Got the tree up, my Christmas cards sent, and all but two gifts bought. Time to relaxe and make some cookies.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Ready for Christmas
Got the tree up, my Christmas cards sent, and all but two gifts bought. Time to relaxe and make some cookies.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
The Season of Advent
The Season of Advent
Anticipation and Hope
Dennis Bratcher
The Colors of Advent The Spirit of Advent Evergreens and The Advent Wreath
Celebrating Advent An Advent Reflection
Advent is the beginning of the Church Year for most churches in the Western tradition. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, which is the Sunday nearest November 30, and ends on Christmas Eve (Dec 24). If Christmas Eve is a Sunday, it is counted as the fourth Sunday of Advent, with Christmas Eve proper beginning at sundown.
The Colors of Advent
Historically, the primary sanctuary color of Advent is Purple. This is the color of penitence and fasting as well as the color of royalty to welcome the Advent of the King. Purple is still used in Catholic churches. The purple of Advent is also the color of suffering used during Lent and Holy Week. This points to an important connection between Jesus’ birth and death. The nativity, the Incarnation, cannot be separated from the crucifixion. The purpose of Jesus’ coming into the world, of the "Word made flesh" and dwelling among us, is to reveal God and His grace to the world through Jesus’ life and teaching, but also through his suffering, death, and resurrection. To reflect this emphasis, originally Advent was a time of penitence and fasting, much as the Season of Lent and so shared the color of Lent.
In the four weeks of Advent the third Sunday came to be a time of rejoicing that the fasting was almost over (in some traditions it is called Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for "rejoice"). The shift from the purple of the Season to pink or rose for the third Sunday Advent candles reflected this lessening emphasis on penitence as attention turned more to celebration of the season.
In recent times, however, Advent has undergone a shift in emphasis, reflected in a change of colors used in many churches. Except in the Eastern churches, the penitential aspect of the Season has been almost totally replaced by an emphasis on hope and anticipation.
In many churches the third Sunday remains the Sunday of Joy marked by pink or rose. However, most Protestant churches now use blue to distinguish the Season of Advent from Lent. Royal Blue is sometimes used as a symbol of royalty. Some churches use Bright Blue to symbolize the night sky, the anticipation of the impending announcement of the King’s coming, or to symbolize the waters of Genesis 1, the beginning of a new creation. Some churches, including some Catholic churches, use blue violet to preserve the traditional use of purple while providing a visual distinction between the purple or red violet of Lent.
This does not eliminate any sense of penitence from the Season. With the focus on the Advent or Coming of Jesus, especially in anticipating His Second Advent, there remains a need for preparation for that coming. Most liturgical churches incorporate confessional prayers into the service that relate to a sense of unworthiness as we anticipate His Coming. It is appropriate even in more traditional services of worship to incorporate confessional prayers as part of the anticipation and preparation of the Season.
With the shift to blue for Advent in most non-Catholic churches, there is also a tendency to move pink to the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It still remains associated with Joy, but is sometimes used as the climax of the Advent Season on the last Sunday before Christmas.
Red and Green are more secular colors of Christmas. Although they derive from older European practices of using evergreens and holly to symbolize ongoing life and hope that Christ’s birth brings into a cold world, they are never used as liturgical colors during Advent since they have other uses in other parts of the church year (see Colors of the Church Year).
The word Advent means "coming" or "arrival." The focus of the entire season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Christ in his First Advent, and the anticipation of the return of Christ the King in his Second Advent. Thus, Advent is far more than simply marking a 2,000 year old event in history. It is celebrating a truth about God, the revelation of God in Christ whereby all of creation might be reconciled to God. That is a process in which we now participate, and the consummation of which we anticipate. Scripture reading for Advent will reflect this emphasis on the Second Advent, including themes of accountability for faithfulness at His coming, judgment on sin, and the hope of eternal life.
In this double focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of individuals and a congregation, as they affirm that Christ has come, that He is present in the world today, and that He will come again in power. That acknowledgment provides a basis for Kingdom ethics, for holy living arising from a profound sense that we live "between the times" and are called to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people. So, as the church celebrates God’s inbreaking into history in the Incarnation, and anticipates a future consummation to that history for which "all creation is groaning awaiting its redemption," it also confesses its own responsibility as a people commissioned to "love the Lord your God with all your heart" and to "love your neighbor as yourself."
The Spirit of Advent
Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt as they cried out from their bitter oppression. It is the cry of those who have experienced the tyranny of injustice in a world under the curse of sin, and yet who have hope of deliverance by a God who has heard the cries of oppressed slaves and brought deliverance!
It is that hope, however faint at times, and that God, however distant He sometimes seems, which brings to the world the anticipation of a King who will rule with truth and justice and righteousness over His people and in His creation. It is that hope that once anticipated, and now anticipates anew, the reign of an Anointed One, a Messiah, who will bring peace and justice and righteousness to the world.
Part of the expectation also anticipates a judgment on sin and a calling of the world to accountability before God. We long for God to come and set the world right! Yet, as the prophet Amos warned, the expectation of a coming judgment at the "Day of the Lord" may not be the day of light that we might want, because the penetrating light of God’s judgment on sin will shine just as brightly on God’s people.
Because of this important truth, especially in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Season of Advent has been a time of fasting and penitence for sins similar to the Season of Lent. However, a different emphasis for the season of Advent has gradually unfolded in much of the rest of the church. The season of Advent has come to be celebrated more in terms of expectation or anticipation. Yet, the anticipation of the Coming of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament and Judaism was not in connection with remembrance of sins. Rather, it was in the context of oppression and injustice, the longing for redemption, not from personal guilt and sin but from the systemic evil of the world expressed in evil empires and tyrants. It is in that sense that all creation groans for its redemption as we witness the evil that so dominates our world (Rom 8:18-25).
Of course, there is the problem of longing for vindication from an evil world when we are contributors to that evil. This is the power of the images of Amos when he warns about longing for the "Day of the Lord" that will really be a day of darkness (Amos 5:18-20). Still, even with Amos’ warning the time of Advent is one of expectation and anticipation, a longing for God's actions to restore all things and vindicate the righteous. This is why during Advent we as Christians also anticipate the Second Coming as a twin theme of the season. So, while some church traditions focus on penitence during Advent, and there remains a place for that, the spirit of that expectation from the Old Testament is better captured with a joyous sense of expectancy. Rather than a time of mourning and fasting, Advent is celebrated as a time of joy and happiness as we await the coming of the King. (see Can We Sing Christmas Carols During Advent?)
There will be time enough during the rest of the journey through the Church Year to remember our sins. It begins in Epiphany when we hear about the brotherhood of the Kingdom, and realize our failure to effect it. Then as we move toward and through Lent we realize that the coming of Jesus served more to lay bare our own sin than it did to vindicate our righteousness. There will be time to shed Peter's bitter tears as we realize that what started with such possibility and expectation has apparently ended in such failure.
It is only as we experience that full cycle, beginning with unbridled joy in Advent that slowly fades into the realization of what we have done with and to the Christ, that the awful reality of Good Friday can have its full impact. And in that realization we can finally be ready to hear the Good News on Resurrection Sunday! That is the journey that the disciples took. And so there is value in taking the same journey beginning with the anticipation and joy of Advent!
So, we celebrate with gladness the great promise in the Advent, yet knowing that there is also a somber tone as the theme of threat is added to the theme of promise. This is reflected in some of the Scripture readings for Advent, in which there is a strong prophetic tone of accountability and judgment on sin. But this is also faithful to the role of the Coming King who comes to rule, save, and judge the world.
Because of the dual themes of threat and promise, Advent is a time of preparation that is marked by prayer. While Lent is characterized by fasting and a spirit of penitence, Advent’s prayers are prayers of humble devotion and commitment, prayers of submission, prayers for deliverance, prayers from those walking in darkness who are awaiting and anticipating a great light (Isa 9)!
The spirit of Advent is expressed well in the parable of the bridesmaids who are anxiously awaiting the coming of the Bridegroom (Matt 25:1-13). There is profound joy at the Bridegroom’s expected coming. And yet a warning of the need for preparation echoes through the parable. But even then, the prayer of Advent is still:
Come, O Come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel!
Evergreens and The Advent Wreath
The beginning of Advent is a time for the hanging of the green, decoration of the church with evergreen wreaths, boughs, or trees that help to symbolize the new and everlasting life brought through Jesus the Christ. Some churches have a special weekday service, or the first Sunday evening of Advent, or even the first Sunday morning of Advent, in which the church is decorated and the Advent wreath put in place. This service is most often primarily of music, especially choir and hand bells, and Scripture reading, along with an explanation of the various symbols as they are placed in the sanctuary.
The Advent wreath is an increasingly popular symbol of the beginning of the Church year in many churches as well as homes. It is a circular evergreen wreath (real or artificial) with five candles, four around the wreath and one in the center. Since the wreath is symbolic and a vehicle to tell the Christmas story, there are various ways to understand the symbolism. The exact meaning given to the various aspects of the wreath is not as important as the story to which it invites us to listen, and participate.
The circle of the wreath reminds us of God Himself, His eternity and endless mercy, which has no beginning or end. The green of the wreath speaks of the hope that we have in God, the hope of newness, of renewal, of eternal life. Candles symbolize the light of God coming into the world through the birth of His son. The four outer candles represent the period of waiting during the four Sundays of Advent, which themselves symbolize the four centuries of waiting between the prophet Malachi and the birth of Christ.
The colors of the candles vary with different traditions, but there are usually three purple or blue candles, corresponding to the sanctuary colors of Advent, and one pink or rose candle. One of the purple candles is lighted the first Sunday of Advent, a Scripture is read, a short devotional or reading is given, and a prayer offered. On subsequent Sundays, previous candles are relighted with an additional one lighted. The pink candle is usually lighted on the third Sunday of Advent. However, different churches or traditions light the pink candle on different Sundays depending on the symbolism used (see above on Colors of Advent). In Churches that use a Service of the Nativity, it is often lighted on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the final Sunday before Christmas.
The light of the candles itself becomes an important symbol of the season. The light reminds us that Jesus is the light of the world that comes into the darkness of our lives to bring newness, life, and hope. It also reminds us that we are called to be a light to the world as we reflect the light of God's grace to others (Isa 42:6). The progression in the lighting of the candles symbolizes the various aspects of our waiting experience. As the candles are lighted over the four week period, it also symbolizes the darkness of fear and hopelessness receding and the shadows of sin falling away as more and more light is shed into the world. The flame of each new candle reminds the worshippers that something is happening, and that more is yet to come. Finally, the light that has come into the world is plainly visible as the Christ candle is lighted at Christmas, and worshippers rejoice over the fact that the promise of long ago has been realized.
The first candle is traditionally the candle of Expectation or Hope (or in some traditions, Prophecy). This draws attention to the anticipation of the coming of a Messiah that weaves its way like a golden thread through Old Testament history. As God’s people were abused by power hungry kings, led astray by self-centered prophets, and lulled into apathy by half-hearted religious leaders, there arose a longing among some for God to raise up a new king who could show them how to be God’s people. They yearned for a return of God’s dynamic presence in their midst.
And so, God revealed to some of the prophets that indeed He would not leave His people without a true Shepherd. While they expected a new earthly king, their expectations fell far short of God’s revelation of Himself in Christ. And yet, the world is not yet fully redeemed. So, we again with expectation, with hope, await God’s new work in history, the second Advent, in which He will again reveal Himself to the world. And we understand in a profound sense that the best, the highest of our expectations will fall far short of what our Lord’s Second Advent will reveal!
The remaining three candles of Advent may be associated with different aspects of the Advent story in different churches, or even in different years. Usually they are organized around characters or themes as a way to unfold the story and direct attention to the celebrations and worship in the season. So, the sequence for the remaining three Sundays might be Bethlehem, Shepherds, Angels. Or Love, Joy, Peace. Or John the Baptist, Mary, the Magi. Or the Annunciation, Proclamation, Fulfillment. Whatever sequence is used, the Scripture readings, prayers, lighting of the candles, the participation of worshipers in the service, all are geared to telling the story of redemption through God’s grace in the Incarnation.
The third candle, usually for the Third Sunday of Advent, is traditionally Pink or Rose, and symbolizes Joy at the soon Advent of the Christ. It marks a shift from the more solemn tone of the first two Sundays of Advent that focus on Preparation and Hope, to a more joyous atmosphere of anticipation and expectancy. Sometimes the colors of the sanctuary and vestments are also changed to Rose for this Sunday. As noted above, in some churches the pink Advent candle is used on the fourth Sunday to mark the joy at the impending Nativity of Jesus.
Whatever sequence is adopted for these Sundays, the theme of Joy can still be the focus for the pink candle. For example, when using the third Sunday to commemorate the visit of the Magi the focus can be on the Joy of worshipping the new found King. Or the Shepherds as the symbol for the third Sunday brings to mind the joy of the proclamation made to them in the fields, and the adoration expressed as they knelt before the Child at the manager. If used on the fourth Sunday of Advent, it can symbolize the Joy in fulfilled hope.
The center candle is white and is called the Christ Candle. It is traditionally lighted on Christmas Eve or Day. However, since many Protestant churches do not have services on those days, many light it on the Sunday preceding Christmas, with all five candles continuing to be lighted in services through Epiphany (Jan 6). The central location of the Christ Candle reminds us that the incarnation is the heart of the season, giving light to the world.
Celebrating Advent
Advent is one of the few Christian festivals that can be observed in the home as well as at church. In its association with Christmas, Advent is a natural time to involve children in activities at home that directly connect with worship at church. In the home an Advent wreath is often placed on the dining table and the candles lighted at meals, with Scripture readings preceding the lighting of the candles, especially on Sunday. A new candle is lighted each Sunday during the four weeks, and then the same candles are lighted each meal during the week. In this context, it provides the opportunity for family devotion and prayer together, and helps teach the Faith to children, especially if they are involved in reading the daily Scriptures.
It is common in many homes to try to mark the beginning of Advent in other ways as well, for the same purpose of instruction in the faith. Some families decorate the house for the beginning of Advent, or bake special cookies or treats, or simply begin to use table coverings for meals. An Advent Calendar is a way to keep children involved in the entire season. There are a wide variety of Advent calendars, but usually they are simply a card or poster with windows that can be opened, one each day of Advent, to reveal some symbol or picture associated with the Old Testament story leading up to the birth of Jesus. One unique and specialized Advent calendar that can be used either in the home or the sanctuary is a Jesse Tree. (We have available an online Advent calendar with devotionals for each day of Advent as well as Christmas through Epiphany Day: NazNet's Advent and Christmas Celebration). All of these provide opportunities to teach children the significance of this sacred time, and to remind ourselves of it as well.
In congregational worship, the Advent wreath is the central teaching symbol of the season, the focal point for drawing the congregation into the beginning of the story of redemption that will unfold throughout the church year. For this reason, members of the congregation are often involved in lighting the Advent candles and reading the appropriate Scriptures each Sunday. While in some churches it is customary for this to be done by families, it can also be an especially good opportunity to demonstrate the unity of the entire community of Faith by including those without families, such as those never married, divorced, widowed, elderly who live by themselves, or college students away from home.
Small Things and Possibility: An Advent Reflection
We live in a world in which bigger and better define our expectations for much of life. We have become so enamored by super size, super stars, and high definition that we tend to view life through a lens that so magnifies what we expect out of the world that we tend not to see potential in small things. But as the prophet Zechariah reminds us (Zech 4:10), we should not "despise the day of small things," because God does some of his best work with small beginnings and impossible situations.
It is truly a humbling experience to read back through the Old Testament and see how frail and imperfect all the "heroes" actually are. Abraham, the coward who cannot believe the promise. Jacob, the cheat who struggles with everybody. Joseph, the immature and arrogant teen. Moses, the impatient murderer who cannot wait for God. Gideon, the cowardly Baal-worshipper. Samson, the womanizing drunk. David, the power abusing adulterer. Solomon, the unwise wise man. Hezekiah, the reforming king who could not quite go far enough. And finally, a very young Jewish girl from a small village in a remote corner of a great empire.
It never ceases to amaze me that God often begins with small things and inadequate people. It certainly seems that God could have chosen "bigger" things and "better" people to do His work in the world. Yet if God can use them, and reveal Himself through them in such marvelous ways, it means that He might be able to use me, inadequate, and unwise, and too often lacking in faith that I am. And it means that I need to be careful that I do not in my own self-righteousness put limits on what God can do with the smallest things, the most unlikely of people, in the most hopeless of circumstances. I think that is part of the wonder of the Advent Season.
I am convinced that one of the main purposes of the incarnation of Jesus was to provide hope. While most people today want to talk about the death of Jesus and the Atonement of sins, the early Church celebrated the Resurrection and the hope it embodied. It was a proclamation of a truth that rang throughout the Old Testament, that endings are not always endings but are opportunities for God to bring new beginnings. The Resurrection proclaimed that truth even about humanity’s greatest fear, death itself.
