The Nexus: Understanding Faith and Modern Culture

By Jon H. Widener M.D.

The Nexus, so-named because of the operational intersection or Nexus of faith and culture, is an alphabetized manual of cultural artifacts of significance to Christians.

In The Nexus, Jon Widener observes how Christianity has lost many battles over the years and how the evangelical community has been fraught with endemic anti-intellectualism. He sees an evangelical insularity taking the form of retreat and retrenchment from the comings and goings of the larger society.

Dr. Widener proposes that modern Christian believers correct these deficits by exercising the exhortation of I Pet 3:15 (KJV) to always be prepared to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you. Believers should educate themselves on culturally relevant issues where there are questions of Christian morality. This is the burden and purpose of the book. Accordingly, the standard for inclusion is straight-forward. If the topic is culturally encountered and has moral implications, then it meets the threshold standard for inclusion in the work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512791327

Jon H. Widener M.D.

Jon H. Widener, M.D. is a retired orthopedic surgeon, evangelical and long-time Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher with a special interest in the relationship between the individual’s cultural literacy and his or her ability to understand and hold forth for the Christian Gospel of Good News. Widener concedes that there is an unfortunate bent of anti-intellectualism in evangelical circles. Historian and evangelical Mark Noll has written about the “scandal of the evangelical mind” while Os Guinness, also an evangelical, has said bluntly, “Most evangelicals simply don’t think, and Harry Blamires, a student of CS Lewis, says that there is no such thing as “a Christian mind.” The author too has observed these trends over the years and in “The Nexus”, he proposes a comprehensive plan to deal with it . Jon Widener submits this manual of alphabetized religiously relevant cultural artifacts in the hopes that in some small way, it might augment the evangelical’s cultural literacy and thereby strengthen his or her understanding at the Nexus of Faith and Culture.

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Copyright © 2017 Jon H. Widener, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9133-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-9132-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908972

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/31/2017

Dedicated to the memory of

Lieutenant Robert Bob F. Widener,

who loved to fly the wild blue yonder

INTRODUCTION

The immediate impetus for this book was a study done in 2006 by Lifeway Resources, a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention. The study found that Christians tend to be poorly informed about the culture around them and that ministers are even less well informed than their parishioners.

This clearly renders Christian believers less able to articulate the practical application of their beliefs to the surrounding culture. As a result, they are less able to share the beliefs that they claim are central to their lives.

The practical burden of this work is to identify those points where religion and culture intersect (hence the title The Nexus) and to explain the spiritually relevant implications of those intersections.

A work of this sort should begin with a frank admission of where we are today.

Several prominent commentators have said that members of the American clergy will not publicly stand up for what they believe.

The late D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said that on any given Sunday, three hundred thousand pulpits are silent on the great cultural issues of the day.

These comments suggest a major retreat and retrenchment by the Christian community, a phenomenon some have called safe-harbor evangelism. The minister withdraws to the uncontroversial territory of John 3:16, preaches redemption to the choir, and stops there. As Kennedy said, such a minister fails to take on the great cultural issues of the day.

Such are the foibles of the safe-harbor evangelists. They fail to feed the sheep, as Jesus commanded (John 21:16). Retreating to the comfort of the safe harbor and avoiding controversy at all costs, they offer an insular pulpit ministry that fails to acknowledge the breadth of God’s sovereignty over every aspect of people’s lives. As the Lord told Jeremiah, Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot (Jer. 12:10).

Surely such retreat and retrenchment have contributed to the indisputable fact that over the last several generations, Christians have lost battles on nearly every front. Examples range from the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, to the 1963 Supreme Court decision in Abington v. Schempp barring school prayer to a recent order that military chaplains say deity-neutral prayers that close in the name of the Most High rather than in Jesus’s name. As we continue to lose these crucial battles, the opposition is down in the red zone and threatening to put the game out of reach.

A major thrust of this book is that Christians and Christian ministers are in retreat because they are not sufficiently knowledgeable of the ambient culture to feel comfortable talking about it.

For example, I recently attended a missionary conference in Montgomery, Alabama, sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. During one of the breakout sessions, the subject of postmodernism came up. Of the thirty-five or forty ministers in the room, I could count on one hand those who could give a coherent definition of the term.

Think about it. Postmodernism is the reigning philosophy of the Western world, and Christians have been given the great commission to take the gospel to all of society. Can we take the gospel to a society we don’t understand?

While it’s challenging to speculate about the reasons for this lack of understanding, some Christians see an inverse relationship between faith and intellect, as if the two were on opposite ends of a teeter-totter and when intellect is up, faith is down. An anti-intellectual bent within Christianity has been noted by several astute observers, such as Wheaton College historian Mark Noll in his The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994). Then too, Dr. James L. Garlow in his book Well Versed (2016) argues that the biblical worldview framework is often trapped inside the walls of our churches when we lack the capacity to articulate sound science coupled with scripture. These alleged deficits of the mind have led to Christians being diminished and marginalized as know-nothings, dunces, illiterates, or troglodytes. One of the goals of this book is to help reverse these trends.

It’s axiomatic that the accuracy of any work is inversely proportional to its scope. The broad scope of this book presents a chore that’s obviously beyond the capacity of any one person. I feel much like Will Durant, who in the introduction to his eleven-volume The Story of Civilization referred to his effort as a brave stupidity. Surely mine is a brave and presumptuous stupidity.

The purpose of this work is not to convert but to inform, although readers, once informed, should have a wider operating envelope in their efforts to convert.

Christians are called to be light and salt to the larger society. Being light means redeeming men, while being salt means redeeming the works of men, or culture. We have done fairly well with the mandate to be light but not with the mandate to be salt. In other words, we have redeemed people, but we fall short when it comes to redeeming the culture. While it’s true that the mandate to show the way to personal redemption is the central stake in the Christian tent, we should not give short shrift to being salt. This work is aimed primarily at the mandate of redeeming the culture (the works of men) by addressing the deficit found in the 2006 Lifeway study. Unless we correct this deficit, we will continue to be like an athletic team that beats itself through unforced errors.

This work attempts to reverse the Christian cultural deficit by augmenting readers’ cultural literacy, giving them more confidence to share the truths of the gospel not only in church and in Sunday school but also in conversations over the back fence and in informal discussion groups.

While I was writing this book, a friendly critic advised that he could look up any topic on the internet and retrieve pertinent information in under a minute. So I said, Okay, look it up. He said, Look what up? I replied, Exactly. I rest my case. The best information-retrieval system in the world is useless unless one knows what to ask.

