I keep hoping that the universities and churches will really turn around as the tenured - and ordained - radicals left over from the sixties and seventies retire and younger people move into positions of authority. The sixties revolution was a lot of fun for the folks who got to tear down vital institutions of our civilization and tell themselves they were going to build all over again, much improved, from scratch.
But growing up in the rubble wasn’t so much fun, for the generations who came after. People born after 1964 have good reason to be enthusiastic about things the sixties’ generation trashed - including Biblical Christianity and sane scholarship.
Dave Shiflett’s Exodus makes the case that the theologically liberal denominations are already shrinking and dying, while the the Bible-based ones like Southern Baptists are growing. And today, Tim Drake, blogging from World Youth Day (hat tip to Amy Wellborn) reports, “The applause was loudest when [the pope’s] remarks were most challenging. . . .”
I admit that academia seems less likely to reform itself from within. For one thing, the huge amounts of government money they get keeps the universities from having to be accountable to anybody.
Mary Ellen and Roger - Do you see any signs of improvement, at all?
