Moral decline

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Moral decline (or degeneration) refers to the process of declining from a higher to a lower level of morality. The condition of moral decline is seen as preceding or concomitant with the decline in quality of life, as well as the decline of nations. In the words of British lawyer and jurist Judge Devlin (1905 -1992), "an established morality is as necessary as good government to the welfare of society. Societies disintegrate from within more frequently than they are broken up by external pressures."[1]

Moral standards


In the realm of formal religion, moral codes are passed on via sacred scriptures and traditions, which usually transcend time. However, cultural adaptations may be made as needed, while upholding the principal of the original.[3] This adaptation is an area of theology.








Biblical theology








But we have forgotten God.



Secular ideology


While people without religion may sometimes be considered relatively good, and contrasted with evil people, yet, in contrast to the Bible, atheism offers no objective transcendent authority which comprehensively defines good and evil, and which is proven to provide beneficial morality. In addition, the moral foundation of atheism is seen by many as having allowed atheists such as Mao Zedong and Pol Pot and others to easily justify their atrocities, these being pragmatically reasonable to them. [15][16] The corresponding responses from atheists, such as which invoke Hitler as an example of a Christian, and or charge God with immorality (paradoxically, by Biblical standards), is part of a renewed conflict.[17][18]

Examples of development and decline

General Douglas MacArthur once stated,

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline.[19]

Biblical examples

The Bible, containing extensive historical narratives, provides many personal and corporate examples of spiritual and moral development declension, otherwise know as backsliding.[20] Israel was provided much grace by way of superior laws, and leaders such as Moses and Joshua, and enjoyed blessings of obedience, as recorded in the Torah (and in such overviews as Psalms 105). But soon they overall "dealt proudly, and hardened their necks, and hearkened not" to God's commandments, as succinctly rehearsed by Nehemiah (cp. 9) and Psalms 78, 105, 107, Acts 7, and Old Testament prophets such as Hosea. The grace given to men such as King Saul, David, Solomon, Asa and Hezekiah, and their subsequent failures, provide examples of souls who walked in disobedience, to their and Israel's hurt, though in such examples as David, earnest repentance enabled continued usefulness. In the New Testament, a higher plane of holiness is exhorted and enabled, (Rm. 8:4), with 1 John delineating what manner of faith is efficacious to salvation. Most individual examples of backsliding (which presumes a period of growth first) are more incidental, such as Peter's denial of Christ, (Mk. 14:66-72) and of Gentile equality, under pressure, (Gal. 2:9-14) but are followed by repentance, and their sins counterbalanced by overall holy lives in which such sins are an exception.

Other souls, such as Demas (who "hath forsaken me [Paul], having loved this present world", (2 Tim. 4:10) indicate a more willful spiritual and moral departure. Biblical texts such as Galatians 5:1-4 and Hebrews 3:12; 10:38 warn believers (as believers) of falling from grace, making Christ of no effect, departing from the living God, and drawing back into perdition. The apostle Paul's letters to the Corinthians reveal the most detailed example of corporate backsliding of a Christian church, and in response to which God works to motivate repentance through chastisement, lest one be condemned with the rest of the world. (1 Cor. 11:32)



Roman Empire

While pagan Rome evidenced that its people had retained a somewhat strong degree of adherence to many basic moral values for much of its history, without which it could not have been a great empire, their gods themselves (mainly being forms of Greek deities) were immoral, and the Roman Empire followed the path of moral degeneration that would be its ruin. The moral deterioration of the Empire is seen to have attained its highest point in the dissolute age of the immoral Roman Emperors,[22] almost all of which were active homosexuals, and who often claimed godhood themselves in order to legitimize their rule.

J.W. Shepard states,





This was the condition of the world morally when Jesus came, who was to "overcome the world" with His Gospel.[23]

Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889) adds,


See also Roman Homosexuality

The United States





Though the extreme of creating theocracies ruling over those without the church (contrary to the charter given to the church in the New Testament[27]) was rightly resisted by men such as Baptist Roger Williams, yet all 50 states referred to God in their Constitutions.[28] Evangelical Calvinism (then the predominate faith) is seen as fostering a fervent American nationalism,[29] and the effect of a Bible based Christianity is credited with working to bring souls to be ruled from within, by the Spirit of Christ and a sound conscience.[30] This helped to enable relatively small government and yet promote stability in a vast and fertile country with a multitude of different peoples, and to endure and progress in overcoming many serious negative consequences of the abuse of power, and the iniquity of unjust bondage.




