments and assertions sound quite familiar, though undoubtedly updated. I look forward to reading the book for myself.

Andrew B| 2.4.11 @ 8:39AM

I remember touring one of Frank Lloyd Wright's famous works, the Johnson Wax building in Racine, Wisconsin. I was given a somewhat iconoclastic tour by a friend who worked there, and it made a strong impression.

I am terribly old-fashioned, but I actually believe that the primary function of a building should be to...carry out its primary function. In that respect, I look upon Wright as a good sculptor and a less than impressive architect. His masterpiece, Fallingwater, was Fallingover after less than half a century, yet New England is littered with buildings pushing 300 years (and going strong). Who was the master--the famous Wright or the anonymous housewright?

C. S. P. Schofield| 2.4.11 @ 8:44AM

It is important to remember that Modern Architecture was not the origin of ugly in public buildings. The Eisenhower Executive Office Building (formerly State, War, and Navy) in the District of Columbia is profoundly, even ostentatiously, ugly.

That said, I would recommend that anyone reading Ms. Pearcey's book also read Tom Wolfe's THE PAINTED WORD and FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE. The "Classes that matter" have, over the last century or so, deliberately distanced themselves from the Public taste, and so have to a great degree marginalized themselves. Nobody reads what they admire. Nobody voluntarily listens to their 'modern classical' except as a form of penance. Their grip on most forms of public discourse is slipping, in large part because they cannot argue and are finding that attempts to overawe are less and less effective.

A synthesis of Ms. Pearcey's books and Mr. Wolfe's observations would be a fascinating thing to read.

Le Cracquere| 2.4.11 @ 8:51AM

Unfortunately, our civilizational habits of beauty are under attack from mutant strains of both the left AND right. For every Corbusian hive deforming a city, there's an asphalt-lobby politician or thinktanker hoping to make living in a central city untenable. For every brutalist atrocity like the one in D.C., there's a suburban "worship complex" perpetrated by an Evangelical megachurch. For every nihilist traducing the arts, there's a good ole boy dismissing them tout court.

If the U.S. Congress were built today, the Left would insist on its being a concrete/vanadium trapezoid, with a multicultural hologram show in the lobby. The Right would insist on its being a featureless office park in northern Virginia, with twelve acres of parking.

Derek Leaberry| 2.4.11 @ 9:23AM

One of the ugliest parts of America is Northern Virginia and its crown jewel, Tyson's Corner. Concrete, asphalt and glass boxes abound. Even the slums of Anacostia across the Potomac have more personality and beauty. And just think that Northern Virginia in the days of Washington and Lee was a place of natural beauty. No more.

Coal Miner's Son| 2.4.11 @ 11:08AM

Another great blog I read, Robin's Readings and Reflections features a post on the objectivity of beauty and how we've come to where we are. For those interested, the link is:
http://robinphillips.blogspot......bjectivity of Beauty

scythe| 2.4.11 @ 11:17AM

Look no further than the goals of the Communist Party. Sterile meaningless art, no more "representational" art, nothing of "beauty" nothing of truth. This is a great column about a subject most people seldom contemplate, but the long and short of it is that Marxism has infected every avenue of our lives. The traditional standards have been in hand to hand combat with secular humanism/Marxism for the better part of the last century and this one. So all the fancy explanations might add to it, but the start reality is that we are living with Stalinist art. Brought to you by the cultural warriors of the left.

henry| 2.5.11 @ 3:40AM

This posting is spot on. Ethics, for example, is defined as “a contemplation of morality in praxis” . The rhetoric is pure Marx, as is the concept. It was Marx who said that philosophy is rubbish unless it leads to change - change you can believe in. Where have we heard that lately?

The paradigm shift has been from absolutism, the cornerstone of Christianity, to relativism, the basic concept of secular humanism.

