Culture Friday: Eroding ethics

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 3rd of May, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It is time for Culture Friday. And joining us now is author and speaker Katie McCoy. Katie, good morning.

KATIE McCOY: Good morning, Nick, and Myrna.

EICHER: All right. Well, let's talk about these campus protests, Katie. We have discussed this on Culture Friday at different levels over the last few weeks. And frankly, I think I misjudged. I thought it'd be over by now, but it's just continued on. And we know now that the number of arrests have exceeded 2,000 as of this week, and it's really been something.

But let me call special attention to a young man who tried to stand in the way of a mob. This was a sea of anti-Israel activists. They were intent on seizing a building on the Columbia University campus. I happened to notice that this was the son of the author N.D. Wilson, the grandson of theologian and pastor Douglas Wilson. Now I looked at a video of that on social media. You saw it to Katie. Right now, we're hearing some audio from that video. But it really is all about the video. Wilson's friend was pretty quickly moved out of the way. But you'll see this one single kid making a stand against the mob. And it just looked terrifying to me, especially in the United States of America. The building, it eventually was taken over and then taken back by New York City's finest. But what in the world do you think is going on here?

McCOY: Yeah, that young man just had pure courage to do what he did. And thank God that he's okay. It could have gone very badly for him. And we're hearing some other stories of young people standing up to these mobs. It's really unfair to even call the ones that we're seeing on TV at places like Columbia and UCLA a protest because of just the the degree of violence and destruction that's happening there. In terms of why, that brings up two very interesting points. So let's talk about how we got here and then let's talk about why it's so familiar.

So in terms of how we got here, we are living in the age of identity politics. And scholar writer Mary Eberstadt wrote in her book, Primal Screams, that part of why we have people acting so irrationally when you disagree with them, is because identity politics has taken the place of one's center of self-understanding, and one's place in society. Eberstadt chronicles how, with the decline of family life of religious life, those aspects of how we organize our understanding of who we are and our place in society, have been replaced by political ideas and political beliefs. So if all that sounds very familiar to things that you hear in the public square today, that's why.

But then there's another factor to this, Nick, and here's where it gets really interesting. Now, in 1930s Germany, that country was being overrun by one extreme political idea on the political right. Now, that's very different from what we're seeing, we're seeing an extreme on the political left. However, there are some fascinating points of commonality. And I think we would do well, to pause and take note of them. You know, we come to important dates like Holocaust Memorial Day. We say never again, and well, we should. But as much as we are aware of the atrocities of the Holocaust, we're not always aware of the years of cultural shift that produced a nation that went along with those atrocities. For instance, the Nazi Socialist Party started off as a fringe ideological group, one that gained influence in a very culturally vulnerable nation. They disseminated misinformation about history. They had a lot of propaganda that was very divorced from facts. Everyday citizens, they looked the other way because it was politically expedient. And it was socially expected. Even evangelicalism in Germany had been eroding and being deeply affected by not only the political life, but it ended up really abdicating its moral authority. And on top of that, if I can just step on all the toes while I'm here today, you know, when we hear about Christian influencers and evangelical thought leaders who have been nothing short of scandalized in recent years, by political influence from the right when it produces certain forms of Christian nationalism, but then they have been relatively silenced by the political influence from the left when it produces anti-Semitism. I take note of that, Nick, and I hope your listeners do, too.

BROWN: Okay, you mentioned stepping on toes. Let me stir the pot a little more here. Just this week at the General Conference of The United Methodist Church, delegates removed—with no debate, mind you—a long-standing rule that for decades forbade self-avowed practicing homosexuals from being ordained or appointed as ministers. The vote was 692-51. Apparently the conservatives who had upheld the ban in the past, you know, left the denomination, making it easier for the conference, at least here in the United States to move in this direction. I'd like to focus on this statement, Katie. The change doesn't mandate or explicitly affirm LGBTQ clergy, it just means the Church no longer forbids them. You know, I've heard that so-called distinction used before in the culture. What does it even mean?

McCOY: Yeah, I think the best explanation of that likely is a distinction without a difference, because certainly it is opening the door to an increasingly progressive mainline Protestant denomination to move towards LGBTQ affirming lifestyles and choices. You know, Myrna, even this I think we can connect this to the upheaval that we're seeing nationwide. It all fits in the same cultural moment. And lest you think that I might be exaggerating this, consider that in pre-Nazi Germany, evangelicalism had been eroding and becoming a version that was culturally acceptable, but biblically unsupported, and at that time it was arguing for things like Jonah in the whale was just a myth, or Jesus didn't walk on the water, it was a sandbar. So to de-mythologize, or take the miracles out of the Bible, in that time, was perceived to make Christianity more culturally acceptable.

Fast forward to here we are in the 2020s. In America, we are in a very similar moment where we see mainline denominations and popular personalities adapting Christian doctrine to fit what is culturally acceptable. Now, however, it's not so much about whether the virgin birth or the resurrection actually happened - today, it primarily means denying a biblical sexual ethic, and then also importing different cultural progressive ideas into our doctrine. I think, one that I heard recently was the idea that the Tower of Babel was actually about anti-colonialism. And so here we have another trend in evangelicalism trying to import and introduce political ideas into our doctrine rather than allow our doctrine to inform our political ideas.

EICHER: Well, Katie, last item. A decision by the Biden administration this week to reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous drug. Now, I'll not go into the legal particulars. It's pretty technical, but the Associated Press had a completely political take on this. Let me read a bit from the story. “Facing softening support from a left-leaning voter group that will be crucial to his reelection hopes in November, Biden has made a number of election year moves, intended to appeal in particular to younger voters. His move toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug is just the latest coming weeks after he canceled student loans for another 200,000 borrowers. He's also made abortion rights central to his case for re-election.” Now there's more to the story. But I think that's basically the gist. And maybe the AP is right, but I'm just thinking that the one thing we know is this generation of young people is highly stressed. And given what's been called a mental health crisis, among lots of young people. Is it really a good idea to make pot easier to get?

McCOY: Oh, my goodness, I'm so glad you brought this up. Because when you think about the last four years, all of the significant learning loss that students have endured after COVID and school shutdowns, the epidemic of anxiety and depression. I have even heard it said that today's average teenager has the same mental health issues as the average psychiatric patient did in the 1950s. We are not an emotionally or mentally healthy society. And so certainly we can look at it with the cynicism of an election year to say, “Oh, they're trying to drum up support from some other faction of the population,” but if we really start asking about whether law should be reflecting the common good, this is quite disappointing. I just can't imagine a world where we have the headlines about lower math scores and reading levels and people thinking, "I know what we need to do: let's make pot easier to find."

BROWN: Katie McCoy is an author and speaker. Her most recent book is titled To Be a Woman: The Confusion over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond. Thanks so much, Katie.

McCOY: Always good to be with you.

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