McGuffey Readers became the standardized reading text for most schools across the United States, especially throughout the West and South, during the mid to late nineteenth century,[33] [34] and were used widely in America until just after World War I. This resulted in the Readers becoming a unifying force in American culture, giving America a common value-laden body of literary reference and allusion,[35] and “a sense of common experience and of common possession”.[36]

The first elementary schools also taught Christian morality, and even the Unitarian (a religion which essentially denies Christ and Divine biblical authority, but which then overall upheld Bible morality, much unlike it does today) Father of the Common School, Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in 1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.” Mann, who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and lotteries, [37] dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from virtue”, and that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would produce more evil than it inherited.[38]

In higher education, the second requirement of Harvard Universities Lawes of 1642 (after requiring literacy in Latin, which language the Scriptures were then mostly written in), was that "Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life. (Joh. 17:3) Overall, the nature of early colleges and universities was religious, and which continued at least until the Civil War. Even State colleges had significant religious (most always Christian) components, such as mandatory religion courses and attendance at chapel services, while large numbers of their faculties had formal religious training. [39]

By 1820 American publishers had produced almost 300 different editions of the King James Bible, and by 1870 the number had increased to almost 1,900 in the English language alone. By the mid-800'sBiblical literacy so high that, as these historians state,

Authors throughout this period used biblical stories and phraseology as a kind of cultural anchor in their own works. They were able to allude to the biblical narrative—or how that narrative was worded in the King James Version of the Bible—with an un-abashed fluency and confidence. Readers were so familiar with certain biblical stories, characters, and passages that authors could build upon these narratives in their own works without feeling any need to point out the biblical roots of their thinking. Frederick Douglass could write of weeping "near the rivers of Babylon" and Harriet Beecher Stowe could underline the Christlike character of Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by lacing his conversation with unattributed biblical allusions, knowing that their readers would know the parts of the Bible they were so freely referencing.[40]



During certain periods of America's growth moral degradation increased, and a strong correlation was felt between loss of Christian religious devotion and the increase in iniquity. America's faith saw revival as a result of the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740's, and which is held to have began the modern Evangelical Christian movement. During the period of approximately 1800-1830's the Second Great Awakening took place, and a Third Great Awakening occurring from the late 1850's to the early 1900's. These revivals had a profound spiritual and civil impact on Christian faith within America and England, and worked toward the abolition of the well-entrenched historical institution of slavery.

As a Library of Congress exhibit notes,



The 1800's and onward also saw a notable increase in the charitable work by private persons and agencies. In 1835 De Tocqueville[43] noted that early America had no distinct class of wealth that could be turned to in times of need to relieve suffering. Associations necessarily formed to create the means to deal with problems and reflected a compassion for all those in trouble. Many agencies created during that time exist today. [44]


While not preventing the American Civil War, a heightened moral sense of guilt and accountability is seen expressed in President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer (1863),[46] which states (in part),


This growth of evangelical faith thwarted the hopes of some men such as the anti-clerical Thomas Jefferson, who had came to imagine that complete liberty of conscience would result religions based on on "reason" versus Biblical revelation with its supernatural aspects, stating in 1822,“There is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” However, in reality the withering of much of institutionalized "religious establishments in the wake of the American Revolution proved to be the making of bible-based, evangelical Christianity. By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, only a minority of Americans adhered to Unitarianism and other rationalist religions, but hundreds of thousands had embraced evangelical Christianity. And those revival converts of the Second Great Awakening were investing their energies in an ever-expanding number of voluntary associations promoting moral and social reform, which immeasurably strengthened the influence of evangelical Protestants on public opinion and political culture in the United States." [47]

And as it is impossible for a constitutional government to separate its laws from the ideology of its founders, and which in a democratic society will also reflect that of the people, this growth of evangelical faith affected the understanding of separation of church and state, as has America's later spiritual declension in Christian faith.

Early to mid 20th century

Religiously, the early 1900's saw a revival of Pentecostalism, as well as the rise of Evangelical Christian Fundamentalism as a distinct form. The latter was manifested in response to the growth of liberal Christianity and doctrinally labored to combat liberalism's move away from historical Christian faith, especially as concerned Christ and salvation, and the Bible's strong emphasis upon personal morality. Liberal theology also placed primary emphasis on a social gospel, while Fundamentalism was rightly committed to uphold the primacy of basic doctrine and to tend to the spiritual needs of souls. However, opportunities to meet material needs of those without tended to be marginalized, an overreaction that some later recognized as an imbalance.[48]

Educationally, the rise of Darwinism worked against the view of man as being made in the image of man and reduced him to being simply a higher order of primates, with morality having no firm foundation. High schools and places of higher education increasingly became places of rampant STD's,[49] inflated grades, and the marginalization of core subjects.[50]

Economically, building upon the foundation of the past, post World War 1 capitalism and the ongoing Industrial revolution helped enable more goods and funds for the general public.