Kingofthenet| 2.4.11 @ 11:37AM

Why publish something from this Creationist Nitwit!
Nancy Pearcey, a CSC fellow and Johnson associate, acknowledges Johnson's leadership of the intelligent design movement in two of her most recent publications. In an interview with Johnson for World magazine, Pearcey says, "It is not only in politics that leaders forge movements. Phillip Johnson has developed what is called the 'Intelligent Design' movement."[30] In Christianity Today, she reveals Johnson's religious beliefs and his animosity toward evolution and affirms Johnson as "The unofficial spokesman for ID."[31]

In his 1997 book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds Johnson summed up the underlying philosophy of the strategy:

If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this... We call our strategy the "wedge.
—pg. 91-92, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds

Paul| 2.4.11 @ 3:15PM

King:

How is this relevant to what is discussed of Nancy Pearcey's views in this article? Is it your contention that her support for the idea of Intelligent Design renders her so risible that nothing that she has to say on the concepts of aesthetics could possibly hold any value? Would it not be more profitable to present an argument demonstrating what you believe to be flawed in the positions described in the article?

Pall Leosson| 2.4.11 @ 6:15PM

Intelligent Design is not Creationism. The former is objective science employing the methodology thereof; the latter is Biblical interpretation, often reading the Creation Story in Genesis in literal terms.
Also, the science of Darwinism is not absolute or finished. Many questions are engendered which still beg to be answered.

FakeEagle| 2.4.11 @ 12:21PM

I'll take her over an evolutionist nitwit anytime.

Dave| 2.4.11 @ 12:22PM

So, to be a "creationist" is to be a "Nitwit" - well up yours!

Creationism is no more lame-brained than believing that the Universe and all that is within it spontaneously appeared out of nothing for no good reason and without cause a few billion years ago. This is as much an article of faith as is Creationism - possible even more so as it leaves unexplained both how and why the event occurred.

Kingofthenet| 2.4.11 @ 1:05PM

Dave, Quantum Physics say's that does in fact happen. Particles come into existence for no good reason and from NOTHING. they dematerialize and rematerialized somewhere else. Time/Space are interconnected and can sometimes even become each other, for that reason the universe might not fave a beginning, or an end. Just like we are told the universe has no 'Center' or that light moves EXACTLY the same speed away from you no matter how fast you are moving, it goes against common sense, we are trained from Children to understand Cause and Effect, apparently those rules break down in certain extreme circumstances. This stuff is WAY above my pay grade, but some of this has been tested to be true in the lab and Super Colliders.

Dave| 2.4.11 @ 3:17PM

Not quite: particles appear to arise from nowhere and nothing under, as you say, "certain extreme circumstances." That the same particle disappears and reappears elsewhere is mere conjecture and not sustainable by the evidence. Establish that it is the same particle. Establish further that this effect can and does occur under less than extreme circumstances. Good luck.

Furthermore, these things have lifetimes measured in microseconds and it is quite a stretch to take an extremely short lived phenomenon and extend it to the creation of the universe from nothing. Good luck on that also.

Paul| 2.4.11 @ 3:25PM

Dave, while the points you offer are valid, there are many cosmologists attempting to demonstrate these very things, at least in mathematical symbology. It is possible that they might.

The larger philosophical significance of this question is unclear. Judaism and its daughter, Christianity, have asserted creatio ex nihilo since antiquity. The real issue is that of the validity of reductionist materialism.

It might be helpful for Kingofthenet, and you, to clarify what you mean by "creationism"... there is room in this term for many very different positions.

Or perhaps I am merely indulging in Random and inappropriate Capitalization.

Dave| 2.5.11 @ 8:56AM

Regarding "creationism," I admit to using a bad word here as "creationism" has negative consequences. Let me try this another way: The Biblical account of creation is NOT true, it's wrong on its time lines and it's wrong in its sequence of events. The underlying message - that ours is a created Universe - is true, IMHO.

