2 of 2

Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture. I would point out to you that the word holy means "set apart," and that it is not against our tradition to be, in fact, "set apart." You can look in the Old Testament, you can look at Christian history. You will see that there were times when those who had our beliefs were in the minority, and a band of hardy monks preserved the culture while the surrounding society disintegrated.

What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public-school systems that no longer educate but instead "condition" students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes. The same thing is happening in other areas. Some people are getting rid of their televisions. Others are setting up private courts, where they can hope to find justice instead of ideology and greed.

I think that we have to look at a whole series of possibilities of bypassing the institutions that are controlled by the enemy. If we expend our energies on fighting on the "turf" they already control, we will probably not accomplish what we hope, and we may spend ourselves to the point of exhaustion. The promising thing about a strategy of separation is that it has more to do with who we are, and what we be come than it does with what the other side is doing and what we are going to do about it.

For example, the Southern Baptists, Dr. Dobson, and some other people started a boycott of Disney. We may regard this boycott in two ways. We might say, "Well, look at how much higher Disney stock is than before. The company made record profits; therefore, the boycott has failed." But the strategy I'm suggesting would see it differently. Because of that boycott, lots of people who otherwise would have been poisoned by the kind of viciously anti religious, and specifically anti-Christian, entertainment that Disney is spewing out these days have been spared contact with it. They separated themselves from some of the cultural rot, and to that extent we succeeded.

I am very concerned as I talk to young people when I find how much of the decadent culture they have absorbed without even understanding that they are a part of it. And while I'm not suggesting that we all become Amish or move to Idaho, I do think that we have to look at what we can do to separate ourselves from this hostile culture. What steps can we take to make sure that we and our children are not infected? We need some sort of quarantine.

Don't be misled by politicians who say that everything is great, that we are on the verge of this wonderful new era, thanks to technology or the stock market or whatever. These are lies. We are not in the dawn of a new civilization, but the twilight of an old one. We will be lucky if we escape with any remnants of the great Judeo-Christian civilization that we have known through the ages.

Again, I don't have all the answers or even all the questions. But I know that what we have been doing for 30 years hasn't worked, that while we have been fighting and winning in politics, our culture has decayed into something approaching barbarism. We need to take another tack, find a different strategy.

Other Religious Right articles:

Ralph Reed

Cal Thomas

Jerry Falwell

Don Eberly

James Dobson

Charles Colson

with book review by
Bruce Shelley

Copyright © 1999 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

first page |  2 of 2

share this page

September 6 1999, Vol. 43, No. 10