Where possible, each entry in the book is discussed vis-à-vis its nearest operational opposite and in light of similar or related notions. This renders a two-for-one or three-for-one learning effect.

The entries in the book may be read serially (back to back) or referentially (topic by topic).

Several years ago, in a televised program, newscaster David Brinkley was asked, What is the most important preparation for journalism students for effective communication? The students posing the question expected him to name journalism courses, but without hesitation, Brinkley said, A thorough sense of history and a complete command of the English language. This work purports to pursue this as a major goal.

What’s not included? A person looking for the details of the Hindu belief system will have to look elsewhere. But readers who want to know the terms, idioms, axioms, metaphors, or laws that can connect them in a practical way to the culture of the larger society will find this work useful.

Consider an example. In 2008 when I started writing this book, two church friends and I were watching The O’Reilly Factor on TV. O’Reilly and Dennis Miller were discussing how George W. Bush adviser Scott McClellan resigned and wrote an embarrassing tell-all about the president. Miller said McClellan was like Richard Rich and had gained a Pyrrhic victory at best. O’Reilly shook his head and asked when the lemmings would stop jumping. Neither of my guests that evening was familiar with the terms Richard Rich, Pyrrhic victory, or lemmings. All three are found in this glossary. Here was a moral issue of interest to Christians—namely, the propriety of betraying a benefactor. But understanding it required a familiarity with these three terms.

I am actually a frustrated history professor. In college, I held an undergraduate fellowship, and with the requisite GPA this offered me an opportunity to be introduced to teaching at the college level. My undergraduate major was history. At the time, I was in a premedicine program, although my real aspiration was a PhD in history.

Nevertheless, I went to medical school at the University of Louisville, stayed there a fifth year for a medical internship, and then completed a four-year residency in orthopedic surgery at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

I practiced orthopedic surgery for twenty-five years in Auburn, Alabama, the home of Auburn University.

I retired at age fifty-eight and settled down on Ono Island in the Gulf Coast resort town of Orange Beach, Alabama, on the Redneck Riviera.

Shortly after, my attention was piqued by the 2006 Lifeway study, which dramatically confirmed what I had suspected during twenty-plus years of teaching Sunday school—namely, that the Christian community has a knowledge deficit concerning the ambient culture, just as Mark Noll had observed in his studies. A lightbulb went off, and the result is what you now hold in your hands.

I have observed that claims of objectivity only serve to mask its absence. In all fairness, I acknowledge that I am a socially and politically conservative Southern Baptist, and if this appears to bring any bias to the discussion, then the reader should feel free to take that into account.

I have scoured the world for nearly two thousand terms and phrases that are commonly encountered at the intersection of Christianity and culture. I attempt to present the information in a concise format. It’s my sincere hope and prayer that this book might offer germane and meaningful information to Christian believers as they seek to cope with the many challenges of the modern world.

It is with considerable trepidation that I take on this challenge, and I accept full responsibility for the inevitable errors in a work of this scope.

While three hundred thousand pulpits remain silent on the great cultural issues of the day, while many in the American clergy refuse to stand up for what they believe, and while others retreat to the safe harbor, those of us who know the breadth of God’s sovereignty will seek to understand the practical implications that arise at the nexus of Christianity and culture.

So hold forth. Fight the good fight (1 Tim. 6:12). I’ve got your back.

***

Most scriptural references are from the Authorized King James Version (KJV) of the Bible; some are from the Revised Standard Version (RSV) when those offered more definitive renderings.

CONTENT

abolition

Abrahamic religions

abrogation, the Islamic principle of

absolutism

abstaining superpower

academic/intellectual validation process

acculturation/assimilation

Achilles’ heel

act vs. hedonic utilitarianism

Acton’s law

ad hoc

ad hominem abusive

adiaphora

advantages of backwardness

Aesop’s Fables

aesthetics

affinity scam

affirmative action

affirmative action bake sales

affluenza defense

Afrocentrism

agape love vs. filial love

ageism

Agenda

agenda-driven or ideologically driven scholarship

agent-centered morality vs. utilitarian morality

agrarian

aha theory of learning

ahimsa

Ajax symbolism / Ajax redux

albatross

alienation

Alinsky tactics

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Allen’s law

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

all things to all men.

alms

al-Qaeda

altruism

ambiguities

amen corner

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

American exceptionalism

American Gothic

American Renaissance

American Revolution vs. French Revolution

American university

amphibology

anachronism

anarchism

anathema

anchor babies

Andrew Mellon effect

Anglo-Israelism

angst

animal rights

animal sins vs. diabolical sins

animal spirits

animism

anointing

anointed (unconstrained) vision vs. tragic (constrained) vision

anomie

another gospel / another Jesus / another spirit

antediluvian

anthropic principle

anthropomorphism

Antichrist

antifoundationalism

Antigone redux / Antigone effect

antinomianism vs. legalism

anti-Semitism

Apocalypse

apocalyptic

apocalyptic date-setters

apocalyptic literature

Apocrypha

Apollonian calm vs. Dionysian ecstasy

apologetic

Apophis

apostasy

apotheosis

appeasement

a priori fallacy

Arcadia

Archduke Ferdinand moment

argot

arguing from a neutral position

Argus-eyed

Armageddon, battle of

art

Aryan Nations Church

asceticism

assimilation

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)

asterisk

astrology

astrotravel

Astroturf

asymmetric threats / asymmetric warfare

atheism

Athenian predicament

athwart

Atlantis

Atlas

atomization

atonement

attainder, bill of

Atticus Finch redux

attributes of God

attrition vs. contrition

au fait

augury

Augustine’s law

Augustinian system vs. Erasmian system

au pair

Auschwitz borders

Austrian economics

autonomous vs. heteronomous appropriation of values

avant-garde

avarice

Avatar

axiology

axis of evil

axiom

Babbittry

Babel, Tower of vs. Pentecost, day of

back to Egypt

Baha’i/Bahaism

Bailey Smith comment

bailiwick

balkanization

banality of evil

baptism

baptism of desire

Baptist Foundation of Arizona (BFA)