Both the season of Advent and the season of Lent are about hope. It is not just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of pain and suffering, although that is certainly a significant part of it. It is more about hope that human existence has meaning and possibility beyond our present experiences, a hope that the limits of our lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be. It is not that we have possibility in ourselves, but that God is a God of new things and so all things are possible (Isa 42:9, Mt 19:26, Mk 14:36)
God's people in the first century wanted Him to come and change their oppressive circumstances, and were angry when those immediate circumstances did not change. But that is a short sighted view of the nature of hope. Our hope cannot be in circumstances, no matter how badly we want them or how important they are to us. The reality of human existence, with which the Book of Job struggles, is that God's people experience that physical existence in the same way that others do. Christians get sick and die, Christians are victims of violent crimes, and Christians are hurt and killed in traffic accidents, bombings, war, and in some parts of the world, famine (see The Problem of Natural Evil).
If our hope is only in our circumstances, as we define them to be good or as we want them to be to make us happy, we will always be disappointed. That is why we hope, not in circumstances, but in God. He has continually, over the span of four thousand years, revealed himself to be a God of newness, of possibility, of redemption, the recovery or transformation of possibility from endings that goes beyond what we can think or even imagine (Eph 3:2). The best example of that is the crucifixion itself, followed by the resurrection. That shadow of the cross falls even over the manger.
Yet, it all begins in the hope that God will come and come again into our world to reveal himself as a God of newness, of possibility, a God of new things. This time of year we contemplate that hope embodied, enfleshed, incarnated, in a newborn baby, the perfect example of newness, potential, and possibility. During Advent, we groan and long for that newness with the hope, the expectation, indeed the faith, that God will once again be faithful to see our circumstances, to hear our cries, to know our longings for a better world and a whole life (Ex 3:7). And we hope that as he first came as an infant, so he will come again as King! (See The Second Coming)
My experience tells me that those who have suffered and still hope understand far more about God and about life than those who have not. Maybe that is what hope is about: a way to live, not just to survive, but to live authentically amidst all the problems of life with a Faith that continues to see possibility when there is no present evidence of it, just because God is God. That is also the wonder of Advent.
Anticipation and Hope
Dennis Bratcher
The Colors of Advent The Spirit of Advent Evergreens and The Advent Wreath
Celebrating Advent An Advent Reflection
Advent is the beginning of the Church Year for most churches in the Western tradition. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, which is the Sunday nearest November 30, and ends on Christmas Eve (Dec 24). If Christmas Eve is a Sunday, it is counted as the fourth Sunday of Advent, with Christmas Eve proper beginning at sundown.
The Colors of Advent
Historically, the primary sanctuary color of Advent is Purple. This is the color of penitence and fasting as well as the color of royalty to welcome the Advent of the King. Purple is still used in Catholic churches. The purple of Advent is also the color of suffering used during Lent and Holy Week. This points to an important connection between Jesus’ birth and death. The nativity, the Incarnation, cannot be separated from the crucifixion. The purpose of Jesus’ coming into the world, of the "Word made flesh" and dwelling among us, is to reveal God and His grace to the world through Jesus’ life and teaching, but also through his suffering, death, and resurrection. To reflect this emphasis, originally Advent was a time of penitence and fasting, much as the Season of Lent and so shared the color of Lent.
In the four weeks of Advent the third Sunday came to be a time of rejoicing that the fasting was almost over (in some traditions it is called Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for "rejoice"). The shift from the purple of the Season to pink or rose for the third Sunday Advent candles reflected this lessening emphasis on penitence as attention turned more to celebration of the season.
In recent times, however, Advent has undergone a shift in emphasis, reflected in a change of colors used in many churches. Except in the Eastern churches, the penitential aspect of the Season has been almost totally replaced by an emphasis on hope and anticipation.
In many churches the third Sunday remains the Sunday of Joy marked by pink or rose. However, most Protestant churches now use blue to distinguish the Season of Advent from Lent. Royal Blue is sometimes used as a symbol of royalty. Some churches use Bright Blue to symbolize the night sky, the anticipation of the impending announcement of the King’s coming, or to symbolize the waters of Genesis 1, the beginning of a new creation. Some churches, including some Catholic churches, use blue violet to preserve the traditional use of purple while providing a visual distinction between the purple or red violet of Lent.
This does not eliminate any sense of penitence from the Season. With the focus on the Advent or Coming of Jesus, especially in anticipating His Second Advent, there remains a need for preparation for that coming. Most liturgical churches incorporate confessional prayers into the service that relate to a sense of unworthiness as we anticipate His Coming. It is appropriate even in more traditional services of worship to incorporate confessional prayers as part of the anticipation and preparation of the Season.
With the shift to blue for Advent in most non-Catholic churches, there is also a tendency to move pink to the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It still remains associated with Joy, but is sometimes used as the climax of the Advent Season on the last Sunday before Christmas.
Red and Green are more secular colors of Christmas. Although they derive from older European practices of using evergreens and holly to symbolize ongoing life and hope that Christ’s birth brings into a cold world, they are never used as liturgical colors during Advent since they have other uses in other parts of the church year (see Colors of the Church Year).
The word Advent means "coming" or "arrival." The focus of the entire season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Christ in his First Advent, and the anticipation of the return of Christ the King in his Second Advent. Thus, Advent is far more than simply marking a 2,000 year old event in history. It is celebrating a truth about God, the revelation of God in Christ whereby all of creation might be reconciled to God. That is a process in which we now participate, and the consummation of which we anticipate. Scripture reading for Advent will reflect this emphasis on the Second Advent, including themes of accountability for faithfulness at His coming, judgment on sin, and the hope of eternal life.
In this double focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of individuals and a congregation, as they affirm that Christ has come, that He is present in the world today, and that He will come again in power. That acknowledgment provides a basis for Kingdom ethics, for holy living arising from a profound sense that we live "between the times" and are called to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people. So, as the church celebrates God’s inbreaking into history in the Incarnation, and anticipates a future consummation to that history for which "all creation is groaning awaiting its redemption," it also confesses its own responsibility as a people commissioned to "love the Lord your God with all your heart" and to "love your neighbor as yourself."
The Spirit of Advent
Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by Israelite slaves in Egypt as they cried out from their bitter oppression. It is the cry of those who have experienced the tyranny of injustice in a world under the curse of sin, and yet who have hope of deliverance by a God who has heard the cries of oppressed slaves and brought deliverance!
It is that hope, however faint at times, and that God, however distant He sometimes seems, which brings to the world the anticipation of a King who will rule with truth and justice and righteousness over His people and in His creation. It is that hope that once anticipated, and now anticipates anew, the reign of an Anointed One, a Messiah, who will bring peace and justice and righteousness to the world.
Part of the expectation also anticipates a judgment on sin and a calling of the world to accountability before God. We long for God to come and set the world right! Yet, as the prophet Amos warned, the expectation of a coming judgment at the "Day of the Lord" may not be the day of light that we might want, because the penetrating light of God’s judgment on sin will shine just as brightly on God’s people.
Because of this important truth, especially in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Season of Advent has been a time of fasting and penitence for sins similar to the Season of Lent. However, a different emphasis for the season of Advent has gradually unfolded in much of the rest of the church. The season of Advent has come to be celebrated more in terms of expectation or anticipation. Yet, the anticipation of the Coming of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament and Judaism was not in connection with remembrance of sins. Rather, it was in the context of oppression and injustice, the longing for redemption, not from personal guilt and sin but from the systemic evil of the world expressed in evil empires and tyrants. It is in that sense that all creation groans for its redemption as we witness the evil that so dominates our world (Rom 8:18-25).
Of course, there is the problem of longing for vindication from an evil world when we are contributors to that evil. This is the power of the images of Amos when he warns about longing for the "Day of the Lord" that will really be a day of darkness (Amos 5:18-20). Still, even with Amos’ warning the time of Advent is one of expectation and anticipation, a longing for God's actions to restore all things and vindicate the righteous. This is why during Advent we as Christians also anticipate the Second Coming as a twin theme of the season. So, while some church traditions focus on penitence during Advent, and there remains a place for that, the spirit of that expectation from the Old Testament is better captured with a joyous sense of expectancy. Rather than a time of mourning and fasting, Advent is celebrated as a time of joy and happiness as we await the coming of the King. (see Can We Sing Christmas Carols During Advent?)
There will be time enough during the rest of the journey through the Church Year to remember our sins. It begins in Epiphany when we hear about the brotherhood of the Kingdom, and realize our failure to effect it. Then as we move toward and through Lent we realize that the coming of Jesus served more to lay bare our own sin than it did to vindicate our righteousness. There will be time to shed Peter's bitter tears as we realize that what started with such possibility and expectation has apparently ended in such failure.
It is only as we experience that full cycle, beginning with unbridled joy in Advent that slowly fades into the realization of what we have done with and to the Christ, that the awful reality of Good Friday can have its full impact. And in that realization we can finally be ready to hear the Good News on Resurrection Sunday! That is the journey that the disciples took. And so there is value in taking the same journey beginning with the anticipation and joy of Advent!
So, we celebrate with gladness the great promise in the Advent, yet knowing that there is also a somber tone as the theme of threat is added to the theme of promise. This is reflected in some of the Scripture readings for Advent, in which there is a strong prophetic tone of accountability and judgment on sin. But this is also faithful to the role of the Coming King who comes to rule, save, and judge the world.
Because of the dual themes of threat and promise, Advent is a time of preparation that is marked by prayer. While Lent is characterized by fasting and a spirit of penitence, Advent’s prayers are prayers of humble devotion and commitment, prayers of submission, prayers for deliverance, prayers from those walking in darkness who are awaiting and anticipating a great light (Isa 9)!
The spirit of Advent is expressed well in the parable of the bridesmaids who are anxiously awaiting the coming of the Bridegroom (Matt 25:1-13). There is profound joy at the Bridegroom’s expected coming. And yet a warning of the need for preparation echoes through the parable. But even then, the prayer of Advent is still:
Come, O Come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel!
Evergreens and The Advent Wreath
The beginning of Advent is a time for the hanging of the green, decoration of the church with evergreen wreaths, boughs, or trees that help to symbolize the new and everlasting life brought through Jesus the Christ. Some churches have a special weekday service, or the first Sunday evening of Advent, or even the first Sunday morning of Advent, in which the church is decorated and the Advent wreath put in place. This service is most often primarily of music, especially choir and hand bells, and Scripture reading, along with an explanation of the various symbols as they are placed in the sanctuary.
The Advent wreath is an increasingly popular symbol of the beginning of the Church year in many churches as well as homes. It is a circular evergreen wreath (real or artificial) with five candles, four around the wreath and one in the center. Since the wreath is symbolic and a vehicle to tell the Christmas story, there are various ways to understand the symbolism. The exact meaning given to the various aspects of the wreath is not as important as the story to which it invites us to listen, and participate.
The circle of the wreath reminds us of God Himself, His eternity and endless mercy, which has no beginning or end. The green of the wreath speaks of the hope that we have in God, the hope of newness, of renewal, of eternal life. Candles symbolize the light of God coming into the world through the birth of His son. The four outer candles represent the period of waiting during the four Sundays of Advent, which themselves symbolize the four centuries of waiting between the prophet Malachi and the birth of Christ.
The colors of the candles vary with different traditions, but there are usually three purple or blue candles, corresponding to the sanctuary colors of Advent, and one pink or rose candle. One of the purple candles is lighted the first Sunday of Advent, a Scripture is read, a short devotional or reading is given, and a prayer offered. On subsequent Sundays, previous candles are relighted with an additional one lighted. The pink candle is usually lighted on the third Sunday of Advent. However, different churches or traditions light the pink candle on different Sundays depending on the symbolism used (see above on Colors of Advent). In Churches that use a Service of the Nativity, it is often lighted on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the final Sunday before Christmas.
The light of the candles itself becomes an important symbol of the season. The light reminds us that Jesus is the light of the world that comes into the darkness of our lives to bring newness, life, and hope. It also reminds us that we are called to be a light to the world as we reflect the light of God's grace to others (Isa 42:6). The progression in the lighting of the candles symbolizes the various aspects of our waiting experience. As the candles are lighted over the four week period, it also symbolizes the darkness of fear and hopelessness receding and the shadows of sin falling away as more and more light is shed into the world. The flame of each new candle reminds the worshippers that something is happening, and that more is yet to come. Finally, the light that has come into the world is plainly visible as the Christ candle is lighted at Christmas, and worshippers rejoice over the fact that the promise of long ago has been realized.
The first candle is traditionally the candle of Expectation or Hope (or in some traditions, Prophecy). This draws attention to the anticipation of the coming of a Messiah that weaves its way like a golden thread through Old Testament history. As God’s people were abused by power hungry kings, led astray by self-centered prophets, and lulled into apathy by half-hearted religious leaders, there arose a longing among some for God to raise up a new king who could show them how to be God’s people. They yearned for a return of God’s dynamic presence in their midst.
And so, God revealed to some of the prophets that indeed He would not leave His people without a true Shepherd. While they expected a new earthly king, their expectations fell far short of God’s revelation of Himself in Christ. And yet, the world is not yet fully redeemed. So, we again with expectation, with hope, await God’s new work in history, the second Advent, in which He will again reveal Himself to the world. And we understand in a profound sense that the best, the highest of our expectations will fall far short of what our Lord’s Second Advent will reveal!
The remaining three candles of Advent may be associated with different aspects of the Advent story in different churches, or even in different years. Usually they are organized around characters or themes as a way to unfold the story and direct attention to the celebrations and worship in the season. So, the sequence for the remaining three Sundays might be Bethlehem, Shepherds, Angels. Or Love, Joy, Peace. Or John the Baptist, Mary, the Magi. Or the Annunciation, Proclamation, Fulfillment. Whatever sequence is used, the Scripture readings, prayers, lighting of the candles, the participation of worshipers in the service, all are geared to telling the story of redemption through God’s grace in the Incarnation.
The third candle, usually for the Third Sunday of Advent, is traditionally Pink or Rose, and symbolizes Joy at the soon Advent of the Christ. It marks a shift from the more solemn tone of the first two Sundays of Advent that focus on Preparation and Hope, to a more joyous atmosphere of anticipation and expectancy. Sometimes the colors of the sanctuary and vestments are also changed to Rose for this Sunday. As noted above, in some churches the pink Advent candle is used on the fourth Sunday to mark the joy at the impending Nativity of Jesus.
Whatever sequence is adopted for these Sundays, the theme of Joy can still be the focus for the pink candle. For example, when using the third Sunday to commemorate the visit of the Magi the focus can be on the Joy of worshipping the new found King. Or the Shepherds as the symbol for the third Sunday brings to mind the joy of the proclamation made to them in the fields, and the adoration expressed as they knelt before the Child at the manager. If used on the fourth Sunday of Advent, it can symbolize the Joy in fulfilled hope.
The center candle is white and is called the Christ Candle. It is traditionally lighted on Christmas Eve or Day. However, since many Protestant churches do not have services on those days, many light it on the Sunday preceding Christmas, with all five candles continuing to be lighted in services through Epiphany (Jan 6). The central location of the Christ Candle reminds us that the incarnation is the heart of the season, giving light to the world.
Celebrating Advent
Advent is one of the few Christian festivals that can be observed in the home as well as at church. In its association with Christmas, Advent is a natural time to involve children in activities at home that directly connect with worship at church. In the home an Advent wreath is often placed on the dining table and the candles lighted at meals, with Scripture readings preceding the lighting of the candles, especially on Sunday. A new candle is lighted each Sunday during the four weeks, and then the same candles are lighted each meal during the week. In this context, it provides the opportunity for family devotion and prayer together, and helps teach the Faith to children, especially if they are involved in reading the daily Scriptures.
It is common in many homes to try to mark the beginning of Advent in other ways as well, for the same purpose of instruction in the faith. Some families decorate the house for the beginning of Advent, or bake special cookies or treats, or simply begin to use table coverings for meals. An Advent Calendar is a way to keep children involved in the entire season. There are a wide variety of Advent calendars, but usually they are simply a card or poster with windows that can be opened, one each day of Advent, to reveal some symbol or picture associated with the Old Testament story leading up to the birth of Jesus. One unique and specialized Advent calendar that can be used either in the home or the sanctuary is a Jesse Tree. (We have available an online Advent calendar with devotionals for each day of Advent as well as Christmas through Epiphany Day: NazNet's Advent and Christmas Celebration). All of these provide opportunities to teach children the significance of this sacred time, and to remind ourselves of it as well.
In congregational worship, the Advent wreath is the central teaching symbol of the season, the focal point for drawing the congregation into the beginning of the story of redemption that will unfold throughout the church year. For this reason, members of the congregation are often involved in lighting the Advent candles and reading the appropriate Scriptures each Sunday. While in some churches it is customary for this to be done by families, it can also be an especially good opportunity to demonstrate the unity of the entire community of Faith by including those without families, such as those never married, divorced, widowed, elderly who live by themselves, or college students away from home.
Small Things and Possibility: An Advent Reflection
We live in a world in which bigger and better define our expectations for much of life. We have become so enamored by super size, super stars, and high definition that we tend to view life through a lens that so magnifies what we expect out of the world that we tend not to see potential in small things. But as the prophet Zechariah reminds us (Zech 4:10), we should not "despise the day of small things," because God does some of his best work with small beginnings and impossible situations.
It is truly a humbling experience to read back through the Old Testament and see how frail and imperfect all the "heroes" actually are. Abraham, the coward who cannot believe the promise. Jacob, the cheat who struggles with everybody. Joseph, the immature and arrogant teen. Moses, the impatient murderer who cannot wait for God. Gideon, the cowardly Baal-worshipper. Samson, the womanizing drunk. David, the power abusing adulterer. Solomon, the unwise wise man. Hezekiah, the reforming king who could not quite go far enough. And finally, a very young Jewish girl from a small village in a remote corner of a great empire.
