Classes Begin January 9, 2012

Classes begin on January 9 for the Spring Semester.

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Sheryl Sandberg and Gender Differences

Almost exactly fifty years ago, Betty Friedan published her bombshell, The Feminine Mystique, which argued, among other things, that traditional gender roles had compartmentalized women as homemakers—both their and culture’s detriment.  Arguably, Friedan’s book was the manifesto of the feminist revolution.  Laws and cultural norms changed as equal treatment of and more professional opportunities for women increased.  Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, has just published Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.  Sandberg’s book is not quite Friedan’s social manifesto, but it is changing the conversation.  A few salient facts that demonstrate why Sandberg’s book is an important one:  Only 17 of the world’s 195 countries and around 4% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women.  Sandberg believes she understands why and proposes to change that.  Permit me a few thoughts on this important book, for it says much about where our culture is and how our culture continues to process basic gender differences.

First, a summary of Sandberg’s basic argument.  The Economist correctly observes that “she mixes autobiography, sociology and management strategy in her book.”  She seeks to explain why so few women reach the top—in the business world and in politics.  Her fundamental thesis is that women themselves are responsible:  They do not aim high enough; underestimate their own abilities; spend too much time doing housework and caring for their children; and compromise their career goals.  She writes:  “We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in.”  In short, Sandberg argues that women must bear some, if not a major part, of the blame.  She states that “Compared to our male colleagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions. . . My argument is that getting rid of these internal barriers is critical to gaining power.  We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today.  We can start this very moment.”  These internal barriers involve, from birth, an ambition gap and being raised to have different expectations—both of which are lethal for women.  [She writes: “The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophecies.”]  Therefore, women “lean back” during meetings, usually not even sitting at the table.  “They question their capacity to lead more often than men do, and push less often for promotions or pay raises.  Internal research by Hewlett-Packard found that women only apply for jobs for which they feel they are a 100% match; men do so even when they meet no more than 60% of the requirements.”  In chapter 8, Sandberg maintains that one of the most important career choices a woman makes is whom to marry.  Women need to negotiate shared household duties with their spouses and these need to be reviewed frequently and revised often.  If this choice is not taken seriously, a woman might be asked to sacrifice her career to support that of her partner—and that a woman should never do.  However, women are not completely at fault.  Sandberg does argue that corporate structures and cultures work against women.  For example, she cites that US companies are not required to offer paid maternity leave, let alone paternity leave.  In addition, child care costs are rising so rapidly that returning to work after the birth of children is financially difficult if not impossible.

Further, Sandberg uses the phrase “benevolent sexism” to refer to how men continue to treat women differently, without the specific intent to hold them back.  To that end, she classifies herself as a “feminist” but defines the term as someone who believes in equal treatment for women.  [Indeed, she argues that a “truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”]  For that reason, Sandberg has also launched a campaign to support and educate career women through online opportunities and support groups.  For example, she has launched www.Leanin.org, a non-profit Web platform.  This website is intended to get women organized using data, sharing and networking.  As Time magazine reports, the website also offers a series of video seminars created by Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research.  Subjects range from body language to negotiating techniques.  On the website, women are encouraged to form “Lean In Circles” and are given suggested guidelines to make them effective (e.g., 8 to 10 peers with a commitment to confidentiality as they carry out “listen, ask and share” exercises).  More than 120 companies have signed up as partners in forming these Lean in Circles.  Therefore, Sandberg is putting an infrastructure in place to provide the tools to empower women to attain places in the corporate boardroom, executive positions in business—and perhaps in the highest positions of political power.  Lean In is not a lament about the dismal state of women in corporate leadership; it is constructing a path to seize the power structures of all aspects of culture.  Seen from that vantage point, it is indeed a manifesto for profound change in America.

Second, how should we think about this “manifesto?”  Two brief comments:

1. Christina Hoff Sommers has written a most helpful article in the March edition of The Atlantic that raises several important points that are relevant to Sandberg’s thesis.  Since one of Sandberg’s clear goals is to liberate Americans from the stereotypes of gender, what is social science telling us about gender differences?  In a 2008 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a group of international researchers compared data on gender and personality across 55 nations.  Their findings:  “Throughout the world, women tend to be more nurturing, risk averse and emotionally expressive, while men are usually more competitive, risk taking and emotionally flat.  But the most fascinating finding is this:  Personality differences between men and women are the largest and most robust in the more prosperous, egalitarian and educated societies. . . Higher levels of human development—including long and healthy life, equal access to knowledge and education, and economic wealth—were the main nation-level predictors of sex difference variation across cultures.”  Sommers summarizes the conclusions of this important study:  “The authors of the study hypothesize that prosperity and equality bring greater opportunities for self-actualization.  Wealth, freedom, and education empower men and women to be who they are. . . What if gender difference turns out to be a phenomenon not of oppression, but rather of social well-being?”  Sommers cites the disparity between men and women in engineering as an example.  Perhaps American women earn fewer degrees in engineering because they do not have to do so.  They have more opportunities to pursue careers that really interest them.  Women now earn a majority of Ph.D.’s in the humanities, biology, social sciences and health sciences.  As Sommers shows, “Despite 40 years of consciousness-raising and gender-neutral pronouns, most men and women still gravitate to different fields and organize their lives in different ways.”  In a 2013 national poll on modern parenthood, the Pew Research Center asked mothers and fathers to identify their “ideal” working arrangement.  Amazingly, 50% of mothers said they would prefer to work part-time and 11% said they would prefer not to work at all.  Of the fathers, 75% said they preferred fulltime work.  Sommers writes that “Sandberg seems to believe that the choices of contemporary American women are not truly free.  [Indeed Sandberg writes:  “True equality will be achieved only when we all fight the stereotypes that hold us back.”]  But aren’t American women as self-determining as any in the history of humanity?  In place of bland-assertions, Sandberg needs to explain why the life choices of educated, intelligent women in liberal, opportunity-rich societies are unfree.  And she needs to explain why the choices she promotes will make women happier and more fulfilled.”

2. Quoting the Creation Ordinance of Genesis 1-2, Jesus declared, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female. . .” (Matthew 19:4).  Jesus made this declaration to a culture with no gender identity or gender difference issues.  Instead, He was affirming a basic proposition of the human race:  God made the human race in two grand streams—male and female—and they are totally different.  No matter what humans try to do, they can never erase this fundamental characteristic of the human race.  This simple proposition is quite absent from Sandberg’s book—and in that absence is a glaring problem.  Perhaps that is the basic reason why, in the pursuit of happiness and in the pursuit of life-fulfilling goals, men and women often take different paths and make different choices.  That is not evil and perhaps that is the way God intended it to be.  A curriculum of Lean In Circles will not change that.  Perhaps the problem Sandberg wants to solve is really not a problem; what she wants to change cannot really be changed.  Perhaps the choices women make merely reflect the gender differences in all their complexity and diversity; profound differences rooted deeply in God’s Creation Ordinance.

See Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead; Belinda Luscombe, “Confidence Woman,” Time (18 March 2013), pp. 34-42; Christina Hoff Sommers, “What ‘Lean In’ Misunderstands about Gender Differences,” www.theatlantic.com (20 March 2013) and The Economist (16 March 2013), pp. 82-83.  PRINT PDF

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Is America Going the Way of Europe?

There is a resistance in some parts of our culture to the idea of American exceptionalism:  The conviction that America has developed differently than say Western Europe.  Our political and our economic system is different than Europe—and intentionally so.  Because America rejected the idea of a state church, the prolific religious pluralism of America has also influenced how it has developed as a civilization.  [Although I do not embrace this idea, there is an underlying premise that because we are different than Europe, we are thereby morally superior to Europe.  That is a dangerous idea that I reject because it is not true.]  America is different from Western Europe and much of this difference results from choices we have made as a civilization.  The columnist David Brooks summarizes some of those choices:  “When Europeans nationalized their religions, we decentralized and produced a great flowering of entrepreneurial denominations.  When Europe organized state universities, our diverse communities organized private universities.  When Europeans invested in national welfare states, American localities invested in human capital.  America’s greatest innovations and commercial blessings were unforeseen by those at the national headquarters.  They emerged, bottom up, from tinkerers and business outsiders who could never have attracted the attention of a president or some public-private investment commission. . . [But we are different now and] reinvigorating a mature nation means using government to give people the tools to compete, but then opening up a wide field so they do so raucously and creatively.  It means spending more here but deregulating more there.  It means facing the fact that we do have to choose between the current benefits to seniors and investments in our future, and that to pretend we don’t face that choice, as Obama [has done] is effectively to sacrifice the future to the past.”  Is there indeed evidence that America is sacrificing its future?  Is there enough evidence to conclude that the US has so leveraged its future (via crippling debt) that it is indeed becoming just like Europe?  For the following reasons, I believe we are.

First is the matter of our national debt.  Broadly speaking, the national debt covers all debts for which the federal government assumes final responsibility.  The economist Robert Samuelson has cataloged our national debt into five categories:

1. Treasury debt held by the public:  $11.3 trillion, 73% of GDP for fiscal 2012.  This is the amount that must be borrowed through the sale of Treasury bills, notes and bonds.

2. Gross federal debt:  $16 trillion for 2012, 103% of GDP.  This figure adds to #1 the Treasury securities issued by the government trust funds, the largest being Social Security.

3. Federal loans and loan-guarantees:  $2.9 trillion in 2011, 19% of GDP.  These are the loans the government makes to college students, farmers, veterans, small businesses, etc.  If these loans default, the federal government must pay them.

4. Fannie and Freddie:  $5.1 trillion, 33% of GDP.  With this category, the total federal debt rises to 155% of GDP.

5. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation:  $7.3 trillion, 47% of GDP.  Add this to the total and you have 202% of GDP.

This makes the total federal debt at $31 trillion, three times the conventional estimate of $11 trillion.

Second, America has created an entitlement culture—a social-welfare culture—that is gradually becoming more like that of Europe.  Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has shown quite compellingly that America has indeed created a nation of “takers” where there is increasing dependency on the state.  Here is Eberstadt’s evidence:

1. Since 1960, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), entitlement transfers—government payments of cash, goods and services to citizens—have been growing twice as fast as overall personal income.  Government transfers now account for nearly 18% of all personal income in America.  (In 1960 it was 6%.)

2. According to the BEA, America’s myriad of social-welfare programs currently dispense entitlement benefits of more than $2.3 trillion annually.  Since this must be covered either by taxes or by borrowing, the burden of entitlement spending now amounts to over $7,400 per American man, woman and child.

3. In 1960, according to the Office of Management and Budget, social-welfare programs accounted for less than a third of all federal spending.  Today, entitlement programs account for nearly two-thirds of federal spending—nearly twice as much as defense, justice and everything else Washington does.

4. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, nearly 49% of Americans today live in homes receiving one or more government transfer benefits, up 20 points from the 1980s.  Contrary to many assumptions, only about one-tenth of the increase is due to increase in old-age pensions and health-care programs for seniors.  Today, the overwhelming majority of people in America on entitlement programs are receiving money, goods or services from government programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.  Only a third of all Americans receiving government entitlement transfers are seniors on Social Security and Medicare.

5. Quite surprisingly, one of the fastest growing programs in America is the Social Security’s disability program.  In December 2012, more than 8.8 million working-age men and women took such disability payments from the government—nearly three times as many as in December 1990.  For every 17 people in the labor force, there is now one recipient of Social Security disability payments.

6. President Obama and others have referred to Social Society and Medicare as “social insurance” programs rather than transfer programs.  People do indeed contribute payroll taxes into trust funds supposedly to cover the cost of the programs when they retire.  That is a myth!  The fact is that Social Security and Medicare have already made tens of trillions of dollars in future promises that are not covered by their expected funding schemes.  When these programs are required to honor these promises, these entitlements become transfer programs funded either by more taxes or more borrowing.  These are indeed now entitlement transfer programs.

As Eberstadt concludes, “The moral hazard embedded in the explosion of social-welfare programs is plain.  Transfers funded by other people’s money tend to foster a pernicious ‘something for nothing’ mentality—especially when those transfers seem to be progressively and relentlessly growing, year by year.  This ‘taker’ mentality can only weaken civil society —even if it places ever-heavier burdens on taxpayers.”

America is tragically becoming more and more like Western Europe.  Our social-welfare state has created a haunting dependency on that state, which does not have the will or the seeming ability to pay for this dependency, which it created!!  As Samuelson has shown, we have funded the growth of this social-welfare state through debt, which has fostered a “something for nothing” mentality among nearly half of our population.  Sensible people would hardy regard that as a positive situation for America.  We lament what we are seeing in Greece, Spain and Italy; but if we continue on this path, America will not be far behind.

See David Brooks in the New York Times (22 January 2013); Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post (24 February 2013); and Nicholas Eberstadt in the Wall Street Journal (25 January 2013). PRINT PDF

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The Arts as a Form of Theological Reflection: CARE Celebrates 25 Years

The Arts as a Form of Theological Reflection: CARE Celebrates 25 Years | Graduate Theological Union Skip to main content Search form Search Text Resize -A +A AboutFrom the PresidentAdministrationHistoryEmploymentMember SchoolsAmerican Baptist Seminary of the West (ABSW)Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP)Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (DSPT)Franciscan School of Theology (FST)Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University (JST-SCU)Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (PLTS)Pacific School of Religion (PSR)San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS)Starr King School for the MinistryCentersAsia ProjectBlack Church/Africana Religious Studies (BC/ARS)Center for Islamic Studies (CIS)Center for Jewish Studies (CJS)Center for Arts, Religion, and Education (CARE)Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS)Institute of Buddhist Studies (IBS)New College Berkeley (NCB)Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute (PAOI)School of Applied Theology (SAT)Women's Studies in Religion (WSR)Accreditation and Educational EffectivenessGTU 50th AnniversaryStoreAcademicsDoctoral ProgramPh.D. / Th.D. F.A.Q.ApplyM.A. ProgramM.A. FAQApplyFaculty DirectoryAreas of StudyArt and ReligionBiblical StudiesBuddhist StudiesChristian SpiritualityCultural and Historical Studies of ReligionsEthics and Social TheoryHistoryHomileticsInterdisciplinary StudiesInterreligious StudiesIslamic StudiesJewish StudiesLiturgical StudiesNear Eastern ReligionsOrthodox Christian StudiesReligion and PsychologySystematic and Philosophical TheologyCourse ScheduleEvening and Weekend CoursesAcademic Calendar2013-14 Extended Calendar2012-13 Extended CalendarAcademic & Administrative Calendars 2011-2013Current Registration DatesTentative Calendar 2012-2013RegistrarClassroom LocationsConsortial Registration PoliciesCross-Registration Instructions: HNU & MillsCross-Registration Instructions: UCBHandicapped AccessKey to Course NumbersLibrary/ID cardsReligious HolidaysSRC RegistrationTranscript RequestsAdmissionsApply to Doctoral ProgramApply to M.A. ProgramOther Study OptionsRequest Program InformationPlan a VisitWhere to Stay While Visiting the GTUDirectionsArea MapInternational StudentsInternational Student ApplicationsFinancial AidLibraryNews & EventsPress RoomEventsLectures and AddressesExhibitionsVideo and Audio ContentStories & ImpactFaculty and Alumni PublicationsCurrents newsletterSpring 2012Fall 2011Spring 2011Fall 2010Spring 2010Dean's NewslettersReligious ServicesDonateDonate NowAreas to SupportFlora Lamson Hewlett LibraryStudent ScholarshipsRichard S. Dinner Center for Jewish StudiesCenter for Islamic StudiesNaming OpportunitiesThe President's CircleWays to Support the GTUGifts of CashGifts of Securities or Real EstateCorporate Matching GiftsGift Form (PDF)Annual Report 2010-2011Contact Us Secondary menuLoginContact Graduate Theological Union You are hereHome The Arts as a Form of Theological Reflection: CARE Celebrates 25 Years Submitted by communications on Tue, 04/16/2013 - 4:33pm

The Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education (CARE) marked its 25th anniversary in 2012. A bridge between campus and community, a connection of academe and the arts, the Center is a GTU-affiliated autonomous non-profit providing “theological reflection and practice through educational curriculum in arts and religion and to present related arts programs that enhance the GTU community.”

Effervescent personality Doug Adams, Professor of Christianity and the Arts at Pacific School of Religion (PSR) and leader in the field of religion and the arts, founded the Center in 1987 to expand the course offerings at the GTU and enhance faith communities.

Carin Jacobs was selected to succeed Adams as Director after his passing in 2007, a mantle she took on five years ago. With a background in museum education and academic publishing, her interests also include food studies and cultural aspects of food and culinary arts. “Museums and food culture are lenses through which we can look at spirituality and worship as they are often informed by spiritual commitments and practices,” Jacobs explains.

Perhaps Jacobs’ greatest accomplishment to date is the creation of the Doug Adams Gallery. Envisioned as a laboratory honoring its namesake, the Gallery has become the public face of CARE since opening in 2009 and holds three exhibits a year. At first glance it might seem awkward that the Gallery shares space with the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology, located in the former library edifice of PSR, but the partnership has actually sparked creativity. Through the innovative “Mining the Collection” series, artists are regularly invited to create new work inspired by the museum’s holdings – the most recent, Dimensions of Dark by Cathy Richardson, focused on light from oil lamps to light bulbs.

The foyer to the museum has also become collaborative space involving museum staff and creative partners from the GTU community. In the unique setting of theological education at GTU, a museum becomes a kind of intellectual nourishment, providing visual pathways to “explore spirituality, belief, ritual, and the sacred.”

Currently Bay Area artist Pamela Lanza’s Twin Bandits is on exhibition with The Body Was Our First Machine in the Foyer.

Providing artistic scholarship to the GTU curriculum, CARE faculty teach 15-20 graduate level courses each year focusing on the theory and practice of visual, performing, literary and media arts, and their role in worship and ministry. Jacobs describes the Center’s work as a Venn diagram of arts, faith, and academe.

As a resource to the museum and gallery communities, CARE has placed its art collection online and on loan. Jacobs is currently spearheading an effort to organize a national conference on the role of visual and material culture in theological education.

