The Loss Of Culture In America

The faith will outlive every culture is a question for us is whether we want to get back inside the church doors and learn something or just going on our merry way in which case will be yet another society dumped on the ash heap of history is family policy matters with NC family Pres. John Weston thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. Our guest today is Prof. amp and he also one, who teaches Renaissance literature and the development of Western civilization at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. Dr. Esalen is well known for his translations of classical works such as Dante's Divine comedy and wouldn't be talking with him today about the restoration of American culture, a prolific and poignant writer Dr. Esalen is a senior editor of Touchstone magazine, and has written more than a dozen books on topics ranging from literature and culture, education, spirituality and theology, including his newest book out of the ashes, rebuilding American culture.

Dr. Anthony Esalen welcome to family policy matters is great to have you with us on the show. Well, think it's great to be here. Well, Prof. Esalen, I think we all recognize that there has been a pretty monumental shift or a decay.

Some like to put it in American culture which has become particularly noticeable in dramatic.

In recent decades. What or in your opinion the most clear and concerning indications of this change almost everything that you can point okay so for instance right now for the first time in American history and perhaps for the first time in the history of any culture that we know of a majority of people of the age of 30 are not married to the divorce rate has has peaked and maybe leveled off.

But that doesn't tell the whole story because nobody's getting married to begin with but that's another indicator we have more people living alone than ever before your children per family and still it just an unsustainable and inexcusable divorce rate hovering between 40 and 50% that all that is terrible.

If he eat you want to look at what about one of the things that I do is collect very very old school books say 100 hundred 20 years old and very old magazines, popular magazines, what ordinary rather intelligent people would've been reading. In 1880 okay and I look at the stuff there.

I look at the language there of the sophistication of the things that ordinary people reading I and I compare that with the newspapers. Now it's it's as if everybody has been taken minds suppressing drugs.

It's it's a colossal collapse. In general, knowledge, intelligence, linguistic sophistication vocabulary of grammar all across the board. We look at the buildings look at public buildings that ordinary people built not talk about great architectural firms talk about you know your local coal miners who would put together the town hall look at what they did hundred years ago hundred 40 years ago the churches. The post office is the town halls, schools that they built and compare that now with the whatever it is that ordinary people can do, but by way of building public buildings or public buildings are ugly and drab by aiming everybody knows is right that everybody goes to an epic story of immediately sick craftsmanship that where is it now, I'm told Dale that you could not possibly you could conceivably build you go to an old Victorian house maybe a big old house built by former governor of the state.

I just recently in the house, built by the former governor of New Hampshire about her 20 years ago and an architect's submission because he $7 million to build this house now and you probably couldn't even do that. And because we don't have people who can do that work with wooden plaster, which we don't have social. I appoint anything point to the collapse of man put it all over the place.

Everywhere return so I write this book saying to people look with appropriate face on it anymore, there's always trouble out there. You can't deal with everything but you and your own person.

You can do with something everybody can do something you talk about craftsmanship, and of course with craftsmanship. Creativity goes hand-in-hand, and I know that one of the things that you do is you open your book out of the ashes, is to begin with a fairly in-depth discussion of the great liturgical music of ages past about a month to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about that boy.

Okay, so let's suppose that I was writing him and I know pretty did I have a Theissen education at his high school.

Maybe I even went to the University. Maybe not, but I read a lot, you know, I've read read poetry in my native tongue, and I've read the Christian classic what Pilgrim's progress I read Augustine's confessions I've been steeped in Scripture. So I'm going to write him. I have centuries of experience of hands at my soul were at my fingertips.

I don't have to be particularly learned man either.

I just absorbed all of this right and so when those guys wrote hymns but I see what types when I pause and actually take notice. I see holy. These are very sophisticated little theological problems here and not just off-the-cuff expressions of feeling that all the King of love my Shepherd is wonderful, deeply theological New Testament meditation upon the 23rd Psalm the Lord is my shepherd, but I saw this holy these guys knew what they were doing right when we sing those two real melodies that a congregation can sing you with doing something different with our minds than when you are just sort of absorbed into a lot of noise singing things that really old linguistically don't really make a whole lot of sense and sometimes are heretical at that. Some things are just dumb and you know and people say we are just an elitist and only go there because I thought about what common ordinary people used to produce okay and in fact nobody says that about his own house… You know what I'm going to hang a piece of chalk over my fireplace in bright orange and green. I know it's junkets is obtaining but it struck that's okay I'm not an elitist. Now you want to put something over your fireplace that looks handsome right all the Christian denominations are guilty of you was listening to a resource to listen to our radio show online resources have a place of persuasion in your community website and see family.org now Dr. S1 is it about your experiences in higher education for over 30 years in both a large public university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and it smaller religiously affiliated colleges like Furman and Providence that leads you to conclude, and I quote the public schools are beyond reform and we must build new colleges talk about old yeah okay well from public schools are not that horrible. There were very few though many feet much.