It never ceases to amaze me that God often begins with small things and inadequate people. It certainly seems that God could have chosen "bigger" things and "better" people to do His work in the world. Yet if God can use them, and reveal Himself through them in such marvelous ways, it means that He might be able to use me, inadequate, and unwise, and too often lacking in faith that I am. And it means that I need to be careful that I do not in my own self-righteousness put limits on what God can do with the smallest things, the most unlikely of people, in the most hopeless of circumstances. I think that is part of the wonder of the Advent Season.
I am convinced that one of the main purposes of the incarnation of Jesus was to provide hope. While most people today want to talk about the death of Jesus and the Atonement of sins, the early Church celebrated the Resurrection and the hope it embodied. It was a proclamation of a truth that rang throughout the Old Testament, that endings are not always endings but are opportunities for God to bring new beginnings. The Resurrection proclaimed that truth even about humanity’s greatest fear, death itself.
Both the season of Advent and the season of Lent are about hope. It is not just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of pain and suffering, although that is certainly a significant part of it. It is more about hope that human existence has meaning and possibility beyond our present experiences, a hope that the limits of our lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be. It is not that we have possibility in ourselves, but that God is a God of new things and so all things are possible (Isa 42:9, Mt 19:26, Mk 14:36)
God's people in the first century wanted Him to come and change their oppressive circumstances, and were angry when those immediate circumstances did not change. But that is a short sighted view of the nature of hope. Our hope cannot be in circumstances, no matter how badly we want them or how important they are to us. The reality of human existence, with which the Book of Job struggles, is that God's people experience that physical existence in the same way that others do. Christians get sick and die, Christians are victims of violent crimes, and Christians are hurt and killed in traffic accidents, bombings, war, and in some parts of the world, famine (see The Problem of Natural Evil).
If our hope is only in our circumstances, as we define them to be good or as we want them to be to make us happy, we will always be disappointed. That is why we hope, not in circumstances, but in God. He has continually, over the span of four thousand years, revealed himself to be a God of newness, of possibility, of redemption, the recovery or transformation of possibility from endings that goes beyond what we can think or even imagine (Eph 3:2). The best example of that is the crucifixion itself, followed by the resurrection. That shadow of the cross falls even over the manger.
Yet, it all begins in the hope that God will come and come again into our world to reveal himself as a God of newness, of possibility, a God of new things. This time of year we contemplate that hope embodied, enfleshed, incarnated, in a newborn baby, the perfect example of newness, potential, and possibility. During Advent, we groan and long for that newness with the hope, the expectation, indeed the faith, that God will once again be faithful to see our circumstances, to hear our cries, to know our longings for a better world and a whole life (Ex 3:7). And we hope that as he first came as an infant, so he will come again as King! (See The Second Coming)
My experience tells me that those who have suffered and still hope understand far more about God and about life than those who have not. Maybe that is what hope is about: a way to live, not just to survive, but to live authentically amidst all the problems of life with a Faith that continues to see possibility when there is no present evidence of it, just because God is God. That is also the wonder of Advent.
First Sunday of Advent
Today, we begin another Liturgical Year. With the celebration of the First Sunday of Advent, the Church throughout the world marks a new chapter in its year-long reflection on the saving mysteries of Christ. Advent (from the Latin “Adventum”) means “coming.”
The Advent season, whose liturgical color is violet, has two phases. In the first two weeks of Advent, the Church focuses its reflection on the final coming of Christ. As we begin a new year, we are invited to meditate on the last days. We begin with the end in mind. For a follower of Christ, it is important that we always remember that our goal is the inheritance of the Kingdom of God.
The last two weeks of the Advent season, however, are devoted to the preparation for the commemoration of the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. As in the season of Lent, Advent has a penitential character. Christians from all walks of life are encouraged to go on spiritual retreats and recollections as well as avail themselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These, among other devotions, make us spiritually prepared for the coming of Jesus.
The readings today speak of the end times. The First Reading from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah recounts the words of the Lord: “The days are coming when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah.” (Jer. 33:14). This is a promise of a happy and secure life – a promise of justice and peace.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus told his disciples, “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:36) Saint Paul advised the early Christian communities to prepare for the coming of the Lord. He said the Lord will judge us according to how we have loved our neighbor. “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father.” (1 Thes. 3:12).
In this season of hopeful anticipation of the coming of Christ, let us heed the call of Christ and the Church. As we begin the season of Advent, let us prepare for the coming of Christ by making our lives pleasing to the Lord
The Advent season, whose liturgical color is violet, has two phases. In the first two weeks of Advent, the Church focuses its reflection on the final coming of Christ. As we begin a new year, we are invited to meditate on the last days. We begin with the end in mind. For a follower of Christ, it is important that we always remember that our goal is the inheritance of the Kingdom of God.
The last two weeks of the Advent season, however, are devoted to the preparation for the commemoration of the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. As in the season of Lent, Advent has a penitential character. Christians from all walks of life are encouraged to go on spiritual retreats and recollections as well as avail themselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These, among other devotions, make us spiritually prepared for the coming of Jesus.
The readings today speak of the end times. The First Reading from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah recounts the words of the Lord: “The days are coming when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah.” (Jer. 33:14). This is a promise of a happy and secure life – a promise of justice and peace.
In the Gospel reading, Jesus told his disciples, “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:36) Saint Paul advised the early Christian communities to prepare for the coming of the Lord. He said the Lord will judge us according to how we have loved our neighbor. “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father.” (1 Thes. 3:12).
In this season of hopeful anticipation of the coming of Christ, let us heed the call of Christ and the Church. As we begin the season of Advent, let us prepare for the coming of Christ by making our lives pleasing to the Lord
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
ESPN.COM NFL FAN BASE RANKINGS
• ESPN.COM NFL FAN BASE RANKINGS: 1-10 | 11-22 | 23-32
1. Steelers
Consecutive sellouts: 299 | Season-ticket waiting list: More than six years
No team is as woven into the fabric of a city. The organization's stability has a lot to do with it, as generations of Steelers fans relate to the tradition of ownership (Rooneys), smashmouth football, quality head coaches (league-low three since 1969) and success (five Super Bowl titles). The season-ticket waiting list is extremely long and the consecutive sellout streak of 299 games, including playoffs, is unbelievable.
-- James Walker
2. Packers
Consecutive sellouts: 269 | Season-ticket waiting list: 78,000
Want to talk about support? The Packers have been sold out since 1960. Win or lose, fans fill Lambeau Field. The Packers are a huge part of the community fabric, perhaps more so than any other NFL town. Passion is second to none. Of course, that passion has been directly challenged following the team's ugly divorce with quarterback Brett Favre. Many fans are upset, and some have taken it out on replacement Aaron Rodgers. But if they are true to form, the vast majority of Packers fans will remain supportive of the team.
-- Kevin Seifert
3. Browns
Consecutive sellouts: 72 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
Browns fans are some of the most dedicated in the NFL. Cleveland is a football-crazed town year-round, and its loyalty has been tested like no other city. Cleveland lost its team to Baltimore following the 1995 season, and the "new" Browns have taken nearly a decade to get it together. Yet the fans remain rabid and hopeful every year, sometimes to a fault. Cleveland fans travel well and the "Browns Backers" are one of the NFL's largest and well-organized fan groups. About the only thing lacking is the stadium atmosphere, which has yet to reach the level of the old Municipal Stadium.
-- James Walker
4. Eagles
Consecutive sellouts: 71 | Season-ticket waiting list: 70,000
No other team dictates a city's mood like the Eagles. It's a loyal group of fans, but don't confuse it with blind loyalty. When the Eagles play poorly, they face the wrath of the fans. That rattles some guys, but players such as Jeremiah Trotter and Brian Dawkins have thrived on that tough love. Fans of opposing teams should tread lightly in the Linc.
-- Matt Mosley
5. Chiefs
Consecutive sellouts: 141 | Season-ticket waiting list: none
Kansas City is often referred to as the Green Bay of the AFC when it comes to fans. KC has a small-town feel, and the fans completely buy into the Chiefs. Arrowhead Stadium is a sea of red and the party begins early. There's nothing like arriving at a Chiefs game and smelling miles of smoking BBQ hours before game time.
-- Bill Williamson
6. Redskins
Consecutive sellouts: 319 | Season-ticket waiting list: 200,000
Redskins fans aren't as volatile as Eagles fans -- especially in swanky FedEx Field. It is, however, a very astute crowd that stays loyal through tough times. It's hard to tell who hates the Cowboys more between the Redskins and Eagles, although I'd lean toward the Eagles. The Redskins built a stadium at least 45 minutes from civilization -- yet fans never missed a beat. Owner Dan Snyder has plowed through coaches at an alarming rate, but the fan base has a remarkable amount of patience that has been passed down from generation to generation. Outside of Steelers and Packers fans, the Redskins travel better than anyone. And though politically incorrect, the feathers and face paint still reign.
-- Matt Mosley
7. Broncos
Consecutive sellouts: 293 | Season-ticket waiting list: 27,600
This is traditionally one of the stronger fan bases in the NFL. The magic of old Mile High may be gone, but Broncos fans brave varying degrees of football weather to cheer the Broncos season after season. If you are a no-show for a game in Denver, you'll endure plenty of shame from the orange-clad residents of Broncos Country.
-- Bill Williamson
8. Patriots
Consecutive sellouts: 149 | Season-ticket waiting list: 50,000
There's no way to argue with a fan base that has sold out Gillette Stadium since it opened -- pushing the Patriots' streak to 149 games, including playoffs -- and is willing to join a waiting list 50,000 deep to get a crack at season tickets someday. On-field dominance will do that. It will be interesting to see how the addition of Patriot Place -- a commercial development that offers shopping, restaurants, a movie theater and a medical center -- will affect the game-day dynamic. Do you throw Italian sausages on the grill or grab a teriyaki burger at Red Robin? One sounds more festive than the other.
-- Tim Graham
9. Raiders
Consecutive sellouts: 4 | Season-ticket waiting list: none
The Raiders may have the most fun group of NFL fans in the league. The Raider Nation travels like a college contingent, and game day in Oakland is an all-day Halloween party, whether it's October or Christmas Eve. The Raider Nation prides itself in bullying the opposition.
-- Bill Williamson
10. Giants
Consecutive sellouts: 249 | Season-ticket waiting list: 130,000
It's sort of a drag sharing a stadium with another team, but Giants fans are more loyal than Jets fans. And speaking from experience, Giants fans will tailgate in any weather. I prefer Lot C because that's where you find the short-rib experts.
-- Matt Mosley
11. Bills
Consecutive sellouts: 8 | Season-ticket waiting list: none
Don't blame Bills fans for the team's financial angst. The front office hasn't fielded a playoff team since 1999, but fans have purchased the third-highest number of season tickets in franchise history and the most since Buffalo's fourth straight Super Bowl season. In the Ralph Wilson Stadium parking lot, you'll find some of the best tailgating anywhere. A convoy of RVs pulls in days before the game and the masses party all weekend. Some locals will show up just for the pregame festivities even if they're not going to the game.
-- Tim Graham
12. Cowboys
Consecutive sellouts: 145 | Season-ticket waiting list: Not applicable due to new stadium
Cowboys fans aren't nearly as rabid as Eagles and Steelers fans, but the Cowboys have more of a worldwide audience. If you stay in the team hotel, you'll see something pretty remarkable. No matter where the Cowboys show up (even Appleton, Wis.), there are at least 30 fans waiting for them in the lobby. Texas Stadium is iconic because of the hole in the roof, but now it's simply a dump. This isn't a fan base that feels a great deal of hatred for certain teams or players. In fact, I think Texas Stadium is one of the safest places in the league to wear an opposing jersey. The most hated player from an opposing team is now lining up at wide receiver for the Cowboys.
-- Matt Mosley
13. Bears
Consecutive sellouts: 202 | Season-ticket waiting list: 4,000
The Bears inspire high emotion among Chicagoans, who like to think of themselves as part of a blue-collar city. Life is thrilling when the Bears are winning, but things can get nasty when they're not. Best of luck to Kyle Orton this season. But win or lose, you can expect Bears fans to fill Soldiers Field's parking decks before the game and the stands during it -- regardless of wind, rain, sleet or snow. The stadium's location on Lake Michigan can make for some interesting weather conditions, but Bears fans don't let that affect them.
-- Kevin Seifert
14. Jets
Consecutive sellouts: 249 | Season-ticket waiting list: 9,000
The Jets' sellout streak and season-ticket waiting list are impressive considering their fans have endured three years with six or fewer victories since 2003. Jets fans are rabid and quite ribald. The NFL this month issued a fan code of conduct partly in response to the goings-on at Gate D at the Meadowlands, where unruly fans harassed women during games.
-- Tim Graham
15. Saints
Consecutive sellouts: 16 | Season-ticket waiting list: Five figures, according to Saints
Bourbon Street is close by and that means the tailgate parties start Saturday afternoon. The party atmosphere fuels the Superdome. When the Saints are playing well, this can be one of the league's loudest venues. Before Hurricane Katrina, there were rumblings the Saints could be a candidate for a move. But the team became a rallying point for the entire Gulf Coast in the aftermath of the storm and the fan base is now stronger than ever.
-- Pat Yasinskas
16. Colts
Consecutive sellouts: 56 | Season-ticket waiting list: 17,000
The Colts had a tremendous advantage in the way the RCA Dome held sound. We'll need some time to see if the extra square footage of Lucas Oil Stadium dissipates some of the noise, which is likely. The fan base has been great while the Colts have been an elite team in the AFC and won a Super Bowl. But insiders in Indianapolis wonder how things will be when the team ultimately hits a dip.
-- Paul Kuharsky
17. Ravens
Consecutive sellouts: 96 | Season-ticket waiting list: 3,000
Ravens fans are a mixture. There are some traditional, longtime football fans who rooted for the old Baltimore Colts and really understand the history of the game, and there are the new-age fans who just adopted football full time when the Ravens came to town. The loyalty factor is pretty good. But with the Redskins to the south and Eagles to the north, the Ravens geographically have a much smaller, boxed-in fan base than most NFL teams. A Super Bowl win in 2000 helped, but the organization still hasn't built up as much loyalty as its AFC North brethren.
-- James Walker
18. Titans
Consecutive sellouts: 72 | Season-ticket waiting list: 28,000
Titans fans have lived off reputation for some time. When their building opened in 1999 as Adelphia Coliseum, it was incredibly loud and could throw an unfamiliar visitor off. It's been quite some time, however, since the volume was a real factor. Fans were also spoiled by early success -- the team went to the Super Bowl in its first season as the Titans and had the best record in the following regular season. In SEC country, the tailgating is hard-core. But there are empty seats at LP Field when things aren't going well and ticket holders in the club sections generally spend too much time inside.
-- Paul Kuharsky
19. Vikings
Consecutive sellouts: 104 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
The Metrodome has spoiled a generation of Minnesota football fans who don't realize how good they have it. Try sitting outside for three hours in -10 wind chill when you're not used to it. There is also an undeniable fair-weather factor among Vikings fans, and the team needed corporate help to sell out its games last season for the first time in a decade.
-- Kevin Seifert
20. Seahawks
Consecutive sellouts: 44 | Season-ticket waiting list: 14,000
No team in the league has a louder stadium, inside or out. It's always been that way. Seattle fans rocked the Kingdome so hard that opposing quarterbacks routinely backed out from under center to ask the referee to intervene. The place only got louder. They rocked Qwest Field hard enough to induce the Giants into 11 false-start penalties -- in one game. Management has succeeded in selling the 12th Man concept. The waiting list for season tickets goes thousands deep. On the downside, a city ordinance prevents fans from tailgating at the stadium, a major deduction that kept the Seahawks from moving up the list.
-- Mike Sando
21. Bucs
Consecutive sellouts: 80 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
This fan base survived some lean early years and Raymond James Stadium has brought a big-time atmosphere to town. The parking lots are one huge tailgate party. Teams from the North sometimes catch a break because of transplanted fans.
-- Pat Yasinskas
22. Chargers
Consecutive sellouts: 30 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
Chargers fans haven't quite caught up to the team they follow, but they are trying. Chargers fans have become very vocal, and sellouts have become a trend just north of the border. Perhaps these fans suffer from the reputation of being laid-back SoCal fans. After all, there are plenty of other things to do besides going to a football game … no matter how good that team may be.
23. Texans
Consecutive sellouts: 60 | Season-ticket waiting list: 3,500
In 2006, when local hero Vince Young returned as a member of the division rival Titans, fans couldn't have greeted him more warmly. When he won the game with a TD run in overtime, most of Reliant Stadium cheered him. Texans fans are desperate for a winner and appreciate first-class ownership. They score well in loyalty (though as Young proved, a good share of it is to the University of Texas.) Though they can be whiny on a Monday morning, they've had a reasonable amount to whine about.
-- Paul Kuharsky
24. 49ers
Consecutive sellouts: 259 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
San Francisco fans must be dedicated to sell out 259 consecutive games at one of the league's worst stadiums. The impressive sellout streak has nearly ended more than a couple of times during lean years, but fans keep coming back. The team's glory years in the 1980s helped, solidifying a fan base well beyond the Bay Area. The parking lots at Candlestick Park produce some memorable fare. The team has had trouble securing public funding for a new stadium, always a tough sell in California, even as fans keep turning out for games.
