The American Idea

Posted in: News By House Divided on June 29, 2020

“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…” These words from the song by Buffalo Springfield reverberate through the hearts and minds of Americans today: there’s something going on in America, but we’re not sure what.

In 2020, Americans have already seen President Trump impeached along party lines, suffered illness and death as the coronavirus swept across our land, producing a lockdown nearly collapsing our economy, generating a recession with 36 million claims for unemployment benefits, resulting in a stimulus package plunging Americans 3 trillion dollars deeper into debt. Just when we thought the virus was contained, it resurged, threatening a new round of illness and financial setbacks. The senseless death of George Floyd on May 25th at the hands of Minneapolis police was a catalytic event, sparking protests and campaigns to defund the police. Violent riots erupted in major metropolitan areas: businesses were looted and burned to the ground, police precincts overrun and many, including law enforcement officers, were injured or killed. Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant were forcibly toppled by rioters and vandals defaced the Lincoln Memorial. Finally, we are in the midst of a bitterly contested presidential election year, with Republicans and Democrats both threatening that if other party wins the Whitehouse, it will be the end of America as we know it.

Welcome to the Fourth Turning.

In 1997, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote, The Fourth Turning, an American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiney. History, they say, is seasonal: Spring turns to Summer, Summer to Fall and Fall always turns to Winter…a season of crises. All four turnings take place in the span of a saeculum, a period of about 100 years or a long human life.

“The First Turning is a High,“ say the authors, “an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. In the current saeculum, the American High took place during the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies. The Second Turning was the Consciousness Revolution, stretching from the campus revolts of the mid-1960’s to the tax revolts of the early 1980’s. The Third Turning was the Culture Wars, an era of cultural unraveling that began with Regan’s mid 1980’s Morning in America and expired sometime in the Oh-Oh decade. The Fourth Turning is a season of Crises, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.” Around 2025, they predict, America will pass through the next great gate of history.

Fourth Turnings are “critical thresholds for national survival” and the authors make no rosy predictions for America on the other side of our present crises: “American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better…or unspeakably worse.” They ask, “Is new thinking required? On the contrary: to prepare for the Fourth Turning America needs old thinking.”

In Faith and Freedom, author Barbara Ward observed, “Racially, the United States is a melting pot of every nation under the sun. Only by force of an idea – the ‘proposition’ that all men are created equal and possess inalienable rights – has it risen to be the most powerful community in the history of man.” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this ancient proposition was theological, not political. In a 1965 sermon, King said, “You see the Founding Fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago Dei…is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected and this gives them uniqueness……Every man is significant…because every man is made in the image of God”. Ward warned that when faith in this proposition vanishes, “all the energies of the soul are poured into the one channel of political faith” …and that’s what’s “happening here”.

An example of all the energies of the soul being poured into the one channel of political faith is the Black Lives Matter movement. In a Berkeley Forum article, Hebah Farrag interviewed Professor Melina Abdullah, Co-Founder of the L.A. Chapter of Black Lives Matter. Abdullah sees the movement as a legacy of “spirit-infused” social justice work. BLM “infuses a syncretic blend of African and indigenous cultures’ spiritual practices and beliefs, embracing ancestor worship and Ifa-based rituals such as chanting, dancing and summoning deities”. Ifa is a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa and Abdullah explained that chanting, as they recall the fallen, is “a form of worship”.

Patrisse Cullors, a cofounder of BLM, self-described “trained Marxist” and an ordained priestess in Ifa religion, leads meditations that allow participants to better imagine the future, including “reimaging policing”, through a movement Cullors said “could be utilized by many, many black folk”. One of these folk, Hawk Newsome, leader of the N.Y.C. chapter of BLM, threatened to “burn the system down and replace it” if the country “doesn’t give us what we want.” Another BLM leader, Shaun King, called for destroying statues of Jesus and smashing stained glass windows in which “white Jesus” appears.

In BLM political religion, being born white in America is a transgression; Caucasian’s must bow the knee and confess their sin of White Privilege if they seek absolution from the BLM priesthood. It’s not clear whether repentance will require reparations, but it is clear the objectives of BLM political faith have little to do with the tragic death of George Floyd.

As a theological proposition, the assertion that black lives matter is unassailably true. By comparison, Black Lives Matter, as a political proposition, represents a different gospel, one Dr. King would have thoroughly disavowed.

As American’s celebrate the birth of our nation on the Fourth of July, a looming question remains: will our Founding proposition from 1776 – the ancient idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights – survive this Fourth Turning?