It is unreasonable to expect the Bible, or any other religion's creation story to be scientifically accurate as they are stories told to and by an ignorant people. (Isaac Asimov wrote a funny short story detailing a conversation between Moses and Aaron on this very subject - I don't recall the title but it's a hoot.)

It is equally unreasonable to demand that all there is is what can be seen, touched, heard, smelled or tasted - which is the essence of materialism. Perhaps it is the materialist blinders that is making life so difficult for cosmologists.

Kingofthenet| 2.4.11 @ 4:52PM

Dave, I don't pretend to understand Quantum Events, but the way i understand it here is what we know: Like most people, you look at the universe as you would an object in your room. It is not. Looking at the universe, you have to "think outside the box."

Here is what we know:

1) All distant galaxies appear to be moving from us. We can measure it by the red-shift of their light. Hence, we are the center of the universe! But we know that we will observe the same wherever we are in the universe.

2) We observe a cosmic microwave background (CMB) This the left over from the energy released 380,000 years after the big bang. We observe it coming not from one point but all directions in the sky. It means that the big bang, the "center" of the universe is ... a sphere around us! How is that possible? Well, the farther you see in the sky, the farther you see in the past, right? It makes sense.

So, you ask questions that can't be answered because, according to the theory of Relativity, there is no absolute reference in the universe; everything is relative to the observer.

And therefore, there is no "center" nor "edge" to the universe. Each observer will see something different. Amazing, isn't it?

Dave| 2.5.11 @ 9:07AM

Cosmologists would do well to go dust off their old copy of Plato and re-read it. I am speaking of the "Allegory of the Cave," wherein the ancient Greek still speaks to us today of the folly of narrow viewpoints and limited perceptions.

Modern science is as hog-tied by their unrelenting faith in materialism as are the Biblical Fundamentalists in their insistence thae every word of the Bible is 100% accurate and error free.

carolinem| 2.4.11 @ 1:09PM

Christian architecture also absorbs modern sensibilities, rendering exterior and interior construction appalling. A look at modern churches can repel the soul. The sentimentalized, unlistenable babble of modern Christian music sends one running in a hurry for the secular dial. Inspiration by Christianity is one thing; the ability to translate that inspiration into physical expression is quite another.

Gretchen| 2.4.11 @ 3:23PM

Re: appalling interior construction. One of the ugliest churches I have ever been in is the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, VA. Unrelieved, cold, marble, blondwood pews, an organ, the pipes aimed at the congregation, like a machine gun emplacement, and, the piece de restance, an enormous gold pigeon, about the size of a Piper Cub, hanging overhead. (I know, I know, it's supposed to be the Holy Ghost, but, seriously, should a representation of the HG make one want to duck and wish one had an umbrella?) The place DID, however, have a marvellous acoustic.

Franklin| 2.4.11 @ 2:04PM

Wow this is drivel. The church is responsible for some of the biggest atrocities in human history. Seriously read the Book of Kings. God sends a she bear to tear apart 40 children for calling a monk baldy. Seriously you people would believe in a God like that? That sure explains a lot.

Paul| 2.4.11 @ 3:18PM

Franklin:

I suspect that few people in the West believe in a God "like that." The point you raise presents difficulty only for those who assert that every word of the present text of the Bible is the Word of God and undeniably, literally true. Only a tiny minority of those who call themselves Christians (or Jews, for that matter) take this position.

jolizoom| 2.4.11 @ 11:40PM

You are partly right--many of us believe the Bible is "the Word of God". Those of us who actually read it understand that not every word is "undeniably, literally true." Some of it is poetic, some of it prophetic, some allegorical, some metaphorical, and some is historical. The common thread among all types of Biblical scripture is that it holds spiritual truths.