And people almost all the public schools or deadlocks because Talk in any of those schools about the most important human things you cannot talk about who we are as human beings and where were going there I'm sorry I'm in there that's that's like.

That's an amputated education and our forebears in public schools hundred years ago they did not think that they were required required to give students an amputated education they were not allergic to religious thought, okay, as we are now on, but also I mean, think about what the public schools don't even do PE do not go to graduate from those public schools.

Knowing a heck of a lot about world history, American history, they teach no grammar anymore that's gone they they don't teach the great heritage of English literature.

My students don't even know the names they don't recognize the names of great English poets. The greatest that's like living like living in Italy and never never having heard the name of Leonardo da Vinci, I mean the people around schools and the people who teach and there's no reforming it right that that that Neil was laced with rat poison. You can't take the rat poison out piece by piece, forget it, it's gone. That which we need to build schools now from the bottom up all over again. There's no alternative address when you dedicate entire chapters of out of the ashes to the topics of restoring manhood and womanhood which we've just been talking about writing that the harms of the sexual revolution and the rejection of natural law and order, as it pertains to the sexes has been particularly harmful. You've already addressed this a little bit but I imagine that this is a pretty fundamental issue is is you have discussed so far throughout our discussion.

Can you expand on that we have been dealing with.

As I'm sure you know in North Carolina, particularly on issues of bathroom access, and transgender rights and rights types of things and our culture seems to have made in this particular arena. A huge shift in that direction and it is it is going to have profound impacts on our culture, depending upon how we deal with it is if it's as if the whole society has gone mad. Okay I teach.

I teach material that spans 4000 years and I read a lot of languages and I teach about a lot of different cultures when something pops up like this and you know that no matter where you went in the ancient world. Medieval world Renaissance, the near East, North Africa, Europe and North America where he went, people would look at you and say you people crazy, you gone insane.

Nobody in the history of the world is confused about these things except Russ said I think I've said it once in the book grandparents who did not have ultrasound use to him wonder about the sex of the child before it was born were more sophisticated.

Now we wonder about it afterwards. The problem with this bill is worse and opponents should be very clear about this. Okay the problem is not first and foremost, that it poses a danger to girls and women it.okay but the problem first and foremost is that is on real. This is caving into unreality. You cave-in here and there's nothing sensible that you will ever again have to say about the sexes and the one thing that is most constitutive of the common good in any culture will be the stability of the male-female bond and the bond that they have with the children that they make, but this sort of thing sweeps right off the board.

Any notion that there are such things as men and women dressed when you state also that the health of the society may be gauged by how full the churches or do you think it's possible to restore the role of faith and religion in America, and if so, as we conclude how will this be accomplished well of course it's possible because with God all things are possible and the history of the church over 2000 years is shown at just when you know that the church is probably died 15 times and it died most notably on a Friday afternoon outside of Jerusalem on Calvary and yet has come back to life. This is a feature of the church all times. That doesn't mean that the particular culture comes back to life cultures do die that the faith will outlive every culture. The question for us is whether we want to grow up finally and admit our mistakes and get our sorry carcasses back inside the church doors and learn something again or to keep just going on her merry way in which case will be yet another society dumped on the ash heap of history like the Soviet Union. There is no future in in society that does not have an orientation towards towards God, towards the transcendent, however, that is, imagine human society loses that orientation towards heaven it dies, it dies pretty fast and were seeing in Europe and North America. No doubt, no doubt this is been a fascinating discussion and I know that many of our listeners are interested in obtaining a copy of your book to dig into this deeper there so much to talk about. Unfortunately, we are just about out of time before we go. I do want to give you an opportunity to let our listeners know where they can go to get a copy of out of ashes. It's on Amazon but it is published by rectory press so the rectory website should have it very good what they can just Google Dr. Anthony Asselin MSDS oh LEM again ESO LEM and obtain a copy of out of ashes, which again is just a fascinating in the look into American culture where we are where we need to be and especially comparisons made in light of prior generations and historically accurate information and changes in our culture that will I think be of strong encouragement and also a challenge to those who are willing and interesting to delve into that I am without Dr. Anthony S what I want to thank you so much for being with us on family policy matters and for offering such an interesting exploration of these the truth in your book out of the thank you thank you family policy matters production of NZ family to listen to our radio show online, and for more resources and information about issues important to families in North Carolina go to my website and see family.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook