Women, Religion And Feminism In Britain, 1750-1900 Book

Toward the end, he does a remarkable job of explaining the ineffectiveness at times of charging across the minefield laid by liberal thought, while conceding that reason alone is almost never sufficient, and that we must learn the proper approach/tone. Yet somehow his early declaratives resonate with premature preachiness, such that--even when agreeing, mostly--I even felt he was likely left preaching to the choir. As with many great, prominent men in our history, he astutely pinpoints the problem as forward advance in nearly every area of human progress but morality (ix).

His courage to take stances on certain positions, as he himself admits, is almost retro...we have stumbled so far as a nation. He unequivocally stands for what is wrongly dismissed these days as "exceptionalism," the LDS, gratefully, not being the only ones to see the problem: "The United States of America has a transcendent heritage of liberty rooted in self-government and personal responsibility, the result of a revolutionary two-hundred-year-old 'experiment' so gloriously successful it became a shining light in an otherwise mostly dark world" (6). His section on "turning the tables on evil in America" cites an example from Charlton Heston of what is increasingly necessary. Having heard that Time Warner was selling Ice-T's "Cop Killer" CD, Heston decided to attend the stockholders meeting in Beverly Hills. There, "against the advice of [his] family and [his] colleagues," he took the floor and read "the full lyrics . . . every vicious, vulgar, instructional word." So degraded were they that when he read them again to the press corps outside, "one of them said, 'We can't print that, you know.' 'I know,' I said, 'but Time Warner is still selling it.' Two months later, Time Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warner Brothers, or get a good review from Time magazine. But . . . you have to be willing to act, not just talk.'"

As a journalist, Kupelian gives an insider view to what even the left can largely laughingly acknowledge now: their stranglehold on public information. He attended an event with prominent newscasters which was so riddled with profane jokes that he refrained from giving more than a glimpse of the cesspool minds that the public often allows to inform our decisions, even with their personal interjections of belief.

Kupelian observes--and I have notes going back to the 60s and 70s protesting the rise of this trend--how psychology has resisted any reference to sin whatsoever (see 176), touting man as a merely behavioristic being. With a small nod to some cases of necessity, he proceeds, "Dangerous substances are recklessly being relied upon to solve Americans' mental-emotional-spiritual problems" (101). As he points out very ably, there's now a diagnosis for nearly every flaw, weakness, or personality problem (105-106), opening the door to relief of conscience in either shifting blame or actually numbing one's psyche. In short, says the establishment, we have nothing to repent of any more, no need to apologize; we just need better prescriptions. Responsibility belongs only to the state.

Kupelian quotes one commentator who, from my own experience, with interestingly creeping diminution visible to observant along the way, accurately captures the perilous Zeitgeist:

Unless one receives a strong grounding in a religious school and/or religious home, the average young person in the Western World is immersed in a secular cocoon. From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world--the secular--is presented. The typical individual in the Western World receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the Middle Ages. I have taught college students and have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of the most elementary religious arguments and concepts--such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is subjective--is total. (144)

While reviewing the alarmingly rapid erosion of Judeo-Christian values, such that even many of those few remaining who profess Christianity don't seem to understand or follow it, he talked about the rise of belief systems which promote the "victimless" sin lifestyle. One fellow, the author of Conversations with God, primarily advocates witchcraft and obtained a lot of his ideas via "channeling." He dismisses the reality of a heaven or hell and, predictably, recounts his inner sense as teaching him "there is no devil" (117). Kupelian pauses to indicate the harm done to Christianity by weak and hypocritical teachers within "the church" as well. In the fine tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (consistently picked up by the LDS general authorities), he condemns the "modern notions of 'cheap grace' and stadiums full of people being instantly 'saved' in great crusades and the like" (210).

As an aside, how many of us knew that Obama declared June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, something only Clinton had done once before? (175) And that he did so again last June, with a memorandum blatantly declaring his agenda? I think at the very least he should drop the formality to the signature line of "in the year of our Lord."