The bear story is historical. In context (not that you want context, as you have already made up your mind), the people of Israel were sinning greatly against the Lord, and a band of more than 42 boys ("the bears mauled 42 of the boys" implies that there were more than 42 boys--perhaps many more) came out of the city and treated the Lord's prophet with contempt. They demonstrated not only their own hatred of the Lord, but the fact that their parents hated the Lord also, and failed miserably to teach their children to fear the Lord. These children were by no means innocent--they were at least old enough to be out from under their parents supervision--or perhaps their parents were too busy sacrificing to their golden calf to notice that their young children were running amok.

How does this make sense? Our God is a jealous God--not jealous OF you, but jealous FOR you, in the way that a husband is jealous for his wife and doesn't want her looking at other men. He uses the gentlest means possible to woo his adulterous wife back to Himself, but sometimes the "gentlest possible means" involves amputating a diseased part of her--in this case, her God-hating children.

I think Obama is currently "the gentlest possible means", and that if those of us who believe God don't reclaim our righteousness as children of God before the next election, the next iteration will be worse.

2 Chron 7:14 "...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

This isn't about non-believers--this is about Christians, which means anyone who has received salvation but has not continued to walk in God's ways bears an enormous responsibility for the condition we now find our country in. Including me. How about you?

Kingofthenet| 2.5.11 @ 3:03AM

jolizoom, So you want to KILL the President? I think Obama is currently "the gentlest possible means", and that if those of us who believe God don't reclaim our righteousness as children of God before the next election, the next iteration will be worse.????

Dude Get with Science, instead of superstition , God doesn't exist, but REALITY does! A SINGULARITY doesn't mean a 'point' in space but merely a mathematical concept, in fact the ENTIRE KNOWN universe could(And most likely was) a SINGULARITY for TRILLIONS upon TRILLIONS of Years. Our universe 'Began' when the Singularity 'Exploded' and allowed time and matter to start forming.Our Universe is 'Expanding' actually it is STRETCHING.

Dave| 2.5.11 @ 8:36AM

Ho hum, this achieves nothing. Earlier you say that the Universe can arise from the spontaneous generation of sub-atomic particles from the quantum foam under "certain extreme conditions." Which does nothing towards solving the fundamental issue.

Now you are trying to claim that the entire known Universe was once compressed into a single singularity. Again, leaving the fundamental issue unresolved.

At best, your faith in Science merely pushes the creation event further back in time. It does not eliminate creation from the list of possibilities only postpones (or perhaps prepones) it a bit. Science still posits a creation event, they just call it a different name.

skip| 2.5.11 @ 12:50PM

K(itschy)
i(diotic)
n(incompoop)
g(ratuitously)
o(bnoxious)
f(ilthy)
t(orpid)
h(alfwit)
e(ffetely)
n(auseous)
e(mbarrassment full of)
t(waddle)

What will you be king of, should your faith, without any basis of proof by the scientific method, be incorrect, that God does not exist, while you are being judged by the real King, who had been revealed to one and all for centuries?

jolizoom| 2.5.11 @ 3:34PM

WOW, you really took a wrong turn on my intent there. No, I'm not suggesting that we kill the President. I'm saying that his reign over us is God's gentle discipline for individually and nationally turning away from Him, and that if we don't figure that out, our continuing discipline will involve death on a large scale brought about by the policies of Obama or his successor.

As for God not existing, you can tell Him that when you meet him.

Tina B| 2.5.11 @ 9:00AM

and a minute after that tornado blew through that junkyard, and the smoke cleared, I swear I saw a Boing 747 sittin on the concrete. Pretty as can be. Seats 'n all. Made right outa the junk in the junkyard. Don't believe me? Well I wasn't actually there but I saw the 747. It musta been the hurricane that put it all together. That's what all that flyin around and spinning produces right? A fully functional 747. Right?

Hey atheist, that's what you are, right? The human eye has over 600 "parts" and you think this was made by chance, random chance, without a designer. Like that 747 with no designer, just naturalistic "forces". The ability to see, or to love even, evolved over billions, or millions, of years. By random chance, or natural selection.

Nothing evolves upward, we are in a constant state of decay.