bargainers vs. challengers

Barmen declaration

Barnum’s law

Barth’s reduction

bathos

Baudelaire’s law

Beard thesis

begging the question

Belial effect

Bell Curve, The

Bellesiles thesis

belligerent righteousness

Belloc-Dawson thesis

bellwether

Benedict option

benign neglect

Bentham’s law

Berger’s disconnect thesis

Berkeleianism or immaterialism or illusionism

Bernard Lewis thesis

Bernhard Goetz redux

best of all possible worlds

bias in the news

bias response teams

Bible code theory

Bible teaching, devotional vs. academic

biblical consistency

biblical interpretation

biblicism

bibliomancy

Biden rule

big bang

Big Brother

Big Lebowski, The

big rip

biggest leg-pull in history

bigotry

Bilbo Baggins effect

bioethics

birth is destiny vs. vertical social mobility

Birth of a Nation, The

birthers

Bismarckian/Bismarck gesture

black conservatives

Blame America first

blasphemy

blasphemy, the Christian-Islamic difference

bleeding heart liberal

Bloody Mary redux

Bloomsbury Group

blooper

boilerplate

Boko Haram

boll weevil Democrats

book burners

Booker T. Washington approach vs. Marcus Garvey approach

boondoggle

boosted coinage vs. arrested coinage

born again

Born-Alive Infants Protection Act or anti-infanticide bill

bourgeoisie vs. proletariat

boutique fuels

bowdlerization

boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement

Boyd movement vs. the Christian reconstructionist movement, or the dominionist or theonomist movement

Bradley effect

Brady amendment

Brady doctrine

Brandeis’s law

bread-alone welfare

Brecht Forum

Bretton Woods Conference

Brexit

Brezhnev Doctrine

brights vs. dulls

brinkmanship

brio

broken-windows theory of neighborhood crime

brokenness

Brooks’s – thesis

Brown v. Board of Education

Brownshirts

Bubba vs. the Unbubba

bubble president

Buchanan thesis

Buckley’s rule

Buckley’s stand athwart gesture

Buffett rule

Burkean patriotism

Burke’s law

burnout

Bushido

butterfly effect

Byronic heroism

bystander apathy, the law of

cachet

cafeteria Christianity

Calliope

Calvinism

Camelot

Campbell’s monomyth

Cane Ridge Revival

canonization

cant

capital punishment

capital strike

capitalism vs. socialism, God’s Word on

Capone’s law

captive vs. casual Christians

carbon debt

card check

caress-and-annihilate strategy

carpetbagger

Cartesian anxiety

Cassandra effect

castle doctrine

castrati

catch-

catechism

catharsis

Catholic vs. catholic

caveat

celibacy

Celtic thesis

challenge-and-response theory of history

Chambers’s epiphany

charismatic movement

CharityNavigator.org

Charles Murray’s epiphany

chauvinism

Che factor

cheap grace

chestnut

chiastic justice

Chicken Little effect

chief lacuna of the twentieth century

child savers’ agenda

chilling effect

chimera

chosen people

Chrislam

Christian argument for limited government

Christian holophobia

Christian Identity movement

Christian learning curve

Christianity, classification of

Christianity, liberalism and decline in

Christianity, the signature gesture of

Chua thesis

church growth, relative

church-state separation

Cicero’s law

circular argument

circumlocution

cisgender or cis

Citizens United ruling

city on a hill

civil disobedience

civil rights vs. civil liberties

clairvoyance

claque

Clarion project

Clausewitz advantage

Climategate

Cloward-Piven strategy

Clytemnestra effect

cockalorum complex

cognitive dissonance/cognitive consonance

Cole-Ohanian thesis

Colson’s law

Coming Insurrection, The

Common Core

commons, tragedy of the

communism

compassionate conservatism

compatibilism

Compel them to come in

compensatory history

complementarity

composition, the fallacy of

Comstockery

Cone’s theory of colonial recompense

confiscatory rights vs. nonconfiscatory rights

conjuration vs. adjuration

conquest ethic vs. wealth ethic

conservative Hollywood

conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)

conservatism, classification of

conspiracy theories

constrained vs. unconstrained visions

constructivism

consubstantiation

contextualism/contextualized writing

continuum, fallacy of the

convergence/convergence agenda

conversion

conviction politician vs. consensus politician

cool-pose culture

Copenhagen syndrome

Cordoba tradition

Corleone’s law

cornucopians vs. Malthusians

Correctional Intelligence Initiative

cosmology vs. eschatology

cosmopolitanism

counterfeit gospel of communism

covenant vs. contract

Covenant of Democratic Nations

Coventry principle

cowardly moral escapism of unbelievers

crawdad effect

creationism

creative destruction

créche

crisis of purpose

critical theory

crony capitalism

crossing the Rubicon

Crusader-Zionist alliance

Crusades

crutch, Christianity as a

cryogenics

cryptic

cryptophilosophy

Ctesiphon’s challenge

cuckservative

cults

cultural appropriation

cultural hegemony

culture war

cyberhacking

Cynics

czars

Damascus road experience

Damocles, sword of

dance of the lemons

Dante’s theory of symbolic retribution

Darwinian theory vs. Genesis

dead man’s switch

Dead Sea Scrolls

death panels

Debt and Deficit Reduction Committee

declinism

deconstruction

deep state

default argument

defining deviancy down

deification

deity-neutral prayers

delinking movement

demagogue

democracy vs. republic

democratization

demonic activity

demonization and dismissal

demotic

demythologization

denationalization

dénouement

deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) exonerations

depression

desensitization

de-Stalinization

desuetude

determinism

deterrent vs. inducement

diabolical ventriloquism

diaspora

diatribe

Dickensian conditions

Dickey-Wicker amendment

dietary nannyism

differential privileging of self-identity

diminishing spontaneity, the principle of

Diogenes’s search

disparate impact

dispensationalism / dispensational premillennialism

disposition evaluations

distinction-without-a-difference fallacy

diversity mantra / diversity tautology

divination

divinity-of-the-decider argument

doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants

doctrines

do-gooders

dog-whistle politics

dominion scripture

Don Juan

doom eager

downside of learning and knowledge

down the rabbit hole

doyen/doyenne

draconian

Dred Scott decision

Dresden redux

Dreyfuss Initiative

Dreyfus redux

Durant’s law

Durocher’s law

dying faith–dying people correlation

E pluribus unum

early sexualization of girls

Eastern vs. Western strains of thought

eclecticism

eco-government

Economic Freedom Index

economic nationalism

economic repatriation

ecstasy

ecumenism / ecumenical movement

Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal

efficiency vs. effectiveness

egalitarianism

ego

egocentric predicament

egoism vs. altruism

Einstein on religion

electability of President Obama

Electra complex

elegy

Elf on the Shelf

Elijahs-without-Elishas problem

elitism

Elmer Gantry redux

emergent movement

Emerson case

Emerson’s caveat

eminent domain

empathy

emperor has no clothes, The

enabler

enemy of my enemy is my friend, The

Enlightenment

ennui

entitlement state vs. safety net state

entrepreneur / entrepreneurial activity

entropy

envirostatism

envy

epicureanism

epilogue

epiphany

epistemological humility vs. epistemological dogma

epistemology

equal pay for equal work

Erasmian system / Erasmian idea

Erastianism

erudite/erudition

escalator myth

eschatology

essentialism

establishmentarian churches vs. disestablishmentarian churches

ethic of authenticity

Ethical Culture movement

ethics

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC)