-- Mike Sando
25. Panthers
Consecutive sellouts: 41 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
There's a bit of a wine-and-cheese atmosphere at Panthers games, but there is a strong core of diehard fans who bring energy to Bank of America Stadium. Charlotte lives and dies with the Panthers because there aren't a lot of other options in the sports world.
-- Pat Yasinskas
26. Bengals
Consecutive sellouts: 36 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
Bengals fans are disenchanted with their team. Cincinnati has just one winning season in the past 17 years, and during that span the city has grown accustomed to having a sub-par football team. Cincinnati historically is a baseball town, not a football town, and there is no natural pigskin rival to root against. If anything, Bengals fans spew most of their venom on their own. They're upset at star receiver Chad Johnson for his antics and wanting to get out of town. They turned on Carson Palmer recently for supporting USC -- his alma mater -- over Ohio State. A majority of fans turned long ago on the Bengals' front office led by owner Mike Brown. Granted, Cincinnati does draw well and has more loyal followers today than during the lean Dave Shula/Dick LeBeau/Bruce Coslet years. But Bengals fans remain very skeptical of their franchise.
-- James Walker
27. Jaguars
Consecutive sellouts: 0 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
Even with tarps covering seats to cut Jacksonville Municipal Stadium down to a more reasonable capacity, the building doesn't fill consistently enough. Three of the NFL's 10 blacked-out games last year were in Jacksonville. The team says it had the option of corporate bailouts to prevent those, but didn't accept them on principle. The city was spoiled some by the team's early success, but this piece of SEC country has not developed the hardcore loyalty to its NFL team that you find in Nashville.
-- Paul Kuharsky
28. Dolphins
Consecutive sellouts: 77 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
The Dolphins might have the most alluring fans in the league. You won't see any sweatshirts or parkas around Miami Dolphins Stadium. Chances are pretty decent there will be bikinis and midriffs showing off tanned bodies. Problem is, the fans are supposed to enjoy watching what's on the field, not each other. A six-season playoff drought has led to rows of empty orange seats. The visiting crowd has been louder at times.
-- Tim Graham
29. Rams
Consecutive sellouts: 2 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
St. Louis is a baseball town, and the Rams' roots in the city go back only to 1995. The Edward Jones Dome gets plenty loud when the Rams are on their game, but the enthusiasm has dropped off in recent seasons. With the team's future in question following the death of owner Georgia Frontiere, fans can't be sure if the franchise will stay in St. Louis for the long haul. Two consecutive sellouts aren't much to brag about.
-- Mike Sando
30. Falcons
Consecutive sellouts: 0 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
The Georgia Dome has the potential to be loud, but it seldom has been. The Falcons have struggled through much of their existence. The Braves and the University of Georgia are the favorites in this town, and the Falcons only draw attention when they're good.
-- Pat Yasinskas
31. Lions
Consecutive sellouts: 49 | Season-ticket waiting list: 0
Visit Ford Field in midseason and you feel like you should keep your voice down. That's how quiet it is. Of course, given the Lions' long history of disappointment, it says a lot about the loyalty of those who do come to the games.
-- Kevin Seifert
32. Cardinals
Consecutive sellouts: 20 | Season-ticket waiting list: 2,500
The team's new stadium has helped draw sellout crowds, but the franchise faces challenges. Too many football fans in the region had already latched onto other NFL teams, notably the Cowboys, by the time Bill Bidwill brought the Cardinals to the desert in the 1980s. Mismanagement and losing seasons kept fans away. The franchise is on an upswing and the fans are responding, but the Cardinals must win to turn skeptics into full-fledged believers.
-- Mike Sando
1. Steelers
Consecutive sellouts: 299 | Season-ticket waiting list: More than six years
No team is as woven into the fabric of a city. The organization's stability has a lot to do with it, as generations of Steelers fans relate to the tradition of ownership (Rooneys), smashmouth football, quality head coaches (league-low three since 1969) and success (five Super Bowl titles). The season-ticket waiting list is extremely long and the consecutive sellout streak of 299 games, including playoffs, is unbelievable.
-- James Walker
2. Packers
Consecutive sellouts: 269 | Season-ticket waiting list: 78,000
Want to talk about support? The Packers have been sold out since 1960. Win or lose, fans fill Lambeau Field. The Packers are a huge part of the community fabric, perhaps more so than any other NFL town. Passion is second to none. Of course, that passion has been directly challenged following the team's ugly divorce with quarterback Brett Favre. Many fans are upset, and some have taken it out on replacement Aaron Rodgers. But if they are true to form, the vast majority of Packers fans will remain supportive of the team.
-- Kevin Seifert
3. Browns
Consecutive sellouts: 72 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
Browns fans are some of the most dedicated in the NFL. Cleveland is a football-crazed town year-round, and its loyalty has been tested like no other city. Cleveland lost its team to Baltimore following the 1995 season, and the "new" Browns have taken nearly a decade to get it together. Yet the fans remain rabid and hopeful every year, sometimes to a fault. Cleveland fans travel well and the "Browns Backers" are one of the NFL's largest and well-organized fan groups. About the only thing lacking is the stadium atmosphere, which has yet to reach the level of the old Municipal Stadium.
-- James Walker
4. Eagles
Consecutive sellouts: 71 | Season-ticket waiting list: 70,000
No other team dictates a city's mood like the Eagles. It's a loyal group of fans, but don't confuse it with blind loyalty. When the Eagles play poorly, they face the wrath of the fans. That rattles some guys, but players such as Jeremiah Trotter and Brian Dawkins have thrived on that tough love. Fans of opposing teams should tread lightly in the Linc.
-- Matt Mosley
5. Chiefs
Consecutive sellouts: 141 | Season-ticket waiting list: none
Kansas City is often referred to as the Green Bay of the AFC when it comes to fans. KC has a small-town feel, and the fans completely buy into the Chiefs. Arrowhead Stadium is a sea of red and the party begins early. There's nothing like arriving at a Chiefs game and smelling miles of smoking BBQ hours before game time.
-- Bill Williamson
6. Redskins
Consecutive sellouts: 319 | Season-ticket waiting list: 200,000
Redskins fans aren't as volatile as Eagles fans -- especially in swanky FedEx Field. It is, however, a very astute crowd that stays loyal through tough times. It's hard to tell who hates the Cowboys more between the Redskins and Eagles, although I'd lean toward the Eagles. The Redskins built a stadium at least 45 minutes from civilization -- yet fans never missed a beat. Owner Dan Snyder has plowed through coaches at an alarming rate, but the fan base has a remarkable amount of patience that has been passed down from generation to generation. Outside of Steelers and Packers fans, the Redskins travel better than anyone. And though politically incorrect, the feathers and face paint still reign.
-- Matt Mosley
7. Broncos
Consecutive sellouts: 293 | Season-ticket waiting list: 27,600
This is traditionally one of the stronger fan bases in the NFL. The magic of old Mile High may be gone, but Broncos fans brave varying degrees of football weather to cheer the Broncos season after season. If you are a no-show for a game in Denver, you'll endure plenty of shame from the orange-clad residents of Broncos Country.
-- Bill Williamson
8. Patriots
Consecutive sellouts: 149 | Season-ticket waiting list: 50,000
There's no way to argue with a fan base that has sold out Gillette Stadium since it opened -- pushing the Patriots' streak to 149 games, including playoffs -- and is willing to join a waiting list 50,000 deep to get a crack at season tickets someday. On-field dominance will do that. It will be interesting to see how the addition of Patriot Place -- a commercial development that offers shopping, restaurants, a movie theater and a medical center -- will affect the game-day dynamic. Do you throw Italian sausages on the grill or grab a teriyaki burger at Red Robin? One sounds more festive than the other.
-- Tim Graham
9. Raiders
Consecutive sellouts: 4 | Season-ticket waiting list: none
The Raiders may have the most fun group of NFL fans in the league. The Raider Nation travels like a college contingent, and game day in Oakland is an all-day Halloween party, whether it's October or Christmas Eve. The Raider Nation prides itself in bullying the opposition.
-- Bill Williamson
10. Giants
Consecutive sellouts: 249 | Season-ticket waiting list: 130,000
It's sort of a drag sharing a stadium with another team, but Giants fans are more loyal than Jets fans. And speaking from experience, Giants fans will tailgate in any weather. I prefer Lot C because that's where you find the short-rib experts.
-- Matt Mosley
11. Bills
Consecutive sellouts: 8 | Season-ticket waiting list: none
Don't blame Bills fans for the team's financial angst. The front office hasn't fielded a playoff team since 1999, but fans have purchased the third-highest number of season tickets in franchise history and the most since Buffalo's fourth straight Super Bowl season. In the Ralph Wilson Stadium parking lot, you'll find some of the best tailgating anywhere. A convoy of RVs pulls in days before the game and the masses party all weekend. Some locals will show up just for the pregame festivities even if they're not going to the game.
-- Tim Graham
12. Cowboys
Consecutive sellouts: 145 | Season-ticket waiting list: Not applicable due to new stadium
Cowboys fans aren't nearly as rabid as Eagles and Steelers fans, but the Cowboys have more of a worldwide audience. If you stay in the team hotel, you'll see something pretty remarkable. No matter where the Cowboys show up (even Appleton, Wis.), there are at least 30 fans waiting for them in the lobby. Texas Stadium is iconic because of the hole in the roof, but now it's simply a dump. This isn't a fan base that feels a great deal of hatred for certain teams or players. In fact, I think Texas Stadium is one of the safest places in the league to wear an opposing jersey. The most hated player from an opposing team is now lining up at wide receiver for the Cowboys.
-- Matt Mosley
13. Bears
Consecutive sellouts: 202 | Season-ticket waiting list: 4,000
The Bears inspire high emotion among Chicagoans, who like to think of themselves as part of a blue-collar city. Life is thrilling when the Bears are winning, but things can get nasty when they're not. Best of luck to Kyle Orton this season. But win or lose, you can expect Bears fans to fill Soldiers Field's parking decks before the game and the stands during it -- regardless of wind, rain, sleet or snow. The stadium's location on Lake Michigan can make for some interesting weather conditions, but Bears fans don't let that affect them.
-- Kevin Seifert
14. Jets
Consecutive sellouts: 249 | Season-ticket waiting list: 9,000
The Jets' sellout streak and season-ticket waiting list are impressive considering their fans have endured three years with six or fewer victories since 2003. Jets fans are rabid and quite ribald. The NFL this month issued a fan code of conduct partly in response to the goings-on at Gate D at the Meadowlands, where unruly fans harassed women during games.
-- Tim Graham
15. Saints
Consecutive sellouts: 16 | Season-ticket waiting list: Five figures, according to Saints
Bourbon Street is close by and that means the tailgate parties start Saturday afternoon. The party atmosphere fuels the Superdome. When the Saints are playing well, this can be one of the league's loudest venues. Before Hurricane Katrina, there were rumblings the Saints could be a candidate for a move. But the team became a rallying point for the entire Gulf Coast in the aftermath of the storm and the fan base is now stronger than ever.
-- Pat Yasinskas
16. Colts
Consecutive sellouts: 56 | Season-ticket waiting list: 17,000
The Colts had a tremendous advantage in the way the RCA Dome held sound. We'll need some time to see if the extra square footage of Lucas Oil Stadium dissipates some of the noise, which is likely. The fan base has been great while the Colts have been an elite team in the AFC and won a Super Bowl. But insiders in Indianapolis wonder how things will be when the team ultimately hits a dip.
-- Paul Kuharsky
17. Ravens
Consecutive sellouts: 96 | Season-ticket waiting list: 3,000
Ravens fans are a mixture. There are some traditional, longtime football fans who rooted for the old Baltimore Colts and really understand the history of the game, and there are the new-age fans who just adopted football full time when the Ravens came to town. The loyalty factor is pretty good. But with the Redskins to the south and Eagles to the north, the Ravens geographically have a much smaller, boxed-in fan base than most NFL teams. A Super Bowl win in 2000 helped, but the organization still hasn't built up as much loyalty as its AFC North brethren.
-- James Walker
18. Titans
Consecutive sellouts: 72 | Season-ticket waiting list: 28,000
Titans fans have lived off reputation for some time. When their building opened in 1999 as Adelphia Coliseum, it was incredibly loud and could throw an unfamiliar visitor off. It's been quite some time, however, since the volume was a real factor. Fans were also spoiled by early success -- the team went to the Super Bowl in its first season as the Titans and had the best record in the following regular season. In SEC country, the tailgating is hard-core. But there are empty seats at LP Field when things aren't going well and ticket holders in the club sections generally spend too much time inside.
-- Paul Kuharsky
19. Vikings
Consecutive sellouts: 104 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
The Metrodome has spoiled a generation of Minnesota football fans who don't realize how good they have it. Try sitting outside for three hours in -10 wind chill when you're not used to it. There is also an undeniable fair-weather factor among Vikings fans, and the team needed corporate help to sell out its games last season for the first time in a decade.
-- Kevin Seifert
20. Seahawks
Consecutive sellouts: 44 | Season-ticket waiting list: 14,000
No team in the league has a louder stadium, inside or out. It's always been that way. Seattle fans rocked the Kingdome so hard that opposing quarterbacks routinely backed out from under center to ask the referee to intervene. The place only got louder. They rocked Qwest Field hard enough to induce the Giants into 11 false-start penalties -- in one game. Management has succeeded in selling the 12th Man concept. The waiting list for season tickets goes thousands deep. On the downside, a city ordinance prevents fans from tailgating at the stadium, a major deduction that kept the Seahawks from moving up the list.
-- Mike Sando
21. Bucs
Consecutive sellouts: 80 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
This fan base survived some lean early years and Raymond James Stadium has brought a big-time atmosphere to town. The parking lots are one huge tailgate party. Teams from the North sometimes catch a break because of transplanted fans.
-- Pat Yasinskas
22. Chargers
Consecutive sellouts: 30 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
Chargers fans haven't quite caught up to the team they follow, but they are trying. Chargers fans have become very vocal, and sellouts have become a trend just north of the border. Perhaps these fans suffer from the reputation of being laid-back SoCal fans. After all, there are plenty of other things to do besides going to a football game … no matter how good that team may be.
23. Texans
Consecutive sellouts: 60 | Season-ticket waiting list: 3,500
In 2006, when local hero Vince Young returned as a member of the division rival Titans, fans couldn't have greeted him more warmly. When he won the game with a TD run in overtime, most of Reliant Stadium cheered him. Texans fans are desperate for a winner and appreciate first-class ownership. They score well in loyalty (though as Young proved, a good share of it is to the University of Texas.) Though they can be whiny on a Monday morning, they've had a reasonable amount to whine about.
-- Paul Kuharsky
24. 49ers
Consecutive sellouts: 259 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
San Francisco fans must be dedicated to sell out 259 consecutive games at one of the league's worst stadiums. The impressive sellout streak has nearly ended more than a couple of times during lean years, but fans keep coming back. The team's glory years in the 1980s helped, solidifying a fan base well beyond the Bay Area. The parking lots at Candlestick Park produce some memorable fare. The team has had trouble securing public funding for a new stadium, always a tough sell in California, even as fans keep turning out for games.
-- Mike Sando
25. Panthers
Consecutive sellouts: 41 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
There's a bit of a wine-and-cheese atmosphere at Panthers games, but there is a strong core of diehard fans who bring energy to Bank of America Stadium. Charlotte lives and dies with the Panthers because there aren't a lot of other options in the sports world.
-- Pat Yasinskas
26. Bengals
Consecutive sellouts: 36 | Season-ticket waiting list: Undisclosed
Bengals fans are disenchanted with their team. Cincinnati has just one winning season in the past 17 years, and during that span the city has grown accustomed to having a sub-par football team. Cincinnati historically is a baseball town, not a football town, and there is no natural pigskin rival to root against. If anything, Bengals fans spew most of their venom on their own. They're upset at star receiver Chad Johnson for his antics and wanting to get out of town. They turned on Carson Palmer recently for supporting USC -- his alma mater -- over Ohio State. A majority of fans turned long ago on the Bengals' front office led by owner Mike Brown. Granted, Cincinnati does draw well and has more loyal followers today than during the lean Dave Shula/Dick LeBeau/Bruce Coslet years. But Bengals fans remain very skeptical of their franchise.
-- James Walker
27. Jaguars
Consecutive sellouts: 0 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
Even with tarps covering seats to cut Jacksonville Municipal Stadium down to a more reasonable capacity, the building doesn't fill consistently enough. Three of the NFL's 10 blacked-out games last year were in Jacksonville. The team says it had the option of corporate bailouts to prevent those, but didn't accept them on principle. The city was spoiled some by the team's early success, but this piece of SEC country has not developed the hardcore loyalty to its NFL team that you find in Nashville.
-- Paul Kuharsky
28. Dolphins
Consecutive sellouts: 77 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
The Dolphins might have the most alluring fans in the league. You won't see any sweatshirts or parkas around Miami Dolphins Stadium. Chances are pretty decent there will be bikinis and midriffs showing off tanned bodies. Problem is, the fans are supposed to enjoy watching what's on the field, not each other. A six-season playoff drought has led to rows of empty orange seats. The visiting crowd has been louder at times.