1960 and beyond

The decade of the 1960's would begin the most dramatic moral change in America's history. While a more developed moral social consciousness helped to effect beneficial and needed changes, such as in the area of civil rights, as regards such non-moral aspects as race and color, this recognition of basic equality was used by liberal moralists to advocate liberty for immorality in word and in deed, most predominately in the area of sensuality. The 1967 "Summer of love" saw hundreds of thousands of teenagers leaving their homes in search for deeper meaning, as well as satisfaction of fleshly lusts, with "turn on, tune in, and drop out," being a favorite phrase. Vast multitudes made their pilgrimage to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, an area home to many rock icons, and known for its liberalized ideology and culture. The civilization that resulted was a testimony to the practical result of the prolonged practice of this ideology, and when the infrastructure of tradition society, which they both rebelled against and depended upon, could no support them. While the liberal media tended to celebrate it as a positive attempt at Utopian culture, indolence, homelessness or unsanitary living, and drug use (and overdoses) abounded, along with marked increases in crime and disease. "By the fall of 1967, Haight-Ashbury was nearly abandoned, trashed, and laden with drugs and homeless people. Most of the kids that descended upon the Haight with such hope and optimism in June returned home sick and out of money by September."[54]

The 1960's culminated with two major distinctive concerts in 1969, Woodstock and the Altamont Speedway Free Festival. The former would become the world's most celebrated rock concert, being peaceful despite over 500,000 people, while the other was the largest rock disaster ever, with security being provided by Hell's Angels (whom many saw as counter-cultural brothers), and a murderous man being killed while the Rolling Stones sang "Sympathy to the Devil".[55]

As regards moral decline, overall much of the generation of that decade and those that followed evidenced increased rebellion against authority in general(though usually not to living off the government) and against capitalism, and the promotion and practice of pre-marital sex, recreational drug use, the rise of feminism and the advocation of liberal ideology. While most of the main stream media and University professors in America are seen to treat this revolution and its foundational ethos as liberating and beneficial, its effects have been manifestly deleterious, as evidenced by multitudinous studies and statistics.[56]

While promoting tolerance within its culture, and (in the beginning) rejecting the idea that materialism brought fulfillment, the 1960's cultural revolution birthed an unprecedented intolerance of traditional values, while its affection for drugs - used to find the alternative reality they sought - and the its later promotion of the demonic victim mentality (Gn. 3:1-5), had destructive effects upon society, in particular upon its weakest members. The emphasis on social justice may well have been a means to justify a basic rebellion against authority in general, in particular fathers, headmasters, police officers, soldiers.


Colleges and universities largely became the seminaries of the new cultural "religion" and its ethos.[57] Revised standard studies and new courses, such as gay studies, became part of the new orthodoxy, with a later neglect of core subjects.[58] . Relative few teaching posts became staffed by conservatives.[59][60][61] While early attempts by students to gain positions of administrative power in their institutions had only limited success, its graduates would soon fill positions of power in informational, educational, and governmental agencies, and as by a Fabian strategy achieve its victories.



Reactions to moral decline in America have been varied. The liberal media and places of "higher" education (such as Harvard University) overall treated the 60's sexual revolution as a beneficial change, and a victory for its liberal ethos. Rock stars sang of and exampled - by their lives many by their death - the immorality of the 60's. Legitimate improvements in society were invoked as a means to justify the liberal movement as a whole. As regards faith in God, John Lennon, who later (1971) would promote his godless fantasy with the song Imagine, remarked in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. In 1965 and 1966 Time magazine reported on the a growing sense that "God was dead",[62][63] - though 5 years later it would be reporting on the notable Jesus Movement[64][65] Attempts to impugn the authority of the Bible continued to increase, with more recent efforts seeking to impose more specious liberal interpretations of it.[66] The term "progressives" began to be more often used to describe liberals, while their own form of historical revisionism was increasingly seen.






A rare dissenting voice among a mainly liberal group was moderately conservative Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who wrote Defining Deviancy Down (1993). Moynihan argued that, due to the "moral deregulation" of the 1960s,


He further sounded a warning that,




See Also


External links


  19. America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations
  26. Os Guinness, American Hour, p. 225
  29. Alan Heimert, Religion and the Colonial Mind
  31. The Honorable Judge Robert Ulrich Chief Justice, Missouri Court Of Appeals, Western District
  33. Henry H. Vail, A History of the McGuffey Readers
  34. McGuffey's Reader
  36. Historian Henry Steele Commager
  40. The Bible." American History Through Literature, Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert Sattelmeyer. Gale Cengage, 2006. 2006. 10 Nov, 2010
  42. Religion and the New Republic, Library of Congress exhibit
  43. Democracy in America
  44. A Chronological HISTORY OF PHILANTHROPY in America.
  48. Frank E. Gaebelein, Evangelicals and Social Concern, March 1982
  52. Luther Halsely Gulick, Popular Recreation and Public Morality, 1912
  55. Adam Stanley. Minnesota echoes, Atamont
  56. REVEALING STATISTICS, or Costs of the war against God
  62. Time, Theology, Friday, Oct. 22, 1965
  63. Time, Religion, Apr. 8, 1966
  68. America’s Real War, (1999, Multnomah Publishers; Quoted in