With such vision, CARE will continue to illuminate our lives and help us see with new lenses for the next quarter century and beyond.

The Doug Adams and Foyer Galleries are open Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10 AM – 3 PM.
CARE can be found online at care-gtu.org or their new blog, dougadamsgallery.wordpress.com.

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Boys: Victims of the Feminist Revolution

That young men and even young boys are confused about who they are, what is acceptable behavior for them and what exactly it means to be an adult male is now a given in American culture.  This confusion is an unintended consequence of the feminist revolution in our culture, and two authors have been documenting this crisis for several years now.  They are making a compelling case that American culture is failing its boys and that the impact of this failure is devastating.  Let me explain.

First is Christina Hoff Sommers.  In a recent article, Sommers documents what is happening to boys in our educational system.  Citing an article in The Journal of Human Resources, she demonstrates that teachers of early classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades—and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better than boys.  In fact, this study also shows that boys across all racial groups and in all major subject areas (from kindergarten through fifth grade) received lower grades than their test scores would have predicted.  Sommers summarizes:  “The scholars attributed this ‘mismanagement’ to differences in ‘noncognitive skills’: attentiveness, persistence, eagerness to learn, the ability to sit still and work independently.  As most parents know, girls tend to develop these skills earlier and more naturally than boys.”  Since no study has demonstrated so persuasively that the well-known gender gap in school grades begins so early and is almost entirely attributable to differences in behavior, I believe it is worthwhile for me to summarize other salient findings from this study and from Sommers’s work:

1. The researchers found that teachers rated boys as less proficient even when the boys did just as well as girls on tests of reading, math and science.  If the teachers had not accounted for classroom behavior, the boys’ grades, like the girls’, would have matched their test scores.

2. As the cultural biases against women began to evaporate over the last several decades, the educational and occupational playing fields have leveled in American culture.  Women now account for roughly 60% of associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and have begun to outpace men in obtaining Ph.D.’s.

3. Sommers argues that boy-averse trends like the decline of recess, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, the tendency to criminalize minor juvenile misconduct and the turn away from single-sex schooling have harmed boys and their development as men.  Further, she maintains, as our schools have become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, collaboration-oriented and sedentary, they have moved further and further from boys’ characteristic sensibilities.

4. Sommers quotes Christopher M. Cornwell of the University of Georgia:  “If grade disparities emerge this early on, it’s not surprising that by the time these children are ready to go to college, girls will be better positioned.”

5. Improving the performance of black, Latino and lower-income kids requires particular attention to the boys.  Black women are nearly twice as likely to earn a college degree as black men.  At some historically black colleges, the gap is astounding:  Fisk is now 64% female; Howard 67%; Clark Atlanta 75%.  An examination of the Boston public schools recently showed that for the graduating class of 2007, there were 197 black girls for every 100 boys planning to attend college; among Hispanics, the ratio was 175 girls for every 100 boys; and among whites, 153 girls for every 100 boys.

6. Sommers suggests the following initiatives to help improve boys’ educational achievement:  More boy-friendly assignments, more recess, campaigns to encourage male literacy, more single-sex classes, and more male teachers.

7. Sommers concludes her article with this wise counsel:  “I became a feminist in the 1970s because I did not appreciate male chauvinism.  I still don’t.  But the proper corrective to chauvinism is not to reverse it and practice it against males, but rather basic fairness.  And fairness today requires us to address the serious educational deficits of boys and young men.  The rise of women, however long overdue, does not require the fall of men.”

Second is Kay M. Hymowitz.  She uses the term “pre-adult” to define a new cultural development or even a new stage in human development between the teen years and adulthood.  [Other sociologists, such as Christian Smith, have called this stage emerging adulthood.]  Here are some of Hymowitz’s observations about pre-adulthood, based on her new book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has turned Men into Boys.

1. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex.  They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans, ages 25-34) and 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree compared with 27% of men.  They also have higher GPAs.

2. Pre-adults do not know what is to come next.  For them, marriage and parenthood come in many forms, or can be skipped altogether.  In 1970, just 16% of Americans age 25 to 29 had never been married; today an astonishing 55% have never been married in this age group.  In America, the mean age for the first marriage is now 30.

3. “Pre-adulthood has also confounded the primordial search for a mate.  It has delayed a stable sense of identity, dramatically expanded the pool of possible spouses, mystified courtship routines and helped to throw into doubt the very meaning of marriage.”

