The Civil War Revived: Secularism vs. the South
December 2000
No results were found while searching for “[% query %]”
I have vivid memories of my very early Christmases, before I ever entered school.
I will mention here briefly a few disagreements with Gary Crampton's review of Greg Bahnsen's posthumously published Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, a survey and defense of Van Til's thought.
Every society and its institutions are intolerant of some sort of behavior. Unqualified toleration is not only nonsensical; it is impossible and lethal.
Culture implies far more than common food, dress, or accent. The root of our English word "culture" is the Latin "cultus," which to the Romans signified worship of the divine.
Defining the South and Southernness is a favorite pastime of literary critics. Consider a sampling of terms: "calm grace and raw hatred," "guilt-stricken," "shared values," "bone-gnawing poverty and endless defeat."
Evangelical Protestantism has long been "established" (by custom, not law) in most of the South (except for South Louisiana). We are accurately called "the Bible Belt."
Even now, so long after the end of the War of Northern Aggression, the Abolitionists rage. The Abolitionists provoked that war; they sundered the confederated union that had existed since the 1770s.
Conquering culture for Christ is not the task of our generation alone nor any single generation. It is the work of every generation. Nor will any one generation complete the task. Yet each generation's work is foundational and preparatory for the next, as they inscribe "The Chalcedon Signature" upon their own time. That continuity of effectiveness is the beauty of an optimistic eschatology.
We have observed that 95% or more of wealthy families focus their wealth transfer planning lost exclusively on minimizing taxes and drafting appropriate documents. They think that by using the most sophisticated planning and tax reduction techniques and drafting airtight legal documents, they can insure the successful transfer of their wealth to their heirs. After such sophisticated planning, the wealthy must ask themselves this most important question, “Have we been truly successful in our wealth transfer plans if our heirs are not able to retain their inheritance?”
I Timothy 5:8 should be a sobering verse for husbands and fathers ruling over financially strapped households: “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In an age when the bread-winning function is most often shared by husband and wife, the thought of living entirely off the husband’s income sometimes seems a completely unattainable ideal. This is not entirely due to the irresponsibility of couch-potato husbands. Political, economic, and cultural pressures have combined to undermine the family wage — a wage high enough that a man earning it can provide adequately for himself and his immediate family.