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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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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From Burritt Hall to India, Thailand, Latin America and Beyond

Greenville College graduates are sometimes called to serve abroad as they leave campus with a new degree and a passion for global impact. Jennifer Alig '04 puts a new spin on international service as she connects students from around the globe to Christian education in the United States.

Jennifer graduated from Greenville College in 2004, with a dual degree in speech communication and Spanish. As a brand new graduate ready to make her first professional career move, she took a job as an admissions counselor at her alma mater. Jennifer was responsible for recruiting students from the United States as well as international students. Consequently, it was her work with international students that sparked an interest for travel and helping students abroad.

Jennifer pursued a master's degree in international relations from Webster University. With a new degree in hand and connections she made through networking in higher education, she was invited to visit a few companies in the Milwaukee area. "I fell in love with the area and was offered a job at another private university, where over time, I became the associate director of international admissions."

As a student, Jennifer sought out ways to immerse herself in culture, which led her to a semester abroad in San Jose, Costa Rica. "It was a life changing experience, through which now I have had the opportunity to use Spanish in my career."  Beyond that, it was faculty and staff that made Jennifer's experience at Greenville College so rewarding. She was encouraged to think deeply about her faith, pushed to pursue her dream of teaching at the college level, and given confidence to develop herself professionally.

During her time at Concordia University, Jennifer was able to travel to India, Thailand, the Middle East and Latin America. On one of her more memorable trips, she had the opportunity to present about the college to a large group of students in India. As a way of showing their appreciation, the school paraded Jennifer and other college representatives through the streets as a band played and crowds gathered. Jennifer recalls various students asking for her autograph. She was also gifted with a traditional Indian dress made by the mother of a student she had once recruited.

In 2012, Jennifer started a new job as the associate director of international education at Cardinal Stritch University, a Franciscan university located in Milwaukee, WI. She helps incoming international students and outbound study abroad students. She also works as an adjunct professor teaching intercultural communication, speech, and student success.

As for what motivates Jennifer on a daily basis (when she's not continent hopping), it is helping students. "My work is usually stressful and not always glamorous. As with most jobs, there is a lot of meticulous paperwork in my career. The positive thing is that my paperwork helps students from Ghana or Saudi Arabia pursue an American education, or students in the United States achieve their dream of studying abroad and experiencing the world." What can be better than that?

This story was published on October 29, 2012

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Marriage and Family in America (2013)

One of the consistent themes of Issues in Perspective is the centrality of the family, the bedrock institution of civilization.  From the Christian perspective, it was the first institution God created.  From the perspective of sociology and the broader social science disciplines, the family is central to rearing children, to personal well-being and to a stable economy.  In fact, a recent report, called “The State of Our Unions,” released by the University of Virginia and Institute for American Values, buttresses the self-evident importance of the family.  Indeed, this report argues, among other things, that stable marriages and families are crucial to American society and to the American economy.  The report tracks the decline of marriage among the nearly 60% of Americans who have high school but not college educations.  Columnist Kathleen Parker summarizes one critical finding of the report:  “By one estimate cited in the report, which was written by five family scholars, the cost to taxpayers when stable families fail to form is about $112 billion annually—or more than $1 trillion per decade.”  The state of marriage in America is not disconnected to our deficit crisis; it is central to it.  For example, in the 1980s, only 13% of children were born outside of marriage among moderately educated mothers, but now that number is 44%.  But our leaders ignore this important fact.  A multitude of studies have confirmed what we intuitively already know:  Children do best when raised in a stable environment with two committed parents.

Are our leaders that short-sighted?  Are they afraid of being perceived as judgmental?  In the past there was significant concern about such issues.  Consider the famous Moynihan report in 1965 which drew the nation’s focus to the alarming rise of African-American children born out of wedlock.  In the 1990s, increased divorce rates and the growth of single motherhood produced the fatherhood movement and welfare reform.  But, as 2013 dawns, the silence about this crisis is deafening.  Elizabeth Marquardt, a major author of the University of Virginia report writes:  “Marriage is not merely a private engagement; it is also a complex social institution.  Marriage fosters small cooperative unions—also known as stable families—that enable children to thrive, shore up communities, and help family members to succeed during good times and to weather the bad times.  Researchers are finding that the disappearance of marriage in Middle America is tracking with the disappearance of the middle class in the same communities, a change that strikes at the very heart of the American Dream.”  Consequently, as Parker correctly observes, “Our current debate about the fiscal cliff and entitlement spending can’t be separated from the breakdown of marriage.  In the absence of stable families, economic and societal need increases.  And while most good-hearted should wish to help in distress, we are essentially plugging holes in leaky boats.  Shouldn’t we be building better boats?”

Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute has recently published a book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which supports the report cited above from the University of Virginia.  Indeed, he argues that fifty years ago America was somewhat united across the culture and the classic example of that unity was marriage.  But that has changed.  Among 30- to 49-year olds in the white working class, only 48% are now married.  He points out that “Single dads don’t really coach Little League teams very often.  Single moms don’t have much time to go to PTA meetings.  The community functions very differently, and the whole culture starts to collapse and change.”  In an interview published in World magazine, Murray connected several other important dots:  “The fact of getting married often concentrates people’s attention on spiritual and religious matters—but religious belief is a big prompter for getting married.  A loss of religiosity will be associated with lower marriage rates.  It’s a feedback loop…The bottom has fallen out of religious observance in the white working class.  This collapse of religiosity has profound implications for how working-class communities work:  It’s a kind of growing social disorganization that goes to the heart of what in the past made America exceptionally vibrant in community life.”  Murray thus connects religious belief, family and a strong community.  If he is accurate, and I believe he is, then America, indeed all of western civilization, is facing a crisis of immense proportions.  In America, our Founders believed rather strongly that religion, virtue and the survival of the Republic were inextricably linked.  But today, America and much of western civilization are thoroughly secular.  So, this begs an important question:  Can a secular society remain a virtuous society?  We have never really had a society as thoroughly secular as the West, and, in my opinion, it is difficult to build a virtuous society without a biblical worldview.

All of this brings me to one final question:  Can we as a civilization have values, especially Christian values, if we do not have Christian faith?  In other words, can we have cultural Christianity without having biblical Christianity?  One of the significant laments of the current generation of American parents is that their children are abandoning belief in God.  As the recent Pew study discovered, about 20% of Americans now identify themselves as having “no belief” when it comes to belief in God—and most of those are young adults under 30.  The deep-seated Christianity that so defined American civilization was replaced after World War II with a cultural Christianity that is now coming apart.  You cannot sustain a civilization on the shared memory of past faith without the spiritual power that accompanied that faith.  Cultural Christianity tries to hold on to the values and the ethics rooted in biblical Christianity but lacks the power to do so.  Therefore, young adults perceive the shallowness and superficiality of cultural Christianity and are abandoning it for a secular way of living.  Personal autonomy is now the chief value and ethic of this Postmodern culture.  And in that kind of culture virtue and community are replaced with selfishness and self-indulgence.  Marriage and family, which demand an other-centered commitment, do not fit well with that kind of cultural dynamic.

So, we are back to the beginning of this Perspective:  The decline of marriage and of the family is not an incidental cultural development.  That decline is central to our economic and financial crisis and it is absolutely the vital center of any meaningful cultural renewal.  As the family declines the state necessarily fills the vacuum.  We are thus at a major crossroads in our civilization.  Is it the family or is it the state that will be the defining unit of human experience?  As cultural Christianity gives way to a growing secular culture, the answer is the state—and that is disastrous.  The rebirth and renewal of American civilization that we all long for must begin with a renewal of the spiritual life of American civilization.  Our families, our children and our entire way of life depend on it.

A final thought:  One of my favorite holiday movies is Frank Capra’s classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmie Stewart and Donna Reed.  This Christmas I read a book entitled 52 Lessons from It’s a Wonderful Life, by Bob Welch.  Although critics often deem the movie (in the words of Mr. Potter, the movie’s antagonist) “sentimental hogwash,” Welch argues that the movie offers us solutions to life’s challenges and promotes the values, virtues and ethical framework for a life that is worth living.  Arguably a Christian, Welch presents the case that George Bailey is the richest man in Bedford Falls because of his family, his other-centered approach to life and because he lived his life in an eternally significant manner.  For George Bailey, his wife, Mary, and his children, honesty, integrity and hard work are all knitted together into the fabric of a “wonderful life.”  Mr. Potter and George Bailey are distinct opposites:  Potter represents greed, self-centeredness and the epitome of selfishness, while George Bailey represents generosity, other-centeredness and grace.  George Bailey shows us quite powerfully that the essence of life is relationships—and the most important social relationship is centered in marriage and the family.  At the beginning of the book, Welch quotes Oswald Chambers:  “The great need is not to do things, but to believe things.”  As a Christian, that “belief,” I would argue, begins with Jesus Christ and genuine biblical Christianity.  Frank Capra’s movie illustrates the difference one man—and one family—can make in a small town.  Near the beginning of his book, Welch mentions that a bank president in the Oregon town where he lives requires that all new bank employees watch It’s a Wonderful Life.  It gives focus to what really matters in life and to the importance of honesty and integrity in living a meaningful life.  Viewed through the grid of biblical Christianity, Capra’s film gives clarity to the path of cultural renewal—marriage and the family.  Make we heed this message, for the health of our marriages, our families and our civilization depend on it.

See Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post (17 December 2012) and World (3 November 2012), pp. 32-36. PRINT PDF

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