One of the questions that keep coming up for me is who is behind the liberal 'progressive' changes that we're seeing in western culture. There seem to be no obvious leaders - things just seem to start happening. One answer is that the philosophies of the previous half-generation taught in the universities as being the 'enlightened' thing are now bearing fruit. As Nietzsche's ideas allowed the Third Reich and Communism to pass through the intellectual's moral filter (until they were 'cancelled' by the National Socialists), so the heads of public institutions today were schooled in the new ways of thinking back in the 70's, like 'sleepers', and are now trying to get us cancelled, (as well as each other).
Our Christian leaders either drank at the same well or were maybe mercifully kept apart from studying culture - but are now having to catch up.
The US has typically been ahead of the UK in this. Eric Metaxis, who read English at Yale (English departments are hotbeds of progressivism), discusses the attitudes prevalent then and how they have led to now. In his off-beat humorous style he asks 'What Would Bonhoeffer Do Today?'
Larry Taunton a leading US Christian apologist discusses the Biblical basis for conservatives/socialist policies
When my eldest son, Michael, was a student at Yale Law School a few years ago, he says that Yale inculcated a specific progressive strategy for the deconstruction of otherwise simple moral issues ..
This has affected key Christian leaders like Tim Keller who have adopted 'Social Justice' narratives without realising that 'complexified' moral arguments are actually the denial of morality. They are not 'diagonalized' as a form of intellectual nicety but in order to avoid a simple truth that has political ramifications.
This is typical of 'liberalism' where we interpret the Bible according to what works for us at the time. This is crazy because it also effectively denies the Love of God - that we don't trust that his ways are for our human benefit. It's also crazy because: 'If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.'
Cynical Theories
This is an interesting book where 'left wing' academics explain where Social Justice comes from and where it seems to be going.
One aspect of this is the dismissal of anything that is reasoned. To test this 3 academics sent spoof research papers on Critical Theory etc to respected journals in the field - which were accepted and even later quoted from, ie they are literally approving and publishing nonsense. We could add 'thinking themselves wise they became fools'.
This was back in 2018 and underlines the attitude of tearing down 'privileged' structures but as the authors say: '
Quillette discusses this: https://quillette.com/2018/10/01/the-grievance-studies-scandal-five-academics-respond/
The point was to show that the Critical Theory proponents were talking nonsense - ie there was little or no real-life evidence to it.
A section from Nathan Cofnas (DPhil) has a biblical reference to a fool: 'His talk begins as foolishness and ends as evil madness'
Jonathan Anomaly on The Grievance University:
'The problem is that many students are required to take these classes as part of a “diversity” requirement at universities ... these ideas influence leaders of corporations like Google, which can manipulate its search engine to alter elections and change our epistemic environment in subtle ways.'
It shows that it is not only nonsense but dangerous nonsense - leading to division, hate and poverty.
The sad thing is that many of our institutions are believers in the (demonic-sounding) philosophy, and even some Christian ones get sidetracked by over-emphasis on the basic belief that we are all privileged, racist etc instead of concentrating on the real issues people are having.
The good news is that some push-back is beginning to have an affect - Government departments that were using public money to pay Stonewall to advise them (!!) are now pulling out. Hopefully schools will stop employing the kinds of people that caused Tent College Chaplain Rev Bernard Randall to be reported to Prevent for promoting tolerance.