-- Tim Graham
29. Rams
Consecutive sellouts: 2 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
St. Louis is a baseball town, and the Rams' roots in the city go back only to 1995. The Edward Jones Dome gets plenty loud when the Rams are on their game, but the enthusiasm has dropped off in recent seasons. With the team's future in question following the death of owner Georgia Frontiere, fans can't be sure if the franchise will stay in St. Louis for the long haul. Two consecutive sellouts aren't much to brag about.
-- Mike Sando
30. Falcons
Consecutive sellouts: 0 | Season-ticket waiting list: None
The Georgia Dome has the potential to be loud, but it seldom has been. The Falcons have struggled through much of their existence. The Braves and the University of Georgia are the favorites in this town, and the Falcons only draw attention when they're good.
-- Pat Yasinskas
31. Lions
Consecutive sellouts: 49 | Season-ticket waiting list: 0
Visit Ford Field in midseason and you feel like you should keep your voice down. That's how quiet it is. Of course, given the Lions' long history of disappointment, it says a lot about the loyalty of those who do come to the games.
-- Kevin Seifert
32. Cardinals
Consecutive sellouts: 20 | Season-ticket waiting list: 2,500
The team's new stadium has helped draw sellout crowds, but the franchise faces challenges. Too many football fans in the region had already latched onto other NFL teams, notably the Cowboys, by the time Bill Bidwill brought the Cardinals to the desert in the 1980s. Mismanagement and losing seasons kept fans away. The franchise is on an upswing and the fans are responding, but the Cardinals must win to turn skeptics into full-fledged believers.
-- Mike Sando
You don't even have to take the interstate to get from Steubenville, Ohio to Pittsburgh, Pa.
Nope, just a 40-mile hop, skip and jump east along U.S. 22 and you can be there in about 45
minutes.
What you'll find when you get there is a football crazy town, where there's as much pride in
Steubenville High's seven state football titles -- the last in Division III in 2005 -- as
there is in its steel-worker ethos.
It's no surprise, then, that in Steubenville you'll find an enclave of blue-collar types
that go to church on Sundays -- so long as the sermon doesn't interfere with a Pittsburgh
Steelers game.
Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find one person out of the roughly 19,000 that live in the
Ohio border town that doesn't bleed black and gold.
Nope, just a 40-mile hop, skip and jump east along U.S. 22 and you can be there in about 45
minutes.
What you'll find when you get there is a football crazy town, where there's as much pride in
Steubenville High's seven state football titles -- the last in Division III in 2005 -- as
there is in its steel-worker ethos.
It's no surprise, then, that in Steubenville you'll find an enclave of blue-collar types
that go to church on Sundays -- so long as the sermon doesn't interfere with a Pittsburgh
Steelers game.
Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find one person out of the roughly 19,000 that live in the
Ohio border town that doesn't bleed black and gold.
Being a Steeler fan...
Being a Steeler fan means so much more than football. It means being from a corner of the world unlike any other. It means being from a place where the people are so tough-minded that they have survived the Homestead strikes, the Johnstown flood and most recently the Etna floods. These people have the DNA of hard work, in mills and mines, without the necessity of complaint. They live simply, with no frills. They don’t have movie stars or fancy cars. Instead, they have simple traditions like kielbasa, Kennywood, and celebrations. They live in distinctive neighborhoods like Polish Hill and the Hill District and all of the surrounding counties. These people are genuine. They don’t have chic internet cafes and cappuccinos, but they have The Original Hot Dog joint, Primanti’s, Eat n’ Park and Iron City Beer. People from Pittsburgh don’t have sunny beaches or fancy boats, but the rivers roll gently, connecting the small towns
of people whose histories have been built on strength and humility. People from Pittsburgh don’t have the biggest shopping malls or the best nightclubs, but they’ll take Friday night high school football and Steelers Sunday over anything.
Steeler football means so much more than you think. It symbolizes a Diaspora of generations who had the best childhood they could imagine. They ran free without a care or concern in the valleys of those Allegheny Mountains. Their blue-collar world was easy…there was no one to tell them that they lacked material things. There was no one to
tell them that they needed more. As the steel mills closed and the jobs disappeared, some of these people had to leave. While the world benefits because they spread their Pittsburgh values, they long for their home where things
were simpler and more pure. They teach their kids about Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Jack Ham, L.C. Greenwood, Joe Greene, and Myron Cope in hopes of imparting not just the knowledge, but the feeling that they represented.
They are everywhere, those Terrible Towels. They wave, not just for the team, but for the hearts they left behind. They wave in living rooms in Fort Lauderdale and in the bars of Washington, D.C. They wave all the way to the Seattle Superdome! They wave for the Rooney family, whose values mirror our own – loyalty, grit, and humility. They wave for football players like Jerome Bettis and Hines Ward, whose unselfishness and toughness have allowed sports to be about the game and the team.
Make no mistake that Steeler football is not just about football. I could not be prouder to be from the Pittsburgh area than I am right now!! Even if you no longer live in the area, you have South Western Pennsylvania in your blood no matter where you go. And deep down in your heart of hearts, you can still hear the Super Bowls of times past, the excitement in everyone’s voices especially our fathers, cousins, and anyone else who gathered around the TV on Football Sundays! Make no mistake, its just as exciting right now! It’s not just about rivalries and who is better than the other, it’s about family, tradition and roots! It’s more than football,its football at its finest!Go Steelers!
of people whose histories have been built on strength and humility. People from Pittsburgh don’t have the biggest shopping malls or the best nightclubs, but they’ll take Friday night high school football and Steelers Sunday over anything.
Steeler football means so much more than you think. It symbolizes a Diaspora of generations who had the best childhood they could imagine. They ran free without a care or concern in the valleys of those Allegheny Mountains. Their blue-collar world was easy…there was no one to tell them that they lacked material things. There was no one to
tell them that they needed more. As the steel mills closed and the jobs disappeared, some of these people had to leave. While the world benefits because they spread their Pittsburgh values, they long for their home where things
were simpler and more pure. They teach their kids about Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Jack Ham, L.C. Greenwood, Joe Greene, and Myron Cope in hopes of imparting not just the knowledge, but the feeling that they represented.
They are everywhere, those Terrible Towels. They wave, not just for the team, but for the hearts they left behind. They wave in living rooms in Fort Lauderdale and in the bars of Washington, D.C. They wave all the way to the Seattle Superdome! They wave for the Rooney family, whose values mirror our own – loyalty, grit, and humility. They wave for football players like Jerome Bettis and Hines Ward, whose unselfishness and toughness have allowed sports to be about the game and the team.
Make no mistake that Steeler football is not just about football. I could not be prouder to be from the Pittsburgh area than I am right now!! Even if you no longer live in the area, you have South Western Pennsylvania in your blood no matter where you go. And deep down in your heart of hearts, you can still hear the Super Bowls of times past, the excitement in everyone’s voices especially our fathers, cousins, and anyone else who gathered around the TV on Football Sundays! Make no mistake, its just as exciting right now! It’s not just about rivalries and who is better than the other, it’s about family, tradition and roots! It’s more than football,its football at its finest!Go Steelers!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
To All My Liberal Friends…
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
To all my conservative friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
To all my conservative friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Monday, November 2, 2009
National Day of Mourning
National Day of Mourning
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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(See National day of mourning)
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The National Day of Mourning is an annual protest organized since 1970 by American Indians of New England on the fourth Thursday of November, the same day as Thanksgiving in the United States of America. It coincides with an unrelated but similar protest, Unthanksgiving Day, held on the West Coast.
The organizers consider the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day as a reminder of the perceived democide and continued suffering of the Native American peoples. Participants in the National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. They want to educate Americans about history. The event was organized in a period of Native American activism and general cultural protests. The protest is organized by the United American Indians of New England (UAINE). Since it was first organized, social changes have resulted in major revisions to the portrayal of United States history, the government's and settlers relations with Native American peoples, and renewed appreciation for Native American culture.
Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 History
3 Recent Protest
4 Will the Protest Ever End?
5 References
6 Bibliography
7 External links
[edit] Background
The United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organized their protest to bring publicity to the continued misrepresentation of Native American and colonial experience. They believed that people needed to be educated about what happened when the Pilgrims arrived in North America.
A century ago heavy immigration brought millions of southern and eastern Europeans to the United States. Educators and civic groups thought it necessary to assimilate the new citizens. The new arrivals were taught to view the Pilgrims as models for their own families. The tale of the “First Thanksgiving” was an essential element of this curriculum. The story of the Native Americans' and Pilgrims' sharing a meal of turkey became part of United States tradition. The story tells of the mutually beneficial relationship between these groups.
UAINE, by contrast, says that the Pilgrims did not find a new and empty land. Every inch of land they claimed was Indian land. They also say that the Pilgrims immigrated as part of a commercial venture and that they introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry, jails, and the class system.[1]
Governor John Winthrop proclaimed the first official “Day of Thanksgiving” in 1637 to celebrate the return of men that had gone to Mystic, Connecticut to fight against the Pequot, an action that resulted in the deaths of more than 700 Pequot men, women, children, and men (what their people called massacre). In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln authorized that the fourth Thursday of November be set aside to give thanks and praise for the nation’s blessings. Thanksgiving became part of American culture.
UAINE believes that Native American and colonial experience continue to be misrepresented. It asks why the “First Thanksgiving” was not celebrated or related back to the first colony at Jamestown. (It is because northern culture was more influential at the time, thus celebrating the accomplishments of New England, rather than the South.) According to UAINE, the circumstances at Jamestown were too terrible to be used as a national myth. The settlers turned to cannibalism to survive. The UAINE used the National Day of Mourning to educate people about the history of the Wampanoag people. UAINE representatives say the only true element of the Thanksgiving story is that the pilgrims would not have survived their first years in New England without the aid of the Wampanoag. But they believe that in return, they received not friendship but genocide, theft of their lands, and repression that continues today.[2]
[edit] History
Since 1921 (the 300th year after the first Thanksgiving), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts stages an annual reenactment of Thanksgiving. People gather at a church on the site of the Pilgrims' original meeting house, in 17th century costume. After prayers and a sermon, they march to Plymouth Rock. This annual event had become a tourist attraction.
The UNAINE organized the first National Day of Mourning on the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival on Wampanoag land. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts planned to celebrate friendly relations between English ancestors and the Wampanoag. Wampanoag leader Frank James (also known as Wamsutta) was invited to make a speech at the celebration.[3] But, when the anniversary planners reviewed his speech in advance, they decided it was not appropriate for the celebration. The reason given was, "...the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place." (Source: UAINE)
Wamsutta based his speech on a Pilgrim's account of the first year on Indian land. The book recounted the opening of graves, taking the Indians' corn and bean supplies, and selling Wampanoag as slaves for 220 shillings each.[citation needed] After receiving a revised speech, written by a public relations person, Wamsutta decided he would not attend the celebration. To protest the silencing of the American Indian people, he and his supporters went to neighboring Coles Hill, near the statue of Massasoit (leader of the Wampanoag when the Pilgrims landed). Overlooking the Plymouth Harbour and the Mayflower replica, Wamsutta gave his speech. This was the first National Day of Mourning.
[edit] Recent Protest
Today, the UNAINE continues leading the National Day of Mourning protest in Plymouth. The son of the founder, Mr. James, participates as well. The more recent protests have been held on Cole's Hill and a location overlooking Plymouth Rock. The organizers have been joined by other minority activists in protest as well. Typically several hundred protesters appear. The protest general begins at 12:00 noon on Thanksgiving Day with a march through the historic district of Plymouth. All are welcome, but the UNAINE remind participants that this is a day when only the Native people speak about their history and struggles, including contemporary ones. Speakers are by invitation only, so they enforce their own point of view. Following the march and the speeches, they have a social time. Guests are asked to bring non-alcoholic beverages, desserts, fresh fruits and vegetables, or pre-cooked items.
In 1996 the Latinos for Social Change marched to the Plymouth Commons at the same time the Mayflower Society had their Pilgrim Progress parade, to show support of UAINE. The police rerouted the Pilgrim parade to avoid conflict. In 1997 the Pilgrim Progress parade was held earlier and went undisturbed.
In 1997 those who gathered to commemorate the 28th National Day of Mourning had a more difficult time. State troopers and police met the protesters. Some accounts state that pepper spray was used on children and the elderly.[citation needed] Twenty-five people were arrested on charges ranging from battery on an officer to assembling without a permit. In an effort to avoid another conflict, the state reached a settlement with UNAINE in October 1998. It stated the UNAINE were allowed to march without a permit, as long as they gave the town advanced warning.
The 35th National Day of Mourning was held on Thursday, November 25, 2004, and was dedicated to Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder but believed by some (including Amnesty International)[4] to be a political prisoner. Many American Indians and supporters gathered again at the top of Coles Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock. They honored their Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today.
[edit] Will the Protest Ever End?
According to a speech by Moonanum James, Co-Leader of UNAINE, at the 29th National Day of Mourning, November 26, 1998:[5]
“ Some ask us: Will you ever stop protesting? Some day we will stop protesting: We will stop protesting when the merchants of Plymouth are no longer making millions of dollars off the blood of our slaughtered ancestors. We will stop protesting when we can act as sovereign nations on our own land without the interference of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and what Sitting Bull called the "favorite ration chiefs." When corporations stop polluting our mother, the earth. When racism has been eradicated. When the oppression of Two-Spirited people is a thing of the past. We will stop protesting when homeless people have homes and no child goes to bed hungry. When police brutality no longer exists in communities of color. We will stop protesting when Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal and the Puerto Rican independentistas and all the political prisoners are free. Until then, the struggle will continue.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
(See National day of mourning)
This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page. (April 2009)
This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2009)
The National Day of Mourning is an annual protest organized since 1970 by American Indians of New England on the fourth Thursday of November, the same day as Thanksgiving in the United States of America. It coincides with an unrelated but similar protest, Unthanksgiving Day, held on the West Coast.
The organizers consider the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day as a reminder of the perceived democide and continued suffering of the Native American peoples. Participants in the National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. They want to educate Americans about history. The event was organized in a period of Native American activism and general cultural protests. The protest is organized by the United American Indians of New England (UAINE). Since it was first organized, social changes have resulted in major revisions to the portrayal of United States history, the government's and settlers relations with Native American peoples, and renewed appreciation for Native American culture.
Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 History
3 Recent Protest
4 Will the Protest Ever End?
5 References
6 Bibliography
7 External links
[edit] Background
The United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organized their protest to bring publicity to the continued misrepresentation of Native American and colonial experience. They believed that people needed to be educated about what happened when the Pilgrims arrived in North America.
A century ago heavy immigration brought millions of southern and eastern Europeans to the United States. Educators and civic groups thought it necessary to assimilate the new citizens. The new arrivals were taught to view the Pilgrims as models for their own families. The tale of the “First Thanksgiving” was an essential element of this curriculum. The story of the Native Americans' and Pilgrims' sharing a meal of turkey became part of United States tradition. The story tells of the mutually beneficial relationship between these groups.
UAINE, by contrast, says that the Pilgrims did not find a new and empty land. Every inch of land they claimed was Indian land. They also say that the Pilgrims immigrated as part of a commercial venture and that they introduced sexism, racism, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry, jails, and the class system.[1]
Governor John Winthrop proclaimed the first official “Day of Thanksgiving” in 1637 to celebrate the return of men that had gone to Mystic, Connecticut to fight against the Pequot, an action that resulted in the deaths of more than 700 Pequot men, women, children, and men (what their people called massacre). In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln authorized that the fourth Thursday of November be set aside to give thanks and praise for the nation’s blessings. Thanksgiving became part of American culture.
UAINE believes that Native American and colonial experience continue to be misrepresented. It asks why the “First Thanksgiving” was not celebrated or related back to the first colony at Jamestown. (It is because northern culture was more influential at the time, thus celebrating the accomplishments of New England, rather than the South.) According to UAINE, the circumstances at Jamestown were too terrible to be used as a national myth. The settlers turned to cannibalism to survive. The UAINE used the National Day of Mourning to educate people about the history of the Wampanoag people. UAINE representatives say the only true element of the Thanksgiving story is that the pilgrims would not have survived their first years in New England without the aid of the Wampanoag. But they believe that in return, they received not friendship but genocide, theft of their lands, and repression that continues today.[2]
[edit] History
Since 1921 (the 300th year after the first Thanksgiving), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts stages an annual reenactment of Thanksgiving. People gather at a church on the site of the Pilgrims' original meeting house, in 17th century costume. After prayers and a sermon, they march to Plymouth Rock. This annual event had become a tourist attraction.
The UNAINE organized the first National Day of Mourning on the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival on Wampanoag land. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts planned to celebrate friendly relations between English ancestors and the Wampanoag. Wampanoag leader Frank James (also known as Wamsutta) was invited to make a speech at the celebration.[3] But, when the anniversary planners reviewed his speech in advance, they decided it was not appropriate for the celebration. The reason given was, "...the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place." (Source: UAINE)
Wamsutta based his speech on a Pilgrim's account of the first year on Indian land. The book recounted the opening of graves, taking the Indians' corn and bean supplies, and selling Wampanoag as slaves for 220 shillings each.[citation needed] After receiving a revised speech, written by a public relations person, Wamsutta decided he would not attend the celebration. To protest the silencing of the American Indian people, he and his supporters went to neighboring Coles Hill, near the statue of Massasoit (leader of the Wampanoag when the Pilgrims landed). Overlooking the Plymouth Harbour and the Mayflower replica, Wamsutta gave his speech. This was the first National Day of Mourning.