ethnic cleansing

ethnic studies

ethnocentrism

eudemonism

eugenics scandal

eunuch

Europeanization

Eurosecularity

evangelical

Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA)

Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration

Evangelism Explosion

evasion of institutional norms

event horizon

Every man a king

Everyman

evil

evolution

exegesis vs. eisegesis

Existence precedes essence

existential perplexity

existentialism

experiential idolatry

expiation/propitiation

extrapolation/interpolation

Ezekiel, the sword of

Fabianism / Fabian Society

face like a flint

fact-value distinction

factitious victimization

Fairness Doctrine

fait accompli

fakir

faith

faith-based initiative

fallacies of inference

fallibilism

false-flag operation

falsifiability

Falstaffian

fascism

Faustian bargain

faux pas

federalism

Federalist Papers

Feed my sheep.

feminism

Ferguson effect

fiat currency

fideism

Field and Stream policy

fifth column

fig leaf, offering a

Fight the good fight

filibuster

Final Solution

finished work of Christ

finite Godism

Finke-Stark thesis

first principles

first woman

fixed-pie fallacy

flagellants

foreign words

foreigners/strangers/sojourners

Forever Twenty-Seven Club

forgotten depression

forte

Fortress America strategy

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) vs. campus indoctrination

foundationalism

founding-document rule

founding-documents controversy

Four Minute Men

fracking

Franciscan stigmata, the

Frankfurt School

Free Range Kids

free will vs. determinism

freedom, Christian

Freedom of Choice Act

freedom of conscience acts

Freedom of Information Act

freedom of religion vs. freedom of worship

freedom, rarity of

freedom-security trade-off

freedoms, the four basic

Freedoms, Roosevelt’s Four

freeganism

French Revolution

Gaia hypothesis

Gamaliel’s rule

gas law of learning

Gaullism/Gaullesque

gender-obliteration movement

Geneva Convention

gentrification

geocentric vs. heliocentric systems of planetary motion

George McGovern’s revenge

gerrymander

Gestalt / Gestalt moment / Gestalt learning

get saved vs. get involved

ghettoization

Gideon strategy

Gilded Age

Give me liberty or give me death.

Gladys Kravitz effect

glass ceiling

globalism

glossolalia

gluttony

Gnosticism

gobbledygook

God as ethical being

God gap, the

God of the gaps

God on our side

God’s cartoonist

God’s servant standard

God’s ways vs. man’s ways

gold standard

Golda Meir’s law

golden age

golden mean

Golden Rule

Goldilocks zone

Goldwater’s maxim

good-faith differential

Gordian knot

Gordon Gekko

gospel hobby

gospel of performance

gospel of two truths

gossamer

gotcha question

gothic

government-funded inflationary ratchet effect

government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)

Grab Your Wallet campaign

Gracchite politicians

grace

Gramsci-Alinsky-Obama connection

gratuitous

gravamen

great accounting

Great Awakening

great commandment

Great Communicator

Great Depression

Great Disappointment

great endowment

great extinction

Great Firewall of China

Great Leap Forward

great preparation, the

great raconteur

Great Satan

Great Schism

Great Society

great unwashed

great Western butterslide

great Western heresy

greatest generation

greatest happiness principle

green movement philosophy

green-Spanish connection

Gregor Samsa surrealism

Gresham’s law

grief, the five stages of

grief-induced immunizing stratagem

grievance industry

grift/grifters

groundlings

Grub Street

Gucci gulch

guise of moralism

gulag

gun control laws

guns-vs.-butter metaphor

guttersnipe

habeas corpus, writ of

hackneyed

Hadith

hagiography

HAL

hamartia

Hamas vs. Hezbollah

Hamlet effect

hammer, the law of the

Handicapper General

Handmaid’s Tale, The

Hannan’s warning

happiness

harbinger

harridan

Hart-Celler Act

Hatch Act

hate crimes

hate straw man

Hawthorne effect

Hays Code

heart of darkness

Heathcliff effect

heathens, salvation of

heavenly lying

hedonism

hegemony

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

Hellenist culture

Hellman and Hammett redux

helotism

Hemingway code

Hemlock Society

henotheism

heresy

hermeneutics

hero’s journey

heterosexual AIDS scare

Hiawatha effect

high dudgeon

higher criticism

higher sodomy

Hillel’s interrogatory

historical drift

historicism

hive mind

Hobbesian man

Hobson’s choice

holier than thou

Holocaust

Holodomor

Holy Grail

homeschooling

Homeric

homily

homosexuality

honeypot\honeytrap effect

honor killings

Horatio Alger stories

horizontal vs. vertical thinking

Hosea-Gomer analogy

hospice movement

Hout-Fischer thesis

How should we then live?

Howard Beale’s maxim

hubris

human needs, the four basic

Humanist Manifesto

hydra-headed

hyperbole vs. meiosis

hyphenated Americans

hypocritical outsourcing

I-thou vs. I-it relationships

Iago

Icarus effect

ichthys

iconoclast

idealism

identity politics

ideology vs. myth

ideological imposition

idolatry

ignoratio elenchi

if-by-whiskey speech

illegitimacy-poverty link

Illuminati, the Order of

Imagine.

