BEFORE

We had prayer and memorized and studied the Bible in the public schools.

AFTER

Vocal prayer was forbidden, and the Bible was not opened except in a narrowly defined way in some places as an example of English literature.

BEFORE

I only knew one child whose parents were divorced back when I attended the public schools of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, from the first grade through the twelfth. I am sure there were others, but it was not something people talked about.

AFTER

Divorce began to be pandemic.

BEFORE

Sexual matters were almost never openly talked about in public, especially in mixed company. Homosexuality was viewed as a shameful thing. When I took Abnormal Psychology in the nineteen-sixties, our college textbook described homosexuality as a mental disorder. Boys might boast in the locker room about fornication, but females kept up their guard, and when unmarried, white females did drop their guard and get pregnant, they went off to live with an “aunt” for a year, and gave up their babies for adoption. Pornography was relatively difficult to obtain and only showed the top part of a naked female. Condoms could be sold “only for the prevention of disease.”

AFTER

A complete contrast with the above—need I say more?

BEFORE

Unless I am mistaken, the first time profanity occurred in an American film was the year that my brother was born, when Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” That was 1939.

AFTER

While the FCC kept things in check on television until fairly recently, with VCRs, DVDs, satellite TV, and computers, our wonderful English language has once again become enriched with the old onomatopoeic, monosyllabic, physiological terms of our Saxon ancestors. That doesn’t send a shiver up my spine the way that hearing somebody taking our Lord’s name in vain does, but it is, nevertheless, a little bit like watching somebody remove dirt and mucous from his nose and playing with it in his fingers in public.

BEFORE

Very few ministers would admit to rejecting the Bible as the Word of God and an authoritative standard for living and believing.

AFTER

Ministers in the Mainline denominations began openly to reject the concept of an infallible book. Now the Mainline Presbyterians allow people who engage in sex outside of marriage without repentance to become deacons, elders and pastors.

BEFORE

Blacks and whites were completely segregated and this was enforced by civil law. It was against the law for a black and white to marry. Though a white man might have a black mistress—that went on a lot, just look at all the “cream in the coffee” down here—and white men could rape black women and never suffer any legal consequences—if a black man had sex with a white woman, he could get a jail sentence, but he would more likely be killed.

AFTER

Segregation is now illegal, but racial polarization and racism are still with us, but much more subtly. My Political Science professor at Presbyterian College in South Carolina used to say to our class in the sixties: “I can accept a black on equal terms in an impersonal relationship, or I can accept a black in a personal relationship as long as he is not my equal, but I cannot accept a black on equal terms in a personal relationship.” That attitude is still dominant, judged by what I observe of people’s clusters of friends.

BEFORE

African-Americans had made great strides in literacy, the black family was strong, and the church was the central social unit in black society. Black literacy peaked in the sixties.

AFTER

Black literacy continues to plummet, the black family is increasingly matriarchal with the grandmother often tending toward being the most solid member of the family. Islam is reaching young black men in prison, offering them self-worth, self-discipline, help in getting a job after prison, and a masculine dominated culture.

BEFORE (at least in the South)

White people were all Democrats, except for immigrants from “up North” and a few “cranks.” Most black people could not vote, but the few that did were usually Republicans.

AFTER

Black people not only could vote, in many places they became the voting majority, and when they voted, they tended to block-vote the Democratic Party ticket. White people left the Democratic Party in droves in 1948 and voted Dixiecrat. But during the sixties, one of America’s slickest politicians, Richard Nixon, got them to begin to vote Republican with his Southern Strategy.

BEFORE

We got a television after I was in grammar school and an air-conditioner after I finished high school. The computer was developed during World War II, but it did not really hit the home market until after the birth of our fifth child in the eighties. When I was a boy, when you picked up the telephone an operator answered and manually connected you to the person you wanted to talk to—this was even for local calls—and you had to watch out what you said because most people had “party lines” and their neighbors could pick up and listen in if they chose. Most cars had AM radios and police cars had two-way radios.

AFTER

The Russians launched Sputnik in 1957 with massive help from their Nazi scientists, and our Nazis helped us catch up pretty quickly during the sixties. Our Nazi scientists helped us with a whole lot else, too, from chemistry to medicine—not all of them ended up in Argentina and Brazil. Now we have satellite communication, unbelievably powerful, yet compact computers, and access to the major libraries of the world available on our cell phones. I can send and receive e-mail on my laptop while someone else is driving.