I am always amazed at how many educated people fear loving and serving the God who created the Universe, or universes, so much that they are so gullible as to believe this nonsense.

Kingofthenet| 2.5.11 @ 10:39AM

Tina, Worlds/Stars are being created Right this second in certain areas of the universe, NO ONE, NOT even Christians would say 'God' is doing it. Things ARE complex so you need a 'God' to do it? If everything is 'So' perfect why not allow Spinal cords to be easily broken AND repaired? I am not saying 'Science' has all the Answers, but Religion has NONE.

jolizoom| 2.5.11 @ 3:36PM

Tina, love your illustration.

jolizoom| 2.5.11 @ 4:10PM

A friend sent me a file of all the scriptures she could find where God refers to the land He has promised to the Israelites. This was one of the references:

Exd 23:29 "I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.
Exd 23:30 "I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land."

I was struck by God's concern that the land not be allowed to become untamed. It encourages me that He is paying attention to the details. As Americans are waking up to the reality of our sin, I have hope that God is keeping certain situations in place in order to prevent chaos, and that He will "drive" these situations out before us as we "become fruitful and take possession of the land."

In the mid-east, they have all but driven God from the land, and they are reaping the consequences.

Kingofthenet| 2.5.11 @ 5:56PM

I always thought the Mid East was filled with the MOST Religion (Islam) ?

jolizoom| 2.6.11 @ 11:16PM

Worship of the moon god and worship of the true God are not at all the same thing.

Kingofthenet| 2.5.11 @ 10:52AM

Intelligence is a weird thing , the AVERAGE Intelligence is 100 or so, Really Smart is 120(Einstein was 200) DUMB is 90-70, RETARDED is >50. Why is this important? To build/pass along knowledge from one generation to another requires a minimum of say 50, the best animals BESIDES Man might hit 20-30, their brains aren't that different than ours, but they are below the threshold to build a society that can learn from previous ones. not by a lot but still.

skip| 2.5.11 @ 5:06PM

In the interests of good faith when posting you should use the moniker: Kingoftheiqoffortynine

LitlBits2011| 2.5.11 @ 12:21PM

The really sad part of the secularist world in which we now live is that priests, ministers, pastors, etc have abandoned truth - to make church services "more appealing" - just to fill their churches...and to hell with Scriptural teachings! Their own Final Judgment will NOT be pleasant - there are harsh warnings in Scripture about this. But they are so hurting their congregants with this teaching of false "truths"! I heard of one case where a homosexual threatened to sue a church because the minister had the temerity to talk about homosexuality from a Biblical point of view (and he read some Passages)...case was thrown out, as all this idiot had to do was go to a different church - and NOT expect this one church (or any other) to PREACH TRUTH - and not just what they would like to hear!
I recently received a mailing from a local church...in HUGE letters "We Apologize!" - we have not entertained you...we may have made you "uncomfortable"...come and visit us on Sunday, - - - - (date given) and be prepared to LAUGH!" 'Cast' included several comedians! WHAT? is that really honoring the Sabbath? as we are instructed in the Bible? - Doesn't matter I guess as long as they fill the church (and the collection baskets!)
Should be a way to hold these preachers (of all faiths!) responsible when they preach untruths as "truth"! -should be able to unseat them IMMEDIATELY!
But we have become LAZY - and don't really know how to pray anymore...so "going to church" is supposed to satisfy the need to "honor the Sabbath"??? doesn't add up....THAT is precisely why this whole country is falling apart...the Judeo-Christian principles upon which it was founded have been abandoned! we all have much to answer for!

Kingofthenet| 2.5.11 @ 5:58PM

Show me the Word, 'God' or 'Jesus' just ONCE in the Constitution.

skip| 2.7.11 @ 1:56PM

Show me a founding father that thought this nation could survive by any means other than as a Christian nation.

