Turning the Clock Back: the Progressive March to Barbarism
Who’s turning the clock back? Is it the traditionalists who long for the 1950s or is it progressives who want to turn the clock back all the way to the pagan societies of ancient Greece and Rome?
America has always been a liberal progressive society. (I use the word “liberal” in the classic sense of its meaning.) Americans have a moral impulse to improve society and be the shining city set on a hill.
From its earliest days America has been host to a variety of social movements. Early American church people campaigned to abolish dueling and to reform prisons.
They also worked to end lotteries (several states raised funds through lotteries) and to outlaw abortion. Abortion was an issue in early America.
Abortion was only allowed because medical technology was not advanced enough to discern that a preborn child was a genetically distinct human being. Abortion was outlawed in all the states by the mid 1800s.
Early American Christians lobbied most famously for the abolition of slavery. All of the social reform movements were driven by Bible believing Christians. Christians were the political liberals of the time.
Over in England the evangelical Christian Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809 – 1898) was head of the Liberal Party and as Prime Minister worked to free Ireland and other lands from colonialism’s grip.
All of these social progressive movements were led by Christians. Few secularists were involved. In those days secularism, as a faith, was professed by very few people. Christianity reigned supreme in the hearts and minds of the social reformers.
The early church had also engaged in