4. Meanwhile, men go on struggling with an acceptable adult identity.  Women are moving ahead in an advanced economy where husbands and fathers are now optional.  The qualities of men that are needed for them to fulfill their role—fortitude, stoicism, courage and fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.  This healthy role has now been substituted with the likes of Hollywood characters such as Jim Carrey, Will Farrell, Adam Sandler and Owen Wilson:  Frat boys who have never grown up and are enthralled with sex, NASCAR and beer.

5. The number of single men is therefore growing in our culture.  They are “more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers.  So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with ‘Star Wars’ posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we should not be surprised.”

God has given humanity clear teaching on the respective differences between a man and a woman.  The “feminization” of American culture has produced disastrous results for boys and therefore for men.  Few would doubt that correctives within culture were needed to foster greater equality and equality of opportunity for women—but not at the expense of men (and boys).  In God’s eyes, men and women are equal (see Genesis 1:26ff; Galatians 3:28 and 1 Peter 3:17).  But He created them differently.  As Sommers and Hymovitz have demonstrated (unintentionally I suspect), our educational system is ignoring those created differences.  When that teaching is ignored, dysfunction and catastrophe follow—a perfect description of much of American culture in 2013.

See Christian Hoff Sommers in the New York Times “Review” section (3 February 2103) and Hymowitz’s essay in the Wall Street Journal (19-20 February 2011).  PRINT PDF

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21st Century America and Religion: The Secularization of America?

Whatever your view of the role biblical Christianity played in the founding of America, intellectual honesty demands that one recognize that religion, religious values and specifically Christianity have all played a defining role in the development of American civilization.  For example, you simply cannot understand the colonial American decision to seek independence from Great Britain without understanding the First Great Awakening.  You cannot understand Abolitionism without coming to terms with the Second Great Awakening.  The Laymen’s Prayer Revival of 1857-1858 played a strategic role in pre-Civil War religiosity in the urban areas of America—and on into post-Civil War America.  The temperance movement in America, the women’s suffrage movement, the Civil Rights movement, and many other American reform movements all owe their respective origins and development to Christianity.  Finally, the religious revival of the 1950s played a critically important role in defining America’s response to atheistic communism centered in the USSR and China.  Whether one agrees with all of these various American developments or not, biblical Christianity was central in explaining each one of them.  But there is growing evidence that that central role of biblical Christianity no longer exists in America.  Is America becoming increasingly secular, with little or no religious influence in ethical, social, economic or political decision-making?

Most people who follow such things are familiar with the recent Pew Research Center’s study that indicated the growth of the religious preference called “none.”  In the 1950s that number was about 2%; in the 1970s that number was about 7%; today it is about 20%!  All regions of the nation indicate growth in the “nones,” but its growth is especially pronounced among whites, the young and among men.  To be more specific, about 30% of this 20% (i.e., about 6% of the American public) consider themselves atheists or agnostics.  The remaining consider themselves indifferent to religion.  As the columnist Michael Gerson argues, “Though the nones are varied, and occasionally confused, their overall growth has been swift and unprecedented.  This has occasioned scholarly disagreement over the causes.  Clearly, the social stigma against being religiously unaffiliated has faded . . . the decline of religious conformity is itself a major social development, requiring some explanation.”

How do we explain this significant shift in America?  One rather compelling theory centers on the religious right.  This explanation is somewhat important because the increase of the “nones” correlates perfectly with the rise of the religious right.  Some research seems to indicate that the “nones” view the religious right as only interested in money, rigorous rules and politics.  Names such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell are not well accepted among the “nones.”  But, as Gerson also shows, explaining the rise of the “nones” is much more complicated.  For example, “declining trust in religious institutions since the 1990s has been accompanied by declining trust in most institutions (with the notable exception of the military).  Confidence in government and big business has simultaneously fallen—and the public standing of both is lower than that of the church.  Americans may be less affiliated with religious organizations because they have grown generally more individualistic and skeptical of authority.”

The same Pew study that identified the “rise of the nones” has also confirmed another important statistic—58% of Americans still describe religion as “very important” in their lives.  Similar statistics demonstrate that prayer plays an important role in 58% of American lives.  Therefore, it would be difficult to argue that America is becoming more of a secular nation.  What has changed quite poignantly is America’s commitment to institutional religious movements.  Gerson quotes Luis Lugo of the Pew Center, who argues that “what we are seeing is not secularization but polarization.”  Institutional religions have gained a large and growing body of critics.  Gerson reports that this trend is specifically beneficial to cultural liberalism and the Democratic Party.  For example, 70% of the “nones” voted for President Obama.  On volatile issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and broader issues of sexuality, the “nones” are much more liberal.  Indeed, “nones” are now the largest religious category in the Democratic coalition, comprising 24% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.  [The other major block in the Democratic coalition are black Protestants—one of the most religious groups in America.  Can the secular “nones” coexist with the very religious black Protestants?]

There are other major implications associated with the rise of the “nones.”  Gerson shows that “religious conservatives remain the largest constituency within the Republican Party.  So America is moving in the direction of having one secular party and one religious party, bringing polarization to a new level of intensity.  This is movement in the direction of Europe, which has been cursed by the conflict between anticlerical parties and religious parties.  For America, this could be a dangerous source of social division, with each side viewing the other as theocrats or pagans.  There is no contempt like the contempt of the true believer or the militant skeptic.”  Gerson maintains that the rise of the “nones” has other rather profound implications:  Marriage is an important cultural institution and marriage is on the decline among the “nones.”  The unaffiliated also donate less to charity and participate in fewer volunteer organizations.  Hence, “individualism can easily become atomization.”

One final thought:  This increasing polarization is spilling over into public policy and other areas of American life.

1. For example, as a result of President Obama’s Health Care law, the US government has defined two classes of religious organizations, two kinds of religion and two degrees of religious freedom.  Church, being inwardly oriented, gets an exemption—full protection for their convictions and practices.  All other religious organizations, being outwardly oriented on service and not inwardly on worship, are not exercising pure religion, and thus merit only a lesser degree of religious freedom—an “accommodation.”  This of course was at the center of the recent controversy over the contraceptive mandate under the health care law.  Dan Busby of ECFA argues that “[T]he[se] deeply troubling contemporary trends [are] for laws and regulations themselves to be less accommodating of religion, and constitutional interpretive schemes to prioritize other values over religious freedom.  If these trends continue, then fewer religion-accommodating rules will be allowed to stand, and then fewer court decisions will end up favorable to religious exercise by individuals or institutions.”  In other words, due this increased polarization, religious freedom and “free exercise” protections deeply rooted in the Constitution and in America’s history may be in jeopardy.

2. Consider a recent case at Johns Hopkins.  The Inclusion Statement at the University reads that it is “committed to sharing values of diversity and inclusion . . . by recruiting and retaining a diverse group of students.”  The University also has an Office of Institutional Equity and a “Diversity Leadership Council,” which defines “inclusion” as “active, thoughtful and ongoing engagement with each other.”  However, the Hopkins’s Student Government Association (SGA) has denied Voice for Life (VFL) the status of a recognized student group because its website includes images of aborted babies and because it engages in “sidewalk counseling” outside of abortion clinics.  The SGA says that VFL is guilty of “harassment.”  Columnist George Will correctly argues, “Suppose such SGA-recognized student groups as the Arab Students Organization, the Black Student Union, the Hopkins Feminists or the Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance were to link their websites to provocative outside organizations or were to counsel persons not to patronize firms with policies those groups oppose.  Would the SGA want to deny them recognition as student groups?  Of course not.”  Academic institutions are committed to diversity in every way but thought.  Apparently at Johns Hopkins, it is impossible to have a reasoned debate on the ethics of abortion.  One SGA member said that pro-life demonstrations make her feel “personally violated, targeted and attacked at a place where we previously felt safe and free to live our lives.”  Academic institutions practice academic freedom, presumably, and students frequently encounter ideas they do not share.  That is the whole point of developing critical thinking and is at the heart of academic freedom—in every area, apparently, except abortion.  Those who hold deep religious convictions about the value of prenatal life have no voice at Johns Hopkins, apparently a prestigious institution of higher learning that values academic freedom and the free engagement of all ideas—except of course with those who hold to the infinite value of prenatal life.  That is not academic freedom and that is not the free engagement of ideas.  There is another word for that—hypocrisy!

See Michael Gerson in the Washington Post (1 and 3 April 2013); ECFA’s “Focus on Accountability,” (First Quarter 2013); and George Will in the Washington Post (8 April 2013).  PRINT PDF

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The American Demographic Cliff

Over the last few years, we have been bombarded with apocalyptic phrases such as “fiscal cliff,” “sequestration,” “entitlement cliff,” and the persistent debt ceiling crisis.  All of these are real issues and reflect the unwillingness of our governmental leaders to address the serious financial condition of America.  But a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Jonathan V. Last summarizes an even deeper crisis, one that captures one of the real causes of our nation’s financial crisis:  A serious demographic cliff—the declining fertility rate in the United States.  [The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman bears over the course of her life.]  The fertility replacement rate is 2.1.  Therefore, if the average woman has more children than that, the population grows; fewer children and it contracts.  Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the fertility rate in America is 1.93.  In fact, the fertility rate in America has not been above the replacement rate since the early 1970s.  The results of this demographic reality are obvious:  There are more old people than young and, over time, as the older population dies, the population contracts.  As Last argues, “This dual problem—a population that is disproportionately old and shrinking overall—has enormous economic, political and cultural consequences.”

Since the 1960s, we have been warned by some that we are facing dreadful dangers worldwide due to overpopulation.  The prophets of this doom followed the frightening language of Thomas Malthus, an English minister of the 18th century, who predicted that food production could not keep up with population growth.  The inevitable result, he argued, was calamity—starvation and malnutrition.  But this conventional wisdom has proved to be wrong.  (1)  The global population is slowing and will actually shrink within 60 years.  (2)  Economist Esther Bosercups and Julian Simon have demonstrated that growing populations “lead to increased innovation and conservation. . . Since 1970, commodity prices have continued to fall and America’s environment has become much cleaner and more sustainable—even though our population has increased by more than 50%.  Human ingenuity, it turns out, is the most precious resource.”  As Last argues, low-fertility societies do not innovate because their incentives for consumption tilt overwhelmingly toward health care.  Instead of investing aggressively in innovative projects, with the average age skewing higher, capital thereby shifts to preserving and extending life.  Social Security programs are therefore in danger of insufficient funding because there are not enough workers to sustain the program.  Therefore, civilizations facing this demographic shift begin spending less on defense and their position in the world begins to decline.  Thus, as Last’s article demonstrates, if the fertility rate of America were 2.5 or even 2.2, many of our problems would be a lot more manageable.

But this demographic challenge of declining fertility rates is also a worldwide problem.  In fact, 97% of the world’s population now lives in nations with declining fertility rates.  Indeed, Japan is a powerful and compelling example of how serious the fertility rate decline can be.  Its current fertility rate is 1.3.  You might recall that in the 1980s nearly everyone looked to Japan as the rising economic power of the world.  It was buying significant parts of American real estate as well as other American assets.  But that is not the situation today.  Few see Japan as an aggressive economic powerhouse ready to take over the world.  Because of its dismal fertility rate, Japan’s population peaked in 2008 and has shrunk by a million since then.  As Last shows, “Last year, for the first time, the Japanese bought more adult diapers than diapers for babies, and more than half the country was categorized as ‘depopulated marginal land.’  At the current fertility rate, by 2100 Japan’s population will be less than half what it is now.”  For America, there is hope that we will not be another Japan.  Our immigration rate is far higher than most nations and that has helped prevent the US from careening off the demographic cliff.  The source of this immigration is of course Latin America, but the fertility rates of these nations are in decline at a rate even more extreme that the US.  Last argues that “Many countries in South America are already below replacement level, and they send very few immigrants our way.  And every other country in Central and South America is on a steep dive toward the replacement line.”  Mexico has been the source of hundreds of thousands of immigrants—both legal and illegal—into the US.  But, for the last three years there has been a net immigration of zero.  There are, of course, many reasons for this, but it does demonstrate how immigrant numbers can shift quickly.

What then are we to do as a nation?  There are political, financial and social solutions.  Changing tax policy is an important part of the solution, as well fostering innovation through sensible deregulating polices.  But these simple steps will not solve the real problem—the spiritual problem.  Biblical Christianity fosters the importance of the family and the inestimable value of children as a gift from God.  One of the key elements of human sexuality, according to Scripture, is procreation.  The Bible affirms the blessing of a man and woman whose “quiver is full of children.”  But there is one sobering and provocative issue that at its core is both ethical and spiritual—abortion.  American civilization has bought the lie that the rights of the woman are more central than the rights of the baby in that woman’s womb.  Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, the United States has sanctioned the murder of 53 million babies.  What would our demographic situation be if those 53 million babies were now adults?  Would our fertility rate be higher?  Would there be more workers funding Social Security and Medicare?  What inventions and creative, innovative solutions were not discovered or proposed because the persons who would have discovered those were killed as a baby?  America’s demographic crisis is exacerbating the debt crisis and the coming calamity of insufficient funding for both Social Security and Medicare.  But only the naïve ignore the other cause of this crisis.  The abortion holocaust has produced an unintended consequence for American civilization.  When our civilization made the ethical choice to justify abortion (the killing of a human life), it made certain that there also would be a demographic crisis.  Ethical choices such as abortion are never made in a vacuum.  Such choices have rolling consequences through the culture.  We are not only living with the shortsightedness of our leaders when it comes to the American financial condition; we are living with the consequences of placing the rights of the woman above the rights of her child.  Now there are fewer children to care for and pay the taxes to support those same women in their retirement.  Unwise and sinful ethical choices do indeed have profound consequences!

See Jonathan V. Last in the Wall Street Journal (2-3 February 2013).  PRINT PDF

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