David| 2.5.11 @ 11:25PM

Interesting article, to which I am generally sympathetic. However, Babbitt unlistenable? Sorry, you're an imbecile. I first discovered Milton Babbitt's music when I was 14 years old, and have listened to and loved it for 37 years. I can lament secularism as much as anyone, but I regard Babbitt as the first and only composer in western music whose accomplishments surpass J.S. Bach.

Of course, I realize I am in the minority. On the other hand, it took more than a century for the opinion Bach's manuscripts were good for more than wrapping fish to gain universal acceptance.

I am a practicing Roman Catholoic, and when I want reassurance that God is still on his throne, I listen to the Art of Fugue or Canonical Form.

Incidentally, Milton Babbitt passed away last Saturday.

Unger| 2.6.11 @ 2:36AM

You are entitled to your own opinion and of course RIP Babbitt, but I just tried to listen to Babbitt again based on your high praise and yuck yuck yuck that is awful. It was so bad it made my eyes water, and I really tried to find something to like, but it sounded worse than a wind chime in a hurricane. Maybe our wiring is just different or maybe I just didn't know what to listen for, but I don't ever want to hear that noise again.

David| 2.6.11 @ 4:48AM

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It was really not my intention to enter into a debate about the quality of Babbitt's music. If you think it is noise and never want to hear it again in your life, that's fine. What offends me is the idea that only secular humanists who deny God and wish to destroy western civilization could ever find value in it or be attracted to it on purely aesthetic grounds.

Do you know what Babbitt said when he was asked to testify before congress to defend the NEA from "censorship" by Jesse Helms (remember Robert Mapplethorpe)? He said he didn't find Senator Helm's "censorship" any more objectionable than that practiced by the NEA itself. If Milton was a darling of the political avant-garde, it was news to him.

Unger| 2.6.11 @ 9:43AM

Rereading my original post I want to apologizes for the tone I should have been more clear in distinguishing my personal lack of aesthetic enjoyment from the music's intrinsic quality. No undoubtedly there is 'something' there in Babbitt's music, I just don't have the training or capacity to hear it. I am really more of a visual person and most of the films and artworks I enjoy wouldn't pass the ideological test presented here either, so I can sympathize with and understand your position . I have never understood why the dislike of moral relativism is extended until it blankets all of human endeavor. It concerns me a little that the article makes a point about each person being a unique creation of God, but than argues we should all be squished into one perspective about Art. Surely a unique being created by God should have a unique perspective.
'What offends me is the idea that only secular humanists who deny God and wish to destroy western civilization could ever find value in it or be attracted to it on purely aesthetic grounds.' I couldn't agree more. We shouldn't pull the walls in too tight around ourselves. Sometimes there is order and beauty (and also beauty in chaos) in places we wouldn't have normally looked, and I would hate if someone were denied the chance of that discovery.

Wes in Mt| 2.7.11 @ 10:47AM

Well, I tried to listen to Babbit's music, maybe I downloaded a poor example, but, my God! Like trying to find meaning in "fingernails on a blackboard"! It was painful. So, to each his own.

Michael| 3.16.11 @ 6:38PM

This book review contradicts itself. In the first sentence, the author presents the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, and describes it as an ugly example of Brutalist architecture. The review then goes on to pin the blame for bad architecture on secular worldviews. So, are Christian Scientists secular, or are they Christian? If Christian Scientists subscribe to this 'unity of truth,' then how did they wind up with such an ugly building?

This review suggests that Christendom has a unique monopoly on the unity of truth. That Christians understand moral values that are 'ascertainable, immutable, and true.' Therefore, by this logic, there can be no such thing as a failed Christian artist.

And another thing. What about the many Asian and other cultures outside Europe that do not subscribe to Christendom? Did they produce any nice art over the last few millenia? Or is their music 'unlistenable,' too?

العاب بنات | 4.11.12 @ 4:03PM

Nothing evolves upward, we are in a constant state of decay....

The American Spectator