[edit] Recent Protest
Today, the UNAINE continues leading the National Day of Mourning protest in Plymouth. The son of the founder, Mr. James, participates as well. The more recent protests have been held on Cole's Hill and a location overlooking Plymouth Rock. The organizers have been joined by other minority activists in protest as well. Typically several hundred protesters appear. The protest general begins at 12:00 noon on Thanksgiving Day with a march through the historic district of Plymouth. All are welcome, but the UNAINE remind participants that this is a day when only the Native people speak about their history and struggles, including contemporary ones. Speakers are by invitation only, so they enforce their own point of view. Following the march and the speeches, they have a social time. Guests are asked to bring non-alcoholic beverages, desserts, fresh fruits and vegetables, or pre-cooked items.
In 1996 the Latinos for Social Change marched to the Plymouth Commons at the same time the Mayflower Society had their Pilgrim Progress parade, to show support of UAINE. The police rerouted the Pilgrim parade to avoid conflict. In 1997 the Pilgrim Progress parade was held earlier and went undisturbed.
In 1997 those who gathered to commemorate the 28th National Day of Mourning had a more difficult time. State troopers and police met the protesters. Some accounts state that pepper spray was used on children and the elderly.[citation needed] Twenty-five people were arrested on charges ranging from battery on an officer to assembling without a permit. In an effort to avoid another conflict, the state reached a settlement with UNAINE in October 1998. It stated the UNAINE were allowed to march without a permit, as long as they gave the town advanced warning.
The 35th National Day of Mourning was held on Thursday, November 25, 2004, and was dedicated to Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder but believed by some (including Amnesty International)[4] to be a political prisoner. Many American Indians and supporters gathered again at the top of Coles Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock. They honored their Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today.
[edit] Will the Protest Ever End?
According to a speech by Moonanum James, Co-Leader of UNAINE, at the 29th National Day of Mourning, November 26, 1998:[5]
“ Some ask us: Will you ever stop protesting? Some day we will stop protesting: We will stop protesting when the merchants of Plymouth are no longer making millions of dollars off the blood of our slaughtered ancestors. We will stop protesting when we can act as sovereign nations on our own land without the interference of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and what Sitting Bull called the "favorite ration chiefs." When corporations stop polluting our mother, the earth. When racism has been eradicated. When the oppression of Two-Spirited people is a thing of the past. We will stop protesting when homeless people have homes and no child goes to bed hungry. When police brutality no longer exists in communities of color. We will stop protesting when Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal and the Puerto Rican independentistas and all the political prisoners are free. Until then, the struggle will continue.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Camping in Asheville
This past weekend we went to Asheville and the blue ridge for our anniversary. I was so glad to get out of Charlotte and see all the fall color. The hardest part is having to come back here. Every time I go to the mountains I wish I didn't have to come back. I just don't fit in with the wine and cheese crowd here.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Breakdown of the Family in Secular Society
Alex Colvin
Introduction
There is no doubt that today, the United State of America is the most powerful nation in the world. As we prepare to enter the new millennium, America leads the way technologically, and the American economy is the strongest economy in the world.
Yet at the same time our nation is faced by severe problems. Our social fabric seems to be coming apart at the seams. Every day we are confronted by reports of violent crime, teen suicide, drug abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, teen suicide. In the past year we have been shocked by incidents which would have previously been considered unimaginable - teen parents casting their new born babies into dumpsters, an 11 and 14 year-old laying in ambush to kill their teachers and students at a school in Arkansas, and now most recently, a 15 year-old in Oregon slaying his parents and then opening fire on his fellow classmates in the high school cafeteria.
The Breakdown of the Family in the 20th century
Of particular concern for us in this conference is the increasing disintegration of stable, loving families in our society. The following are some facts gathered by Dr. Tyler Hendicks of the True Family Values Institute:
From 1901 to 1970, the divorce rate increased by 700%. In 1900 there were 56,000 divorces in America; in 1992 1.2 million, a 700% increase, adjusted for population growth (Insight 6/17/96, p. 14)
From 1970 to 1992, the divorce rate increased 279%; the number of children with a divorced parent increased 352%, the cohabitation population increased 533%, which means 2.7 million unmarried households, 40% of them containing children. (Stanton, pp. 2-3)
Within six months of their marriage, 50% of newlyweds begin to doubt the marriage will last, 39% report "big fights" at least once a week and 4% had already separated for at least one night. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1994)
"Between 1970 and 1995, . . . the percentage of married couples with children dropped by a third, but single-parent families nearly doubled." (Larry Witham, "New data on American family offer few hopeful signs," WT National Edition, March 11-17, 1996, p. 1)
In 1960, 243,000 children were living with a single parent who had never married; by 1993 this figure had risen to 6.3 million.
1.2 million children per year are born into fatherless homes. America has 1.8 million "latchkey" kids. (Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper, p. 118)
20 years ago, 17% of American children grow up without a father; today, 36% do.
In 1960, 8 million children living only with their mother; in 1995, 23 million.
Three fastest growing forms of the family in the US, 1980-95: 1. Single mother families; 2. Blended families (step-parents); 3. Divorced families (the family left over after divorce). (Stanton, p. 1)
The Relationship Between Family Breakdown and Society’s Major Problems
Furthermore, research has now established a clear link between the breakdown of the family and the major problems plaguing our society. Consider the following facts:
Divorce is the leading cause of childhood depression. (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development)
75% of adolescent patients at chemical abuse centers are from single-parent families. (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA)
63% of youth suicides are single-parent children. (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA)
70% of teen-age pregnancies are single-parent children. ("Children in Need: Investment Strategies for the Educationally Disadvantaged" - Committee for Economic Development )
75% of juveniles in youth correction facilities are from single-parent families. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988)
Children of divorce are 5 times more likely to be suspended from school; 3 times as likely to need psychological counseling; 2 times as likely to repeat a grade; are absent from school more, late to school more often; show more health problems.( . Dr. Gene Brody - Study of Competence in Children and Families; Gormely, Newburgh, NY)
Judith S. Wallerstein, in "Children After Divorce: Wounds That Don't Heal" in Perspectives on Marriage reports her findings that:
Twelve to eighteen months after the divorce "we found family after family still in crisis, their wounds wide open. Their symptoms were worse than they had been immediately after the divorce." After 5 years, 37% of the children had gone downhill: "It would be hard to find any other group of children - except, perhaps, the victims of a natural disaster - who suffered such a rate of sudden serious psychological problems." After 10 years, 41% of the children of divorce were "worried, underachieving, self-depreciating and sometimes angry young men and women." By ages 19-23, 66% of the female children of divorce found that they were more haunted and scarred by the divorce in their earlier lives than either they or the researchers had realized. 40% of the boys were found to be floundering in their lives. "divorce was the single most important cause of enduring pain and anomie in their lives. The young people told us time and again how much they needed a family structure, how much they wanted to be protected, and how much they yearned for clear guideline for moral behavior. An alarming number of teen-agers felt abandoned, physically and emotionally.
Family Breakdown: the Root Cause
Dr. Patrick Fagan, a family therapist and former deputy assistant secretary of Health and Human Services who is currently serving as William H. G. FitzGerald Fellow in family issues at The Heritage Foundation has done extensive research on the causes of crime in America.
In brief, Dr. Fagan’s conclusion is:
The root cause of violent crime thus is found in failed intimate relationships of love in marriage and in the family. The breakdown of stable communities … flows directly from this failure. In contrast, addressing the root causes … requires an understanding of the crucial elements of supportive family and community life.
First in importance and influence is the basic marriage commitment. Its vital importance is starkly evident in the catastrophic impact of its absence.
Second is the relationship of love between parents and children, a love expressed primarily in supervision.
Third, stemming from the first and second, is the child's ability to relate to other children.
Fourth, the backbone of strong neighborhoods, is friendship and cooperation between families.
(The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: the Breakdown of Marriage, Family, and Community by Patrick Fagan, The Heritage Foundation)
D. The Positive Impact of Faith and Traditional Morals
Dr. Fagan also notes the positive effect of religious faith and practice on morals, character and the formation of strong families and offers this advice:
It is no coincidence that one of the central rules in the traditional moral codes of all communities at all times, in all places, and in all cultures is the prohibition against giving birth to children outside of marriage. Societies all over the world have recognized that this prohibition is essential to social stability and to raising members of each new generation with the proper respect for their community and their peers. Unfortunately, and with disastrous consequences, this prohibition is ignored today in American society at all levels …
Whenever there is too high a concentration of such broken families in any community, that community will disintegrate. Only so many dysfunctional families can be sustained before the moral and social fabric of the community itself breaks down. Re-establishment of the basic community code of children within marriage is necessary both for the future happiness of American families and for a reduction in violent crime.
(The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: the Breakdown of Marriage, Family, and Community by Patrick Fagan, The Heritage Foundation)
America’s Schizophrenic Culture
America has developed a schizophrenic culture. On the one hand, we have attained unprecedented heights of material success and prosperity On the other hand, we have been unable to maintain a solid moral character, family stability, safe communities, and a harmonious and happy society. This contradiction is manifest in individual lives. We instill in our youth a strong desire for material success and prosperity yet we fail to teach the values that are necessary to build good character, strong families, and a harmonious society.
A Vicious Cycle
The moral compass of our society, the conscience, has been corrupted and a vicious cycle is being generated. Children born and raised in dysfunctional families in which they do not receive the love of parents necessary to instill the sense of value, empathy for others, self-discipline, and good character necessary for a healthy society are less likely to form lasting intimate relationships which develop into committed marriages and stable families. As this cycle expands, society’s problems multiply. If we are to renew American society, it is imperative that we break the cycle of family breakdown. In order to do this however, it is necessary to understand more about the cultural climate of 20th century America and to identify certain ideas which have suborned and weakened the power of the conscience in today’s society.
Ideas Have Consequences
Ideas have consequences. People act the way that they do because they think in certain ways, because they hold certain beliefs. This is true for individuals and it is also true for a society or culture. In the modern world, certain institutions - the universities, schools, the media and the entertainment industry - have a major influence in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world. The ideas and images which are communicated not only influence the actions of individuals; they have a profound influence on public policy which in turn further affects our life and our decisions.
Secular "Modern" Ideas
Truth is truth. Ideally truth discovered by science and reason should be in agreement with truth revealed by religion and work in harmony to help create a healthy society in a prosperous and productive environment. In practice, however, this has not often been the case. A later lecture will contain a more full discussion of the development and relationship between secular thought, tracing it’s antecedents back to the Greek Hellenism, and sacred thought, which in our tradition have been based primarily upon the Bible.
In this short presentation, there is not time to explore the tremendous social changes that have occurred in the past several hundred years and the complex interplay of secular and religious thought. For our purposes, I will simply say that building on the thought of the Enlightenment and inspired by the rapid development of science, many thinkers in the 19th century rejected the authenticity of divine revelation and called into question basic principles of Judeo-Christian culture. Based upon 19th century conceptions of science, a number of thinkers with a secular bias sought to develop a modern scientific conception of man and the universe. In the process of this development, several ideas were expounded which have contributed to modern man’s separation from God, and confused our comprehension of basic moral truths. As these ideas have been propagated, people’s consciences have been weakened, and this has helped to create a climate in which the breakdown of the family has been occurring. I would like to pinpoint a number of these ideas and trace their development through some of our major institutions.
The following ideas in combination have been particularly harmful:
God, religion, and questions of morality are matters of personal opinion which have little or no relevance to social problems.
Man is a highly evolved animal.
There are no absolute standards; values are relative.
The nuclear family is a product of social evolution and is just one of a number of possible forms of social organization.
Societies problems can be solved by technology and the social sciences with a particular emphasis on the role of the state in social engineering.
Traditional Religious Beliefs
This is in contrast to Judeo-Christian beliefs as well as other traditional cultures which have asserted that:
There is a God
Man is a spiritual being who depends upon a relationship with the divine to discover and fulfill his purpose in life
There are universal and absolute moral principles
The nuclear family is not only the central foundation for the transmission of social values but is a sacred institution protected by very clear standards of sexual morality.
Erroneous Notions of Modernism
In the following remarks, I look at several thinkers who have had a profound influence on the 20th century. Let me clarify that I am not attacking them personally, I am not pretending to give a systematic presentation of their philosophy, and I am not saying that they that they were evil or totally wrong in all of their views. What I would like to do is look at the impact that some of their ideas had - how those ideas have been popularly received by the culture - and how they contributed to and gave currency to the notions mentioned above.
A. God, religion, and questions of morality are matters of personal opinion which have little or no relevance to social problems.
Auguste Comte who lived in France from 1798 to 1857 was the father of Positivism and the founder of the Sociology. Positivism maintains that the only way that verifiable truth can be ascertained is through the empirical methods of science. Because statements of a religious, moral or metaphysical nature can not be verified, they are not objective truths. Though they may have emotional value, they are opinion rather than scientific truth. Comte proposed that scientific methods should be used to study society and human behavior and for this purpose he founded sociology. The founding of sociology was followed by the establishment of several other disciplines of social science such as anthropology, psychology, political science, and the development of social statistics. The principles of positivism also influenced the study of history, law, and philosophy. In fact, the social sciences played a major role in the development of the 20th century university. As the university became the central institution for training the leadership of modern America, the social sciences with their positivistic bias became the wellspring of the progressive movement and the modern liberal state. The army of bureaucrats who man numerous administrative agencies of the modern state are evidence of the legacy of positivism. For you legislators, the next time a representative of a government agency testifies before your committee with a barrage of social statistics, say a little thank you to Auguste.
B. Man as Animal: Evolution as a Result of Random Mutations
The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 was a second milestone in the development of the modernist viewpoint. Darwin’s theory that evolution takes place through a process of natural selection based upon random genetic mutations not only suggested that man is merely a physical animal. His emphasis on the random nature of genetic mutation implies that there is no inherent order to the universe and no creative design. If evolution is determined by chance, then some other form of life could just as easily have developed to a position of ascendancy. Science can explain the ascent of man better than religion. There is no need for belief in God to explain man’s existence. Indeed, God, morality, and religion each can be viewed as mere creations of the human mind. As man’s brain evolved to the point that he developed intelligence and the capability of abstract thought, man created religion in his attempt to explain natural phenomena. God didn’t create man; man created God.
C. Relative Values
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written by Friedrich Nietzsche between 1883 and 1885, Zarathustra proclaims
Before God! But now this god has died. You higher men, this god was your greatest danger. It is only since he lies in his tomb that you have been resurrected. Only now the great noon comes; only now the higher man becomes lord.
Have you understood this word. O my brothers? You are startled? Do your hearts become giddy? Does the abyss yawn before you? Does the hellhound howl at you? Well then you higher men! Only now is the mountain of man’s future in labor. God died: now we want the overman to live. (translation by Walter Kaufman)
Nietzsche was announcing the demise of traditional values and moral restraints of Christian society and the potential for powerful creative individuals to create their own values freed from the restraints of "the morality of the herd." As Alan Bloom states in his book Closing the American Mind:
Values are not discovered by reason, and it is useless to seek them, to find the truth or the good life. The quest begun by Odysseus and continued for over three thousand millennia has come to an end with the observation that there is nothing to seek. This alleged fact was announced by Nietzsche just over a century ago when he said, "God is dead." Good and evil now appear for the first time as values, of which there have been a thousand and one, none rationally or objectively preferable to one another. (p. 143)
Once man is deprived man of a standard of value based on faith in divine revelation, reason itself is incapable of defining any absolute standard of value. Bloom describes in his book how the concept of relative values became extremely influential in American universities after World War II.
D. The Nature and Role of Human Sexuality
In his clinical work with women suffering from hysteria, Sigmund Freud discovered that sexual frustration seemed to be the common cause of their neuroses. In time, Freud developed a theory of personality emphasizing the determining power of unconscious sexual drives. The central principle of the personality is the pleasure principle. The unconscious id or libido is the dominant factor in the human psyche and its strongest impulse is the desire for sexual gratification. The ego, or consciousness is the rational faculty which seeks to adapt the needs of the id to its environment. The superego, which we would generally identify as the conscience, is the composite of parental taboos and rewards which are imbedded in our in our formative years. In the case of Western civilization, the monogamous family as a social institution is a culturally derived attempt of a patriarchal society to control sexuality. Strict monogamy can cause sexual repression and thus give rise to individual and social neuroses. Religion itself is a creation of the unconscious mind, an "illusion", similar to a neuroses, which is generated by the unconscious to reinforce the predominant social mores. In other words, a patriarchal society creates a Father God to replace the father figure of childhood and maintain the control of the superego.
