The Areopagus Update – Jan/Feb 2021
One of my favorite recording artists in the 1970s was Jackson Browne. Most of those who know of him remember his music for songs such as “Rock Me on the Water,” “Take It Easy” (a hit single by the Eagles) and “Running on Empty,” along with classic rock albums including Late for the Sky and The Pretender. Browne was not a Christian, but in his prime he wrote carefully-crafted and thoughtful songs that often conveyed existentialist themes (which in some cases carried his philosophy to its logical conclusion: i.e., nihilism). He was rather obviously a lost soul, but unlike most of his contemporaries in the music biz there were indications that he was searching not only for Beauty but also for Truth even if (to paraphrase a later country song) he was “looking for Truth in all the wrong places.”
One of my favorite Jackson Browne songs was “Before the Deluge,” which closed out the aforementioned Late for the Sky album. Written and recorded in 1974, it was essentially an elegy for the Sixties ’ counterculture – in particular, the environmentally-correct “back to nature” rural communities that sprang up in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. As a young Christian who was reading C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer at the time, I was not surprised that these utopian socialist and proto-New Age communal quests were dissolving. Without the requisite agape love and the Holy Spirit to guide us, all our idealistic efforts to create new and better social communities inevitably end in disillusionment and cynicism. Regardless, I admire those who aspire to higher and nobler ideals than the crass secular gods of Power, Wealth, Social Status, Security, Materialism, Pleasure, and Social Conventionality.
The nature of the looming “deluge” that Browne prophesied was ecological – the mostly ersatz “climate crisis” of recent decades. Nonetheless, some of the lyrics in “Before the Deluge” actually presage the current dilemma of Christians who aspire to be “in the world but not of the world.”
Some of them were dreamers
Some of them were fools
For making plans and thinking of the future.
In the energy of the innocent,
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey
Back to nature.
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
In their hearts they turned to each other’s hearts
For refuge In the troubled years that came before the deluge.
Some of them knew pleasure
Some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment
That mattered.
On the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying about in the rain
And their feathers once so fine Grew torn and tattered.
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love’s bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept
Before the deluge.* Let the music keep our spirits high…
* Let the buildings keep our children dry
* Let creation reveal it’s secrets by and by…
* By and by When the light that’s lost within us
* Reaches the sky.Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty
Into power.
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour.
And when the sand was gone and time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing
So simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live After the deluge.
(“Before the Deluge.” Music and lyrics by Jackson Browne, 1974, Swallow Turn Music)
The “deluge” that Jackson Browne feared was an ecological apocalypse. My concern is quite different. In lieu of a faux “climate crisis,” Christians – and cultural conservatives in general – understand that we face a far more ominous threat. A ferocious cultural, moral and spiritual storm is brewing, and we had best be prepared. This deluge will be more intense than anything we have ever experienced in the past. It will be an unrelenting assault on much of what we value and believe everything from freedom of expression, religious liberty and the sanctity of life to the Constitutional rule of law. From all apparent indications, a Biden/Harris administration will make the Obama administration seem relatively moderate by comparison.
This radical agenda will be propagated by an insidious coalition of neo-Marxist secular socialists and cultural liberals and their allies in the media, Big Tech, corporate America, the entertainment industry, the education establishment, labor unions, the trial lawyers associations, the open-borders lobby, environmental extremists, LGBTQ activists, and naive Christians. Politically, the driving force behind this onslaught will be the Democratic Party, the initiators and enforcers of virtually every immoral, irrational, impractical, irresponsible and counterproductive policy and program that is systematically destroying America socially, morally and institutionally.
Over the course of the last 400 years, American Christians have been the most free, prosperous and privileged Christians in history. But through a lethal combination of indifference, ignorance, apathy, lethargy, and faithless cowardice we are squandering this precious heritage.
We have lost the culture war in America, but not because the secular Left is more intelligent, more humane or more practical. We lost the culture war by default. While the Left has been literally hell-bent on radically transforming America, too many Christians and church leaders have failed to stand up and provide the kind of principled, courageous and prophetic leadership that is so absolutely essential in the face of such overt evil.
What is the solution, and how can Christians prepare for the coming deluge? That is the theme of my recent book, American Crisis particularly the final chapter on “The Ministry of the Watchman.” In addition, I recommend that you read and discuss with others two books by Rod Dreher: The Benedict Option (2017) and Live Not by Lies (2020).