Immanuel

immaterialism

immigration

immortality vs. eternal life

immutability

impairment vs. disability

impartation junkies

imprecate/imprecation/ imprecatory

imprimatur

imputed righteousness

incarnation

incivility in public discourse

income inequality

individual vs. collective salvation

Indivisible

inductive vs. deductive scholarship

indulgences

ineffable/ineffability

inerrancy, biblical

infallibility

inflection point

infrastructure theory vs. catalyst-entrepreneur theory of economic vertical mobility

inhumanity of the humane

injustice collectors

Inquisition, the

instrumentalism

intellectual big bang

intellectual stolen base

intellectuals, characteristics of

intergenerational theft

internment

intersectionality

intolerance

inurement

invective

inverse complexity, the law of

inverse reaction, the principle of

inverse-risk death spiral

inversion

invincible ignorance

Invisible Committee

invisible hand

invisible watchman

irenic

irredentism/revanchism

irreducible complexity

Ishmael effect

Islam

Israel firsters

Israel Test, The

Israelite God vs. pagan gods

itching ears

jabberwocky

jackboot

Jacksonian democracy

Jacobin

Jansenism

Jayson Blair redux

Jekyll and Hyde

Jefferson Gathering

Jefferson’s maxim

Jehovah-jireh

jeremiad

Jesus Seminar

Jewish liberalism

Jezebel

jihad

Jim Crow

jingoism

John Birch Society

John Q. Public

Johnson Amendment

Johnson treatment

Johnson’s law of dissidents

Johnson’s law of patriotism

Joshua Generation Project

JournoList

Judaism

Judaism’s safety belt

judicial activism

juggernaut

Julia liberals vs. Winston liberals

justified deception

K Street

kabbalah

Kabuki dance

Kafkaesque

kamikaze

kangaroo court

kangaroo ticket

Kant’s law

karma

Karamazov’s maxim

Katyn Forest massacre

Kelo case

Kennedy’s law

Kennedy’s law of fairness

keys

kibbutz

Kierkegaard’s impasse

Kierkegaard’s law

kill ‘em with kindness

killing fields

KISS principle

Klein study

knight-errant

Know-Nothings

knowledge as a two-edged sword

knowledge is power vs. power is knowledge

Kraus’s law

Kulturkampf

kum ba yah

Kwanzaa

Lady Godiva effect

Lady Macbeth effect

Lambda Legal

Landmark movement

Lavrenti Beria redux

Lazarus effect

leaderless resistance

learned helplessness

leaven

Lefkowitz dustup

legal realism / legal positivism / sociological jurisprudence

legalism

legalized gambling

legislating morality

legislators’ term limits

lemmings

Let them eat cake.

Lethe effect or Lethe River effect

letter of the law vs. spirit of the law

Leviathan

levirate marriage

Leviticus lobby

lex talionis

liar, legend, lunatic, or Lord dilemma

liberal/modernist Baptist seminaries

liberal Christians / liberal Christianity

liberalism, the evolution of

liberating strife

liberation theology

libertarianism

liberty-democracy distinction

lickspittle

life-expectancy scripture

Life of Julia, The.

light and salt

Lilith myth

Lilliputian

Lilly Ledbetter law

limited government

lingua franca vs. lingua esoterica

literary treatment of war

litotes

living Constitution / living document

Lockean

lodestar

logic

logocentrism

Logos

logrolling

Lomnitz thesis

Looney hypothesis

loose vs. strict construction

Lord of the Flies effect

Lorelei

lost generation

lost tribes of Israel

Lourdes

low-tension vs. high-tension churches

Luciferian inversion

Luddite

lycanthropy

Lysenkoism

Lysistrata gesture

Machiavellian

Madame Defarge redux

magisterium

Magna Carta of Christian liberty

magnum opus

mainstreaming

make the trains run on time

malapropism

malinchista

Malleus Maleficarum ()

Malthus’s law

Malvolio effect

Mammon

Man for All Seasons, A

managers vs. leaders

Manhattan Declaration

Manichaeism

Manichaeanization

manifest destiny

man’s most basic predicament

mantra

manufacturing economy vs. service economy

Marbury v. Madison

mare’s nest

Margaret Mead redux

Marie Antoinette

Marjoe

Mark Twain’s law of journalism

Marley’s chains

Marsden thesis / Marsden-Warren thesis / great-reversal thesis

Marshall’s law

martyrs

Marx’s law

Masada

masochism

mass shootings

materialist politics

Matthew effect

Matthew process, the

Maule’s curse

Maundy Thursday

McCarthyism

McDonald decision

McLuhan principle

mean, doctrine of the

media bias

median voter models

medicalization of political differences

medicate, educate, and incarcerate

medieval mistake

meditation

Megiddo report

meliorism

meme

mercurial

meretricious

meritocracy

mesmerism

mess of pottage

messianic Jews

messianic secret

metanarrative

metaphysics

metempsychosis

Methodism

mezuzah

Micah :

Michael’s law of advocacy

microaggression

microtargeting/micropandering

Midas’s law

middle way

midwife

military strategy

millenarianism

millennials

milquetoast

Miltonic

mimesis

Minogue thesis

mirage of immortality

misogamy

misogyny

missionary religions, the three great

missionary work, the five greats of

mnemonic device

Mommie Dearest

monasticism

money earned vs. money somehow existing

morning-after pill

Morton Downey effect / Morton Downey redux

mosaic thinking

most frequently quoted Christian author

movie rating system

Moynihan Report

muckrakers

mugwump

multiculturalism

multiple witnesses, the law of

Murphy Brown effect

Murphy’s law

museum-quality Democrat

Muslim Brotherhood

mutual assured destruction (MAD)

myrmidons

mystical

myth

mythologies of purity

Nakba Day

naked public square

Name it and claim it

Napoleon’s law

narcissism

narcissistic immunity

natalism

nation of Indians ruled by Swedes

National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL)

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

National Council of Churches

national healing scripture

National Organization for Women (NOW)

nativism/nativists

natural law

natural man

naturalism

nature vs. nurture

negative preponderance, the law of

neoconservative or neocon

neo-orthodoxy

neo-paganism

nepotism

New Age religion / cosmic humanism

New Left

New Spirituality

New Thought

new-wave feminism

new way / middle way / third way

new world order

Newtonian universe

Niebuhr’s reduction of liberal Christianity

Niemöller’s cascade

Nifonged

Nigerian connection, the

nimbyism

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

nirvana

Nixon’s law

no-labels movement

no-platforming

no salvation outside of this church

no think ‘ems

noble lie, Plato’s

noblesse oblige

nom de plume

nondenominational church

nonviolence

nones

Nora Helmer effect

Norquist pledge

normalcy bias

North Star

noses, nickels, and noise

nostrum

nouveau riche

nuclear option

nudge

nullification, doctrine of

numinous/numinosity

objectivism

Occam’s razor vs. Occam’s beard

Oedipus complex

oeuvre

old covenant vs. new covenant

old guard

oldest profession

ombudsman

omertà

on the backs of

one-way valve of political affiliation

Oneness Pentecostalism

Operation Choke Point

Operation Farewell Dossier

oppression theory

optics, metrics, and atmospherics

oracle of Delphi

Orbán indictment

order of play

origin of religion

original position

original sin

orthodoxy/orthopraxy

Orwellian

Orwell’s law of language

Osler’s law

outcome-based education

overarch

overchoice

oversoul

Overton window

ox in the mire

oxymoron

Paley’s watch

Pandemonium

pandering

Pandora’s box

panjandrum

panspermia

pantheism

Pape thesis

parable

paradox of political protection

parapsychology

parked-reserves avalanche

Parkinson’s law

parochial

parody vs. satire

Parousia

parsimony, the law of

parsing words

parvenu

Pascal’s fixed point / Pascal’s wager

past feeling.

pastorpreneurs

pathos

patois

patriotism

patronize

Patterson film, the

Paul Kersey effect

Pauline theology

Pax Americana

paycheck to paycheck

peacemakers vs. peace lovers

peanut butter sandwich analogy

peccadillo

Pecksniffian

pedantic

pedophilia deception

Pelagianism

pelvic revolt

Pemberton effect

Penelope redux

Pentecost

Pentecostalism

penumbras

people of faith

perestroika

perfect storm

Pericles’s predicament

peroration

persecution

persiflage

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of

Peter Pan syndrome

Peter principle

Peterson’s law

pettifogger

phantasmagoria

philology

philosopher’s stone

philosophy

phoenix

phoniness

phrenology

picaresque

picayune

pied piper

Pietism

pig in a poke

Pigford case

pillar of salt

Piltdown Man

pimping educational model

pin the tail on the Antichrist

pipe dreams

pithy

planned obsolescence of self-reliance

Planned Parenthood’s percent lie

Plato’s allegory of the cave

plebiscite

plenitude

pluralism, religious

Pogo’s observation

pogrom

political correctness

political obscurantism

political polarization

polity

Pollyanna

poltergeist

polygamy

polymath

polymorphous perversity

Pooh-Bah

poor are always with us, The

poorly reflected idealism

pop psychology

pork / pork barrel politics

pornography

portmanteau

poseur

positive thinking (the Peale-Schuller-Osteen connection)

Posner’s law

Posse Comitatus Act

post-Christian America

posthumanism

postmodernism

postnationalism

postpartisan/postracial

Potemkin patriotism

Potemkin village

Potomac fever

Potter Stewart’s observation

pottery-barn rule

pound of flesh, exacting a

poverty

Power corrupts

Prager’s line in the sand

pragmatism

Praise Moves

predatory police myth

predictive segmentation

presentism

prestidigitation

pride

priesthood of the believer

prig

primum non nocere

primal temptation / primal lie

principle-behavior dissociation

privileging of self-identity

probabilism

process theology

profiling

pro forma performance

profundity

progress

progressive vs. regressive taxation

Prohibition

project labor agreements (PLAs)

Project Veritas

projection

proletariat

Promethean

Promethean atheism

Promethean neo-Pelagianism

Promise Keepers

propaganda

property rights

propitiation

prosecutorial misconduct

prosperity gospel

Prospero effect

Protagoras’s law

Protestant Reformation

Protestant work ethic

Proudhon’s maxim

Proverbs woman

provocateurs

proxy

prudential monitoring

prurient

pseudonym

psychoanalysis

Ptolemaic system

publicans

pulpit initiative

pulpiteer

punitive liberalism

Puritanism

pursuit of happiness

push poll

putsch

Putnam’s vat

Pygmalion effect

Pygmalionism

Pyrrhic victory

qualitative military edge

quantitative easing

quid pro quo

quisling

Quiverfull movement

quixotic

quotidian

Qutb thesis

Rabelaisian humor

racial and ethnic spoils system in academia

radical

radical feminism

Rain Man

raisin in the sun

rapture, the

Rastafarianism

rationalism vs. empiricism

rationing

Rawlsian liberalism

reactionary

reader-response theory

realm sovereignty

realpolitik

rebuke before all

reciprocity, the law of

reconquista

reconstructionist movement

recreational provocateur / recreational iconoclast

red herring

redshirting

red states vs. blue states

redheaded stepchildren of socialism

reductionist

reductionist fallacy or fallacy of composition

reductio ad absurdum

reductio ad Hitlerum

reductivist art

re-enslavement

Reformed theology / Reformed tradition

reframing the language

refusenik

regimentation, row house

regulatory capture

reification

Reign of Harlots

Reign of Terror

religion as the basis for morality

religion penalty, the

religion as political expedient

religion, purposes and functions of

religious disestablishment

religious exclusivity / exclusionism

religious impostors / religious hypocrites

religious relics, the cult of

religious Right

Remembrance Project

remove the beam

Renaissance

rendition

reparations

repartee

republic

restoration of Israel

restorative justice

restrain-evil passage

Reuther’s law

revanchism

reversibility standard

revisionism or historical revisionism

revivalism

revolutionary socialism vs. evolutionary socialism

Reynard the Fox

Ricardo’s law

Richard Rich redux

right-to-work laws

right vs. left, the origin of

RINO

riposte

rise of the wives

risqué

road rage

Road to Serfdom, The

robber barons

Roe of Roe v. Wade

Rogers’s law

Roman Road, The

romanticism

Romeike religious-freedom case

Rommel’s rule

Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms

root-causes theory

Rorschach

Rosetta Stone

Roth standards of obscenity

Rousseau industry

Rousseau legacy

RU-

rubber rooms

Rube Goldberg mechanisms

Rule of Harlots

Runyon’s law

Rushdie affair

Rust Belt

Sabbatarian

sacerdotalism

sacrificial-lamb strategy

sadism

safe-harbor evangelism

safe-haven laws

safe zones

SAGE Cons

Saladin

salamander

salami tactics

salvation, collective vs. individual

same-fight stance

samizdat

samsara

Samson Option

samurai

sanctification

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

sanctuary city

sandbag

satanic possession

satrap

savant

saved by grace, rewarded by works

scandal of particularity

scatological

schadenfreude

schooling at home

schoolmaster scripture, the

schtick

Schumpeter’s law

scintilla law / scintilla rule

Scofield Reference Bible

Scopes Monkey Trial

scorched-earth policy

Scottsboro Boys redux

screed

Screwtape’s law of undulation

scrofulous

Scrooge

scruples

scrupulosity

séance

Second Amendment remedy

second-oldest faith

Second Vatican Council

Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The.

secret rapture

Section Eighter

sectionalism

Secular City, The

secular humanism

secular-progressive agenda

secularization thesis

security of the believer or perseverance of the saints

sehnsucht

self-cleaning oven

self-deception

self-esteem

Semites

Seneca Falls

sensitivity review boards

sententious

sentient

separation of powers

serendipity

Sesame Citizens System

sesquipedalian

seven deadly sins

seven faith tribes

seven sisters

Sez who?