Here is a representative quote form one of Freud’s later and most widely read works:
The tendency on the part of civilization to restrict sexual life is no less clear than its tendency to expand the cultural unit. Its first, totemic, phase already brings with it the prohibition against an incestuous choice of object, and this is perhaps the most drastic mutilation which man’s erotic life has in all time experienced. Taboos, laws, customs impose further restrictions, which affect both men and women. Not all civilizations go equally far in this; and the economic structure of the society also influences the amount of sexual freedom that remains…. A high-water mark has been reached in our Western Civilization…. As regards the sexually mature individual, the choice of an object is restricted to the opposite sex, and most extra-genital satisfactions are forbidden as perversions. The requirement, demonstrated in these prohibitions, that there be a single kind of sex life for everyone, disregards the dissimilarities, whether innate or acquired, in the sexual constitution of human beings. It cuts off a fair number of them from sexual enjoyment, and so becomes a source of serious injustice. (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930)
As Freud’s ideas gained popularity they gave rise to the notion that sexual repression is unhealthy and that morality is artificial. Such notions are at the root of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, the sexual liberation movements as well as many of the ideas which determine the bias of sex education and school policy to this day. In a more general sense the pervasive influence of the popular concepts of Freud created a general climate in which it is easy for anyone to rationalize the immorality and infidelity which lead to teen pregnancy, and family breakdown.
The Institutionalization of Secular Relativistic Ideas
Now I would like to take a brief look at how these "modern" ideas have influenced the major institutions of 20th century America and have helped to create a moral and cultural climate which has contributed to the breakdown of the family in the last three decades of this century.
A. The University
The university has come to play a central role in 20th century America. Our teachers, our journalists, our policy makers, our lawyers, our writers, and our bureaucrats are all university educated. As emphasized earlier, the 20th century university has emphasized a scientific, empirical approach not only in the hard sciences but in the social sciences as well. University education has embraced the secular ideas of modernism. Whereas, in the 18th and 19th century our most important universities were founded initially as seminaries and theology was seen as the queen of the sciences, gradually the situation changed and the sciences and the social sciences became dominant with government funding for social and scientific research. University students learned to view the universe through a modernist viewpoint emphasizing relative values and man’s secular nature. Needless to say such ideas influenced their personal morality. Moreover, graduates have carried these ideas with them into their work in education, media, and public policy.
B. The Public Education System
John Dewey had a long career extending from the last decade of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th. According to John Westbrook, author of John Dewey and American Democracy:
The consensus of opinion, including that of those critical of Dewey’s social philosophy, is that he was a major influence on the ideology of modern liberalism and that Deweyan pragmatism is the most articulate expression of the philosophical foundation of this ideology, an ideology that has dominated political and social intercourse in twentieth-century America.
Dewey was especially influential in the field of education. As chairman of the department of philosophy, psychology and education at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1904, he helped to found the famous Dewey School, a laboratory school designed to test and develop his psychological and educational theories. In 1904 he went to Columbia University where remained until his retirement in 1930. The Columbia Teachers College trained teachers for the United States and schools around the world and Dewey’s philosophy had a major impact on education. Expressing his pedagogic creed in 1897, Dewey declared: "I believe… the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life… that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth."
Says Westbrook:
Dewey’s conviction … reflected his belief that "education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform." There is a certain logic to this belief. Insofar as schools played an important part in the shaping of the character of a society’s children, they could if they were designed to do so, fundamentally transform the society. The school provided a relatively controlled environment in which the conditions of self-development could effectively shape its course. Indeed, if teachers did their job well, there would hardly be need of any other sort of reform. (John Dewey and American Democracy, p. 109)
Inspired and guided by this mission, American public education in the 20th century became the vehicle for implementing and testing the latest social theories out of the secular academic world.
C. The Legal System
The legal system has also been impacted. Not only has our legislative and administrative policy been heavily influenced by secular, relativistic ideas; moreover, judges have gradually assumed the role of policy makers influenced by modern social theory.
Legal positivism was introduced into American legal thought by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935). Holmes taught law at Harvard, served as editor of the American Law review, and Associate Justice and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In 1902 he was appointed by Theodore Roosevelt to the Supreme Court where he served for almost thirty years. Holmes was extremely active in late 19th century debates concerning the nature of the law.
In 1894, he published The Path of the Law. In this book Holmes analyzed the debate concerning law and moral principles in terms of his "prediction theory." Declared Holmes, " the prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law." In defining the criteria for judicial decision-making, Holmes downplayed legal principle and history and expressed his hope that in the future, "we will spend more energy on a study of the ends to be attained and the reasons for desiring them."
"For the rational study of law," stated Holmes, " the black letter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics."
In evaluating the impact of this book, Morton J. Horwitz, a leading legal historian stated:
With the "Path of the Law" Holmes pushed American legal thought into the twentieth century. It is the moment at which advanced legal thinkers renounced the belief in a conception of legal thought independent of politics and separate from social reality. From this moment on, the late-nineteenth-century ideal of an internally self-consistent and autonomous system of legal ideals, free from the corrupting influence of politics, was brought constantly under attack. …
It is at this moment that the idea that law is discovered and not made was dealt its most powerful blow in American thought. Only a short time later, Charles Beard extended these demystifying premises to the constitution itself. The result was an intellectual alliance between social reform and a view of law as socially created. Those Progressive writers during the decade before World War I who elaborated a "social engineering’ view of law would come to treat "The Path of the Law" as inspired text. (The Transformation of American Law: 1870-1960, p. 142)
HoImes had defined an incredible amount of power that judges wielded in deciding cases and shaping social policy. In practice, after he was named to the Supreme Court where he served for several decades, Holmes was careful not to abuse that power and paid close attention to legislative intent. However, subsequent judges were less reticent and from the 1930’s through the 1970’s we saw the growth of schools of thought such as legal realism and judicial activism in which judges increasingly came to see their role as arbitrators of social policy, and their ideas of social policy were based directly upon modernist secular ideas.
D. The Media and Entertainment Industry
Likewise, the past generation of journalists in both electronic and print media has come to define a role for themselves as shapers of policy as much as seeking to objectively report fact. Even when not engaging in "advocacy journalism," news coverage has been influenced by a secular, relativist viewpoint. This has been documented in numerous studies of members of the media. The entertainment industry, including novels, music, and the film industry, has likewise popularized the ideas of relativism, secularism, sexual freedom, and alternative lifestyles helping to make these ideas pervasive in our culture.
E. Advertising
Finally, as mass marketing developed, Madison Avenue embraced Freud’s theory of sexuality as a means of selling products. "Sex sells" has become a universal maxim, and Americans have been bombarded by millions of sexually suggestive images.
Results of Modern Secular Thought on American Culture
What has been the result of these developments on American culture. Our children grow up in secular schools in which they learn that values are relative, they are animals, and they can not be expected to control their sexual desires. We give them condoms and wish them good luck. They go on to university, where freed from parental restraint they are further reinforced in these ideas. Our perception of the world through the media is filtered through a secular relativistic viewpoint and we are bombarded by advertising and the entertainment media with a sympathetic viewing of permissive attitudes and alternative lifestyles. The values of modernism, generated in the 19th century, gaining popularity with the intelligentsia in the early part of this century, and bore fruit in the 1960’s and 70’s. The sexual revolution of the 1960’s was a direct attack on traditional notions of morality, marriage, and family. A generation later, we are realizing the devastating effects of that assault in the myriad social problems of today.
In this climate is it any wonder that young people feel justified in engaging in premarital sex. Is it any wonder that millions of couples can rationalize breaking their marriage vows? In a culture which emphasizes gratification over self-control and morality is viewed as a matter of personal opinion, is it any wonder that families are breaking down and domestic violence and crime are on the rise.
There is no doubt that the science has provided incredible benefits for mankind. Transportation and communications are bringing the world together. Technology has created a wealth of material comforts. But what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but loses his soul. The social sciences in their turn have provided us with a vast amount of information and insight into human nature and valuable techniques with which to study the economy, society, and even the human mind. Yet at the same time the flawed secular and relativist bias of modern secularism has undermined the very principles which are necessary for the maintenance of a stable society. At the root of such flaws are the notions that God either does not exist or is irrelevant to society, that man is nothing more than a highly evolved animal, and that moral values are all relative. The ironic thing is that all of these ideas are based on outdated 19th century notions of science, just as Marxism, which claimed to be "scientific socialism," was in fact not scientific at all. Today, contemporary science is becoming more and more compatible with religious belief, and, as can be seen from the research cited above, the tools of social science are themselves affirming the necessity of traditional moral values.
America Needs a new Faith-Based Perspective
Harvey Cox, the Harvard theologian who in the 1960’s had written The Secular City, published a new book entitled Fire From Heaven in 1995. The book was the result of several years spent traveling across the United States and to four continents studying the growth of the Pentecostal movement. In his introduction Cox states
Nearly three decades ago I wrote a book, The Secular City, in which I tried to work out a theology for the "postreligious" age that many sociologists had confidently assured us was coming. Since then, however, religion… seems to have gained a new lease on life. Today, it is secularity, not spirituality, that may be headed for extinction….
The prognosticators had written that the technological pace and urban bustle of the twentieth century would increasingly shove religion to the margin where, deprived of roots, it would shrivel…
This did not happen. Instead, before the academic forecasters could even draw their pensions, a religious renaissance is under way all over the globe…. We are definitely in a period of renewed religious vitality, another "great awakening" …with all the promise and peril religious revivals always bring with them, but this time on a world scale.
In the concluding chapter of the book, Dr. Cox states
For the past three centuries, two principle contenders - scientific modernity and traditional religion have clashed over the privilege of being the ultimate source of meaning and value. Now like tired boxers who have slugged away too long, the two have reached an exhausted stalemate. As British rock singer Sting laments in one of his most popular songs, many have now lost faith in "science and progress" and in "the holy church." People are still willing to rely on science for the limited things it has proven it can do, but they no longer believe it will answer their deepest questions. They remain vaguely intrigued with the traditional religions, but not with the conventional churches… But the loss of direction Sting sings about also has a positive side. Increasing numbers of people appear ready to move on, and are looking for a more promising map of the life-world.
To provide such a "life-map" is the challenge that faces us as we approach the new millennium. It is our responsibility to articulate an understanding which affirms the sacred truths revealed in the scriptures at the same time that it embraces the proven and useful principles of science. We need to dispel the fallacies of secularism and empower the conscience of our nation with a clear concept of a healthy society with loving God-centered families as the foundation - a God-centered ideal empowered by a love that transcends race, national origin, denomination, profession, or economic status. If we are to restore the family we must clarify what a true family is, how it is attained, and how it functions in the society. Armed with such an understanding, we can then tackle the task of reversing the destructive social trends which are plaguing our society and work toward the realization of a peaceful and loving society, nation, and world.
Alex Colvin
Introduction
There is no doubt that today, the United State of America is the most powerful nation in the world. As we prepare to enter the new millennium, America leads the way technologically, and the American economy is the strongest economy in the world.
Yet at the same time our nation is faced by severe problems. Our social fabric seems to be coming apart at the seams. Every day we are confronted by reports of violent crime, teen suicide, drug abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, teen suicide. In the past year we have been shocked by incidents which would have previously been considered unimaginable - teen parents casting their new born babies into dumpsters, an 11 and 14 year-old laying in ambush to kill their teachers and students at a school in Arkansas, and now most recently, a 15 year-old in Oregon slaying his parents and then opening fire on his fellow classmates in the high school cafeteria.
The Breakdown of the Family in the 20th century
Of particular concern for us in this conference is the increasing disintegration of stable, loving families in our society. The following are some facts gathered by Dr. Tyler Hendicks of the True Family Values Institute:
From 1901 to 1970, the divorce rate increased by 700%. In 1900 there were 56,000 divorces in America; in 1992 1.2 million, a 700% increase, adjusted for population growth (Insight 6/17/96, p. 14)
From 1970 to 1992, the divorce rate increased 279%; the number of children with a divorced parent increased 352%, the cohabitation population increased 533%, which means 2.7 million unmarried households, 40% of them containing children. (Stanton, pp. 2-3)
Within six months of their marriage, 50% of newlyweds begin to doubt the marriage will last, 39% report "big fights" at least once a week and 4% had already separated for at least one night. (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1994)
"Between 1970 and 1995, . . . the percentage of married couples with children dropped by a third, but single-parent families nearly doubled." (Larry Witham, "New data on American family offer few hopeful signs," WT National Edition, March 11-17, 1996, p. 1)
In 1960, 243,000 children were living with a single parent who had never married; by 1993 this figure had risen to 6.3 million.
1.2 million children per year are born into fatherless homes. America has 1.8 million "latchkey" kids. (Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper, p. 118)
20 years ago, 17% of American children grow up without a father; today, 36% do.
In 1960, 8 million children living only with their mother; in 1995, 23 million.
Three fastest growing forms of the family in the US, 1980-95: 1. Single mother families; 2. Blended families (step-parents); 3. Divorced families (the family left over after divorce). (Stanton, p. 1)
The Relationship Between Family Breakdown and Society’s Major Problems
Furthermore, research has now established a clear link between the breakdown of the family and the major problems plaguing our society. Consider the following facts:
Divorce is the leading cause of childhood depression. (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development)
75% of adolescent patients at chemical abuse centers are from single-parent families. (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA)
63% of youth suicides are single-parent children. (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA)
70% of teen-age pregnancies are single-parent children. ("Children in Need: Investment Strategies for the Educationally Disadvantaged" - Committee for Economic Development )
75% of juveniles in youth correction facilities are from single-parent families. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988)
Children of divorce are 5 times more likely to be suspended from school; 3 times as likely to need psychological counseling; 2 times as likely to repeat a grade; are absent from school more, late to school more often; show more health problems.( . Dr. Gene Brody - Study of Competence in Children and Families; Gormely, Newburgh, NY)
Judith S. Wallerstein, in "Children After Divorce: Wounds That Don't Heal" in Perspectives on Marriage reports her findings that:
Twelve to eighteen months after the divorce "we found family after family still in crisis, their wounds wide open. Their symptoms were worse than they had been immediately after the divorce." After 5 years, 37% of the children had gone downhill: "It would be hard to find any other group of children - except, perhaps, the victims of a natural disaster - who suffered such a rate of sudden serious psychological problems." After 10 years, 41% of the children of divorce were "worried, underachieving, self-depreciating and sometimes angry young men and women." By ages 19-23, 66% of the female children of divorce found that they were more haunted and scarred by the divorce in their earlier lives than either they or the researchers had realized. 40% of the boys were found to be floundering in their lives. "divorce was the single most important cause of enduring pain and anomie in their lives. The young people told us time and again how much they needed a family structure, how much they wanted to be protected, and how much they yearned for clear guideline for moral behavior. An alarming number of teen-agers felt abandoned, physically and emotionally.
Family Breakdown: the Root Cause
Dr. Patrick Fagan, a family therapist and former deputy assistant secretary of Health and Human Services who is currently serving as William H. G. FitzGerald Fellow in family issues at The Heritage Foundation has done extensive research on the causes of crime in America.
In brief, Dr. Fagan’s conclusion is:
The root cause of violent crime thus is found in failed intimate relationships of love in marriage and in the family. The breakdown of stable communities … flows directly from this failure. In contrast, addressing the root causes … requires an understanding of the crucial elements of supportive family and community life.
First in importance and influence is the basic marriage commitment. Its vital importance is starkly evident in the catastrophic impact of its absence.
Second is the relationship of love between parents and children, a love expressed primarily in supervision.
Third, stemming from the first and second, is the child's ability to relate to other children.
Fourth, the backbone of strong neighborhoods, is friendship and cooperation between families.
(The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: the Breakdown of Marriage, Family, and Community by Patrick Fagan, The Heritage Foundation)
D. The Positive Impact of Faith and Traditional Morals
Dr. Fagan also notes the positive effect of religious faith and practice on morals, character and the formation of strong families and offers this advice:
It is no coincidence that one of the central rules in the traditional moral codes of all communities at all times, in all places, and in all cultures is the prohibition against giving birth to children outside of marriage. Societies all over the world have recognized that this prohibition is essential to social stability and to raising members of each new generation with the proper respect for their community and their peers. Unfortunately, and with disastrous consequences, this prohibition is ignored today in American society at all levels …
Whenever there is too high a concentration of such broken families in any community, that community will disintegrate. Only so many dysfunctional families can be sustained before the moral and social fabric of the community itself breaks down. Re-establishment of the basic community code of children within marriage is necessary both for the future happiness of American families and for a reduction in violent crime.
(The Real Root Causes of Violent Crime: the Breakdown of Marriage, Family, and Community by Patrick Fagan, The Heritage Foundation)
America’s Schizophrenic Culture
America has developed a schizophrenic culture. On the one hand, we have attained unprecedented heights of material success and prosperity On the other hand, we have been unable to maintain a solid moral character, family stability, safe communities, and a harmonious and happy society. This contradiction is manifest in individual lives. We instill in our youth a strong desire for material success and prosperity yet we fail to teach the values that are necessary to build good character, strong families, and a harmonious society.
A Vicious Cycle
The moral compass of our society, the conscience, has been corrupted and a vicious cycle is being generated. Children born and raised in dysfunctional families in which they do not receive the love of parents necessary to instill the sense of value, empathy for others, self-discipline, and good character necessary for a healthy society are less likely to form lasting intimate relationships which develop into committed marriages and stable families. As this cycle expands, society’s problems multiply. If we are to renew American society, it is imperative that we break the cycle of family breakdown. In order to do this however, it is necessary to understand more about the cultural climate of 20th century America and to identify certain ideas which have suborned and weakened the power of the conscience in today’s society.
Ideas Have Consequences
Ideas have consequences. People act the way that they do because they think in certain ways, because they hold certain beliefs. This is true for individuals and it is also true for a society or culture. In the modern world, certain institutions - the universities, schools, the media and the entertainment industry - have a major influence in shaping our understanding of ourselves and the world. The ideas and images which are communicated not only influence the actions of individuals; they have a profound influence on public policy which in turn further affects our life and our decisions.