BEFORE

Calvinism did not exist in American Protestantism in the first half of the twentieth century, except among a few Dutch and German, non-Mainline groups, within the somewhat marginal Primitive Baptists, and in the small “Fundamentalist” remnant out of the Presbyterian mainstream.

AFTER

Calvinism began to be rediscovered in the sixties due to a number of factors, including the Banner of Truth Trust’s publishing old works of Orthodoxy, the mainstreaming of Baptistic Calvinism, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod’s (then called the Evangelical Presbyterian Church) break with Carl McIntire and their missionary, Francis Schaeffer, taking his combination of American Fundamentalism and Princeton and Dutch Calvinism to college students, and Reformed Theological Seminary beginning to impact the Southern Presbyterian Church with Calvinism, as over against the moralistic drivel that had tended to characterize the preaching of even their conservative pastors.

BEFORE

Pentecostalism was generally found only among the uneducated, marginalized members of American society and was often associated with really weird stuff like dancing with Rattlesnakes in church.

AFTER

Pentecostalism went mainstream with the Charismatic Movement in the late fifties and during the sixties and the Third Wave after that. It is now part of every major denomination except among traditional Dispensationalists, Fundamentalists, and some Reformed groups. It controls “Christian” television and to a lesser extent radio. Its music is part of the worship of most congregations, including everything from the Liberals to the Reformed and Dispensationalists and Fundamentalists, except, of course, for the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America that has maintained the old Presbyterian commitment to the a cappella singing of the Psalms exclusively.

BEFORE

People read books, magazines, and newspapers. I took Latin in high school and to some degree was taught HOW to think and not simply WHAT to think.

AFTER

Michael Mann popularized high-action, minimal dialogue television shows. DreamWorks gave us unbelievably realistic films. Political and other discourse began to be reduced to TV sound-bites.

BEFORE

People tended to have lots of babies, and men worked outside the home, while women worked as stay-at-home-mothers. People tended not to go out after dark, except for church. They did not eat out very often, and meals took time to prepare. Families ate together at the table and engaged in discussions.

AFTER

Fast-food and prepared food, often laced with lots of corn syrup has replaced the slowly prepared, home-cooked meal that had lots of home-grown ingredients. And television—later televisionS—replaced the family dinner table conversation.

BEFORE

I never saw marijuana until I was a senior in college (I did smoke a joint back then and inhaled, but only once—it was an experiment while I took Physiological Psychology and Neurology, but it was still illegal).

AFTER

Drugs now dominate American culture, not only the illegal kind, but legally under a cluster of industries driven by pressures of time and money. People with a poor knowledge of pharmacology and often without doing adequate studies of long term effects approve psychotropic medicines that have profound side effects as they alter the chemistry of the brain. Where will this lead? Sexual disorders are pandemic—many of these drugs drop a person’s sex drive pretty dreadfully.

BEFORE

Child-rearing followed patterns passed down for thousands of years. I probably would have been labeled with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder because I was curious about almost everything and decided on following my own curriculum rather than the boring one forced on me by my teachers, but the doctor did not know such fancy terms back then. He simply told Mama that I was overflowing with excess energy. Mama and my teachers cured me of ADHD with physical discipline. Mama sat me down, grabbed me on my face, and made me memorize math tables. When my mind wandered, she saw it in my eyes and popped me on the arm with a ruler. It is amazing how well that worked! Mama was not a backwoods woman. She taught at Vanderbilt University (as a graduate assistant), was the head nurse of a major hospital, and after I came along, she taught first grade in the public schools of Horry County, South Carolina, being elected president of both county teachers organizations at separate times.

AFTER

With the arrival of so many things, including chemicals in our food and now genetically altered products for human consumption, to say nothing of mind-engrossing computer games, graphic television and movies, lack of sleep with people texting and interacting electronically into the wee hours and many other things, a pandemic of neologisms have been thrust on the public, and we have a label for almost any pattern of behavior, with this and that syndrome (things that have observable behavior patterns but are not scientifically identifiable under a microscope). And since we have neither the time nor energy for discipline and must never use corporal punishment, we medicate.

Deo et patria,