Shalom

shamanism

Shaw’s law

Sheldon’s question

Sheol

shill

shunning

silk stockings vs. hoi polloi

simony

simpatico

simultaneous loose-tight properties

sin

sine qua non

singularity, the

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

sirens

situation ethics

Skinny Wednesdays

slaughter of the innocents

slush fund

slutification of girls and wussification of boys

smarmy

SNAFU

snake-handling churches

snapping

snollygoster

snowflake

social Darwinism

social gospel

social justice

sociopath

Socrates’s law

soft bigotry of low expectations

Sokal hoax, the

soliloquy

solipsism

Solzhenitsyn’s critique

sophism/sophistry

sorcery/sorcerer

soul competency

Southern Baptist Convention vs. homosexual picketers

Southern Poverty Law Center

sovereign citizen extremist

sovereignty problem

Soviet Union, defeat of the

speaking truth to power

species dominance

speciesism

spirit of the law vs. letter of the law

spleen, venting one’s

spoils system

spoonerism

stalking horse

Star Wars saga symbolism

star chamber

stare decisis

statistical indictment

statistical manipulation

stealthy transition

stemwinder

Stepford wives

stereotype

stewardship

stigma

stigmata

stock character

Stockholm syndrome

stoicism

stolen valor

Stonewall riots

STORM

stovepipe effect

Strangelove factor

Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars)

stream of consciousness

strong Christians vs. weak Christians

sublime

subliminal

subsidiarity

subsistence standard of welfare vs. Garden of Eden standard of welfare

subventions

suicide prevention

supercilious

supererogation, doctrine of

surrealism

surrogate

suttee

swan song

swarthy

sword of Damocles

sword of Ezekiel

sybaritic

symbiosis

symbolic retribution

syncretism

synecdoche

synergism/synergistic

synoptic Gospels, the

systems competition

tabula rasa

talented tenth

tattoos

tautology

Tea Party

technoshamanism

teleological argument for God

teleological ethics or consequentialism

temperance / temperance movement

tempest

tempest in a teapot

temporal

Tenth Amendment movement

term limits

terminological inexactitude

terrified inactivity

terrorist diaspora

text, the law of

Thanatos

theistic evolution

theodicy

theonomy / dominionism / Christian reconstructionism

theophany

theosophy

therapeutic deistic moralism

therapist’s law of arrival

therapist’s law of experience

There Is Only the Fight.

Thessalonian work standard, the

theurgy

think tanks

Third base ain’t what it used to be

third-party litigation financing

third-rail issues

third-way politics

Thoreau’s law of government

thought-stopping cliché

Thrasymachus’s law of justice

threat condition Delta

three A’s of religious expression

three-card monte

three primary fears of the hospice patient

three great missionary religions

three-martini lunch

three-reindeer rule

three who changed the world

threescore and ten

Tiananmen Square

tickling ears

tiger mom

tilting at windmills

time-perspective scripture

time travel

tinker trap, the

Tiny Tim

Tituba

To be or not to be.

toady

Tocqueville advantage

TODDI defense

tokenism

Tokyo Rose

Toledo study on police shootings

tolerance

tong war

Torcaso v. Watkins

Torquemada

total Christian society

touchstone character

touchstone proposition

tour de force

Tours, Battle of

Toynbee’s challenge-and-response theory of history

traducianism

tragedy of the commons

traitors, characteristics of

tranquil-haven theory

transcendentalism

translation

Trans-Pacific Partnership

transubstantiation

transvestite

travesty

triage

trial by ordeal

triangulation

trickle-down economics

Trilateral Commission

triggers / trigger warnings

trip wire effect

trite

triumphalism

Troeltsch’s caveat

Trojan horse

Trollope ploy

trot out the ghosts

truculent

Truman’s laws

truth never changes

Truth Wins Out

truthers

Tunnel of Oppression program

Turley thesis

Turner Diaries, The

Turnitin

turpitude

Twain’s ruling

Tweed Ring

Tweedledee and Tweedledum

Twelvers

twenty-pieces-of-silver crowd

twilight zone

two-Americas speech

two-cheers-for-colonialism thesis

type A vs. type B personalities

Typhoid Mary

Tytler thesis

Übermensch

ubiquitous

Umbrella Revolution

umpire analogy of Justice Roberts

unbelief as the opiate of the morally corrupt

Unbubba, the

uncanny valley

uncle of religion

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

underground press

Underground Railroad

understanding the times

undulation, the law of

unequally yoked

unexpected Messiah, the

unforgivable sin

un-Huxtables, the

unified field theory

uninsured, the

unintended consequences, the law of

Union Conservatives

union-money feedback loop

United Nations

unitive good

UNITY

universal jurisdiction law

universalism

universals

unreached people groups (UPGs)

unrighteous dominion

useful idiots

usurp/usurpation

usury

utilitarianism

Utopia

uxorious

vagabond

valence effect

value-added tax

values clarification

values: the marketplace vs. society

vampires

Velvet Revolution, The

veneer mea culpa

Venona papers

verbal prestidigitation

verbal virtuosity

verification principle, Popper’s

vernacular

verse of the sword

victimhood-preservation movement

victimhood vendors

Vigilant Eagle program

virago

Viral Petition Power

Virgil

virtue

visualize

vitalism

vitiate

voir dire

Voldemort

volunteerism

volunteeristic compassion

voluptuary

vox populi

VX nerve agent

Wahhabism

waiting for Godot

wall memo, the

wall of separation between church and state

Walpurgis Night

war ethic vs. wealth ethic

war on Christmas

War on Poverty

warfare metaphor, the

waterboarding

watershed

wealth, evolution of Catholic thought on

wealth tax

wedge issues vs. bridge issues

Weimar solution

weltanschauung

Wesley’s quadrilateral

What would Jesus do?

whirlwind

white privilege

Whitman’s law of contradiction

widget

Wikileaks

Wilde’s law of tragedy

Willy Loman effect / Willy Loman redux

will to believe

will to power

window of vulnerability

wisdom literature of the Bible

women’s lib

work

works vs. faith

Yad L’Achim

yellow journalism

Yoda of the secular-progressive movement

yoga

You can’t fight city hall

You didn’t build that.

yuppie

zeal without knowledge

zeitgeist

Zenger legacy

zenith vs. nadir

zero-sum game

zero-sum stimulus principle

Zhirinovsky redux

Zinn standards / Zinn revisionism

Zionism

Zoilist

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

abolition. The termination of slavery in the United States in 1865.