Secular "Modern" Ideas
Truth is truth. Ideally truth discovered by science and reason should be in agreement with truth revealed by religion and work in harmony to help create a healthy society in a prosperous and productive environment. In practice, however, this has not often been the case. A later lecture will contain a more full discussion of the development and relationship between secular thought, tracing it’s antecedents back to the Greek Hellenism, and sacred thought, which in our tradition have been based primarily upon the Bible.
In this short presentation, there is not time to explore the tremendous social changes that have occurred in the past several hundred years and the complex interplay of secular and religious thought. For our purposes, I will simply say that building on the thought of the Enlightenment and inspired by the rapid development of science, many thinkers in the 19th century rejected the authenticity of divine revelation and called into question basic principles of Judeo-Christian culture. Based upon 19th century conceptions of science, a number of thinkers with a secular bias sought to develop a modern scientific conception of man and the universe. In the process of this development, several ideas were expounded which have contributed to modern man’s separation from God, and confused our comprehension of basic moral truths. As these ideas have been propagated, people’s consciences have been weakened, and this has helped to create a climate in which the breakdown of the family has been occurring. I would like to pinpoint a number of these ideas and trace their development through some of our major institutions.
The following ideas in combination have been particularly harmful:
God, religion, and questions of morality are matters of personal opinion which have little or no relevance to social problems.
Man is a highly evolved animal.
There are no absolute standards; values are relative.
The nuclear family is a product of social evolution and is just one of a number of possible forms of social organization.
Societies problems can be solved by technology and the social sciences with a particular emphasis on the role of the state in social engineering.
Traditional Religious Beliefs
This is in contrast to Judeo-Christian beliefs as well as other traditional cultures which have asserted that:
There is a God
Man is a spiritual being who depends upon a relationship with the divine to discover and fulfill his purpose in life
There are universal and absolute moral principles
The nuclear family is not only the central foundation for the transmission of social values but is a sacred institution protected by very clear standards of sexual morality.
Erroneous Notions of Modernism
In the following remarks, I look at several thinkers who have had a profound influence on the 20th century. Let me clarify that I am not attacking them personally, I am not pretending to give a systematic presentation of their philosophy, and I am not saying that they that they were evil or totally wrong in all of their views. What I would like to do is look at the impact that some of their ideas had - how those ideas have been popularly received by the culture - and how they contributed to and gave currency to the notions mentioned above.
A. God, religion, and questions of morality are matters of personal opinion which have little or no relevance to social problems.
Auguste Comte who lived in France from 1798 to 1857 was the father of Positivism and the founder of the Sociology. Positivism maintains that the only way that verifiable truth can be ascertained is through the empirical methods of science. Because statements of a religious, moral or metaphysical nature can not be verified, they are not objective truths. Though they may have emotional value, they are opinion rather than scientific truth. Comte proposed that scientific methods should be used to study society and human behavior and for this purpose he founded sociology. The founding of sociology was followed by the establishment of several other disciplines of social science such as anthropology, psychology, political science, and the development of social statistics. The principles of positivism also influenced the study of history, law, and philosophy. In fact, the social sciences played a major role in the development of the 20th century university. As the university became the central institution for training the leadership of modern America, the social sciences with their positivistic bias became the wellspring of the progressive movement and the modern liberal state. The army of bureaucrats who man numerous administrative agencies of the modern state are evidence of the legacy of positivism. For you legislators, the next time a representative of a government agency testifies before your committee with a barrage of social statistics, say a little thank you to Auguste.
B. Man as Animal: Evolution as a Result of Random Mutations
The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 was a second milestone in the development of the modernist viewpoint. Darwin’s theory that evolution takes place through a process of natural selection based upon random genetic mutations not only suggested that man is merely a physical animal. His emphasis on the random nature of genetic mutation implies that there is no inherent order to the universe and no creative design. If evolution is determined by chance, then some other form of life could just as easily have developed to a position of ascendancy. Science can explain the ascent of man better than religion. There is no need for belief in God to explain man’s existence. Indeed, God, morality, and religion each can be viewed as mere creations of the human mind. As man’s brain evolved to the point that he developed intelligence and the capability of abstract thought, man created religion in his attempt to explain natural phenomena. God didn’t create man; man created God.
C. Relative Values
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written by Friedrich Nietzsche between 1883 and 1885, Zarathustra proclaims
Before God! But now this god has died. You higher men, this god was your greatest danger. It is only since he lies in his tomb that you have been resurrected. Only now the great noon comes; only now the higher man becomes lord.
Have you understood this word. O my brothers? You are startled? Do your hearts become giddy? Does the abyss yawn before you? Does the hellhound howl at you? Well then you higher men! Only now is the mountain of man’s future in labor. God died: now we want the overman to live. (translation by Walter Kaufman)
Nietzsche was announcing the demise of traditional values and moral restraints of Christian society and the potential for powerful creative individuals to create their own values freed from the restraints of "the morality of the herd." As Alan Bloom states in his book Closing the American Mind:
Values are not discovered by reason, and it is useless to seek them, to find the truth or the good life. The quest begun by Odysseus and continued for over three thousand millennia has come to an end with the observation that there is nothing to seek. This alleged fact was announced by Nietzsche just over a century ago when he said, "God is dead." Good and evil now appear for the first time as values, of which there have been a thousand and one, none rationally or objectively preferable to one another. (p. 143)
Once man is deprived man of a standard of value based on faith in divine revelation, reason itself is incapable of defining any absolute standard of value. Bloom describes in his book how the concept of relative values became extremely influential in American universities after World War II.
D. The Nature and Role of Human Sexuality
In his clinical work with women suffering from hysteria, Sigmund Freud discovered that sexual frustration seemed to be the common cause of their neuroses. In time, Freud developed a theory of personality emphasizing the determining power of unconscious sexual drives. The central principle of the personality is the pleasure principle. The unconscious id or libido is the dominant factor in the human psyche and its strongest impulse is the desire for sexual gratification. The ego, or consciousness is the rational faculty which seeks to adapt the needs of the id to its environment. The superego, which we would generally identify as the conscience, is the composite of parental taboos and rewards which are imbedded in our in our formative years. In the case of Western civilization, the monogamous family as a social institution is a culturally derived attempt of a patriarchal society to control sexuality. Strict monogamy can cause sexual repression and thus give rise to individual and social neuroses. Religion itself is a creation of the unconscious mind, an "illusion", similar to a neuroses, which is generated by the unconscious to reinforce the predominant social mores. In other words, a patriarchal society creates a Father God to replace the father figure of childhood and maintain the control of the superego.
Here is a representative quote form one of Freud’s later and most widely read works:
The tendency on the part of civilization to restrict sexual life is no less clear than its tendency to expand the cultural unit. Its first, totemic, phase already brings with it the prohibition against an incestuous choice of object, and this is perhaps the most drastic mutilation which man’s erotic life has in all time experienced. Taboos, laws, customs impose further restrictions, which affect both men and women. Not all civilizations go equally far in this; and the economic structure of the society also influences the amount of sexual freedom that remains…. A high-water mark has been reached in our Western Civilization…. As regards the sexually mature individual, the choice of an object is restricted to the opposite sex, and most extra-genital satisfactions are forbidden as perversions. The requirement, demonstrated in these prohibitions, that there be a single kind of sex life for everyone, disregards the dissimilarities, whether innate or acquired, in the sexual constitution of human beings. It cuts off a fair number of them from sexual enjoyment, and so becomes a source of serious injustice. (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930)
As Freud’s ideas gained popularity they gave rise to the notion that sexual repression is unhealthy and that morality is artificial. Such notions are at the root of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, the sexual liberation movements as well as many of the ideas which determine the bias of sex education and school policy to this day. In a more general sense the pervasive influence of the popular concepts of Freud created a general climate in which it is easy for anyone to rationalize the immorality and infidelity which lead to teen pregnancy, and family breakdown.
The Institutionalization of Secular Relativistic Ideas
Now I would like to take a brief look at how these "modern" ideas have influenced the major institutions of 20th century America and have helped to create a moral and cultural climate which has contributed to the breakdown of the family in the last three decades of this century.
A. The University
The university has come to play a central role in 20th century America. Our teachers, our journalists, our policy makers, our lawyers, our writers, and our bureaucrats are all university educated. As emphasized earlier, the 20th century university has emphasized a scientific, empirical approach not only in the hard sciences but in the social sciences as well. University education has embraced the secular ideas of modernism. Whereas, in the 18th and 19th century our most important universities were founded initially as seminaries and theology was seen as the queen of the sciences, gradually the situation changed and the sciences and the social sciences became dominant with government funding for social and scientific research. University students learned to view the universe through a modernist viewpoint emphasizing relative values and man’s secular nature. Needless to say such ideas influenced their personal morality. Moreover, graduates have carried these ideas with them into their work in education, media, and public policy.
B. The Public Education System
John Dewey had a long career extending from the last decade of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th. According to John Westbrook, author of John Dewey and American Democracy:
The consensus of opinion, including that of those critical of Dewey’s social philosophy, is that he was a major influence on the ideology of modern liberalism and that Deweyan pragmatism is the most articulate expression of the philosophical foundation of this ideology, an ideology that has dominated political and social intercourse in twentieth-century America.
Dewey was especially influential in the field of education. As chairman of the department of philosophy, psychology and education at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1904, he helped to found the famous Dewey School, a laboratory school designed to test and develop his psychological and educational theories. In 1904 he went to Columbia University where remained until his retirement in 1930. The Columbia Teachers College trained teachers for the United States and schools around the world and Dewey’s philosophy had a major impact on education. Expressing his pedagogic creed in 1897, Dewey declared: "I believe… the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life… that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth."
Says Westbrook:
Dewey’s conviction … reflected his belief that "education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform." There is a certain logic to this belief. Insofar as schools played an important part in the shaping of the character of a society’s children, they could if they were designed to do so, fundamentally transform the society. The school provided a relatively controlled environment in which the conditions of self-development could effectively shape its course. Indeed, if teachers did their job well, there would hardly be need of any other sort of reform. (John Dewey and American Democracy, p. 109)
Inspired and guided by this mission, American public education in the 20th century became the vehicle for implementing and testing the latest social theories out of the secular academic world.
C. The Legal System
The legal system has also been impacted. Not only has our legislative and administrative policy been heavily influenced by secular, relativistic ideas; moreover, judges have gradually assumed the role of policy makers influenced by modern social theory.
Legal positivism was introduced into American legal thought by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935). Holmes taught law at Harvard, served as editor of the American Law review, and Associate Justice and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In 1902 he was appointed by Theodore Roosevelt to the Supreme Court where he served for almost thirty years. Holmes was extremely active in late 19th century debates concerning the nature of the law.
In 1894, he published The Path of the Law. In this book Holmes analyzed the debate concerning law and moral principles in terms of his "prediction theory." Declared Holmes, " the prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law." In defining the criteria for judicial decision-making, Holmes downplayed legal principle and history and expressed his hope that in the future, "we will spend more energy on a study of the ends to be attained and the reasons for desiring them."
"For the rational study of law," stated Holmes, " the black letter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics."
In evaluating the impact of this book, Morton J. Horwitz, a leading legal historian stated:
With the "Path of the Law" Holmes pushed American legal thought into the twentieth century. It is the moment at which advanced legal thinkers renounced the belief in a conception of legal thought independent of politics and separate from social reality. From this moment on, the late-nineteenth-century ideal of an internally self-consistent and autonomous system of legal ideals, free from the corrupting influence of politics, was brought constantly under attack. …
It is at this moment that the idea that law is discovered and not made was dealt its most powerful blow in American thought. Only a short time later, Charles Beard extended these demystifying premises to the constitution itself. The result was an intellectual alliance between social reform and a view of law as socially created. Those Progressive writers during the decade before World War I who elaborated a "social engineering’ view of law would come to treat "The Path of the Law" as inspired text. (The Transformation of American Law: 1870-1960, p. 142)
HoImes had defined an incredible amount of power that judges wielded in deciding cases and shaping social policy. In practice, after he was named to the Supreme Court where he served for several decades, Holmes was careful not to abuse that power and paid close attention to legislative intent. However, subsequent judges were less reticent and from the 1930’s through the 1970’s we saw the growth of schools of thought such as legal realism and judicial activism in which judges increasingly came to see their role as arbitrators of social policy, and their ideas of social policy were based directly upon modernist secular ideas.
D. The Media and Entertainment Industry
Likewise, the past generation of journalists in both electronic and print media has come to define a role for themselves as shapers of policy as much as seeking to objectively report fact. Even when not engaging in "advocacy journalism," news coverage has been influenced by a secular, relativist viewpoint. This has been documented in numerous studies of members of the media. The entertainment industry, including novels, music, and the film industry, has likewise popularized the ideas of relativism, secularism, sexual freedom, and alternative lifestyles helping to make these ideas pervasive in our culture.
E. Advertising
Finally, as mass marketing developed, Madison Avenue embraced Freud’s theory of sexuality as a means of selling products. "Sex sells" has become a universal maxim, and Americans have been bombarded by millions of sexually suggestive images.
Results of Modern Secular Thought on American Culture
What has been the result of these developments on American culture. Our children grow up in secular schools in which they learn that values are relative, they are animals, and they can not be expected to control their sexual desires. We give them condoms and wish them good luck. They go on to university, where freed from parental restraint they are further reinforced in these ideas. Our perception of the world through the media is filtered through a secular relativistic viewpoint and we are bombarded by advertising and the entertainment media with a sympathetic viewing of permissive attitudes and alternative lifestyles. The values of modernism, generated in the 19th century, gaining popularity with the intelligentsia in the early part of this century, and bore fruit in the 1960’s and 70’s. The sexual revolution of the 1960’s was a direct attack on traditional notions of morality, marriage, and family. A generation later, we are realizing the devastating effects of that assault in the myriad social problems of today.
In this climate is it any wonder that young people feel justified in engaging in premarital sex. Is it any wonder that millions of couples can rationalize breaking their marriage vows? In a culture which emphasizes gratification over self-control and morality is viewed as a matter of personal opinion, is it any wonder that families are breaking down and domestic violence and crime are on the rise.
There is no doubt that the science has provided incredible benefits for mankind. Transportation and communications are bringing the world together. Technology has created a wealth of material comforts. But what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but loses his soul. The social sciences in their turn have provided us with a vast amount of information and insight into human nature and valuable techniques with which to study the economy, society, and even the human mind. Yet at the same time the flawed secular and relativist bias of modern secularism has undermined the very principles which are necessary for the maintenance of a stable society. At the root of such flaws are the notions that God either does not exist or is irrelevant to society, that man is nothing more than a highly evolved animal, and that moral values are all relative. The ironic thing is that all of these ideas are based on outdated 19th century notions of science, just as Marxism, which claimed to be "scientific socialism," was in fact not scientific at all. Today, contemporary science is becoming more and more compatible with religious belief, and, as can be seen from the research cited above, the tools of social science are themselves affirming the necessity of traditional moral values.
America Needs a new Faith-Based Perspective
Harvey Cox, the Harvard theologian who in the 1960’s had written The Secular City, published a new book entitled Fire From Heaven in 1995. The book was the result of several years spent traveling across the United States and to four continents studying the growth of the Pentecostal movement. In his introduction Cox states
Nearly three decades ago I wrote a book, The Secular City, in which I tried to work out a theology for the "postreligious" age that many sociologists had confidently assured us was coming. Since then, however, religion… seems to have gained a new lease on life. Today, it is secularity, not spirituality, that may be headed for extinction….
The prognosticators had written that the technological pace and urban bustle of the twentieth century would increasingly shove religion to the margin where, deprived of roots, it would shrivel…
This did not happen. Instead, before the academic forecasters could even draw their pensions, a religious renaissance is under way all over the globe…. We are definitely in a period of renewed religious vitality, another "great awakening" …with all the promise and peril religious revivals always bring with them, but this time on a world scale.
In the concluding chapter of the book, Dr. Cox states
For the past three centuries, two principle contenders - scientific modernity and traditional religion have clashed over the privilege of being the ultimate source of meaning and value. Now like tired boxers who have slugged away too long, the two have reached an exhausted stalemate. As British rock singer Sting laments in one of his most popular songs, many have now lost faith in "science and progress" and in "the holy church." People are still willing to rely on science for the limited things it has proven it can do, but they no longer believe it will answer their deepest questions. They remain vaguely intrigued with the traditional religions, but not with the conventional churches… But the loss of direction Sting sings about also has a positive side. Increasing numbers of people appear ready to move on, and are looking for a more promising map of the life-world.
To provide such a "life-map" is the challenge that faces us as we approach the new millennium. It is our responsibility to articulate an understanding which affirms the sacred truths revealed in the scriptures at the same time that it embraces the proven and useful principles of science. We need to dispel the fallacies of secularism and empower the conscience of our nation with a clear concept of a healthy society with loving God-centered families as the foundation - a God-centered ideal empowered by a love that transcends race, national origin, denomination, profession, or economic status. If we are to restore the family we must clarify what a true family is, how it is attained, and how it functions in the society. Armed with such an understanding, we can then tackle the task of reversing the destructive social trends which are plaguing our society and work toward the realization of a peaceful and loving society, nation, and world.
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