The Founding Fathers are frequently criticized for failing to end slavery, but this would have been impossible because outlawing slavery without the consent of the majority would have destroyed the American democratic experiment. Historians generally agree that had the Founding Fathers insisted on securing the rights of all people, they would have ended up securing no one’s rights at all. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence had an antislavery provision, but he soon realized this was not workable.

The evils of slavery, racism, and colonialism have occurred everywhere in the world, but only in the West do we see abolition (a.k.a. manumission). In other words, abolition is an exclusively Western phenomenon. As historian J. M. Roberts has said, No civilization once dependent on slavery has ever been able to eradicate it except the Western. Abraham Lincoln illustrated this unique Western attitude when he said, As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.

Of all the churches, it was the Quakers who most loudly protested the slave trade.

After the Civil War, in which more than six hundred thousand souls died in an effort to abolish slavery, the cause of abolition followed the tides of Reconstruction, the period from 1865 to 1877 when the federal government controlled the Southern states of the former Confederacy before they were readmitted to the union. Reconstruction essentially unfolded in three phases. First, President Andrew Johnson pushed for no punishment of the former Confederacy and for full freedoms for emancipated slaves. In a second phase, a dominant Radical Republican faction moved to punish the former Confederacy and to compensate former slaves with a forty acres and a mule program. In a third and final phase, the Radical Reconstruction lost its momentum, and Southern Democrats called Redeemers restored white supremacy to Southern state governments, intimidated blacks, and set Jim Crow off and running. (See also Brown v. Board of Education; carpetbagger; democracy vs. republic; Dred Scott case; founding-documents controversy; founding-document rule; Jim Crow.)

Abrahamic religions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all trace their roots back to father Abraham. The Old Testament is revered as holy scripture by all three religions. (See also Christianity, classification of; golden rule; Islam; Judaism.)

abrogation, the Islamic principle of. See Wahhabism.

absolutism. Absolutism may be political absolutism or moral absolutism.

Political absolutism is the notion that there are no limitations on the powers of governing authorities. Such leaders are called dictators, despots, autocrats, tyrants, sovereigns, potentates, or totalitarians. They typically work through ideology rather than through myth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), a French moral philosopher, is considered the midwife of totalitarianism. In a more generic sense, Rousseau’s work is the original thrust behind the idea of big, centralized, all-powerful, and overweening central government, a notion also known as the Rousseau industry. Christians must reckon with totalitarianism and the Rousseau industry because they are of necessity based on force and coercion, which are antithetical to the agent-centered morality taught by Jesus.

Moral absolutism was a position taken by Plato, who believed in absolute truth, or the idea that something is true for all individuals at all times and in all circumstances. Plato was what we today would call an essentialist, one who believes in the existence of intrinsic context—independent realities or essences that are true regardless of personal preferences, preconceived notions, or antecedent desires. He had a running feud with Aristotle, who believed in relativism, the notion that whether something is true depends on circumstances.

The divide between Plato’s absolutes and Aristotle’s relativism is best remembered by recalling the painting by Raphael (1483–1520) titled The School of Athens, currently hanging in the Vatican. The painting shows Plato with one finger pointing up because he believes in absolutes and Aristotle with four fingers pointing down because he believes in relativism.

Plato is considered the father of idealism largely because he believed that virtue was its own intrinsic reward. He is also considered the uncle of religion because he believed in absolute truth (as most religions do) and in immortality (as most religions do). But he is only the uncle of religion rather than the father because both concepts (moral absolutism and immortality) are basic, generic, ill defined, and short on detail.

The notion of absolute truth has been criticized because it sounds arrogant, presumptuous, dogmatic, and overly assertive, and on this basis, some have criticized the absolutism of Christianity as being the scandal of particularity.

Although there are several philosophical views of truth, Christians accept the correspondence theory of truth, the notion that truth is that which corresponds to things as they really are.

The correspondence theory of truth assumes that truth is out there, waiting to be discovered. This stands in sharp contrast with the postmodernist view of truth as something created rather than discovered.

Postmodernism, the reigning philosophy of the Western world, holds that there is no such thing as absolute truth because all opinions, beliefs, and worldviews are merely social or cultural constructions. In fact, postmodernists refer to such views as the myth of the given, and whoever prefers one over the other is said to have committed the transgression of preference.

Postmodernism is self-defeating because its assertion that there are no absolutes is itself an absolute. This is called the Ishmael effect—the claim to escape a fate to which all others are condemned.

The notion of moral absolutism or absolute truth is important, as it relates to the fact-value distinction. The fact-value distinction is the assumption that facts are facts (2 + 2 = 4), while values are mere opinions and are therefore elastic, malleable, and ever-changing. Postmodernists accept the fact-value distinction as valid, but Christianity does not. This is because Christianity holds that values and morals represent standards that are fixed and unchangeable. (See also agent-centered morality vs. utilitarian morality; essentialism; fact-value distinction; Ishmael effect; idealism; ideology vs. myth; immortality vs. eternal life; postmodernism; scandal of particularity.)

abstaining superpower. The United States is the abstaining superpower. We have sacrificed considerable blood and treasure in defense of freedom worldwide. When the job is done, we leave. We seek no lebensraum (living space) as the Nazis did. We ask only for enough land to bury our dead. Then we leave until another tyrant arises. We enter a country only by invitation and then as liberators rather than as conquerors, and we ask little or nothing in return.

When we win a war, we help former enemies rebuild, as in the case of the Marshall Plan, through which the United States pumped $12 billion into post–World War II Europe. The gesture turned the Iron Curtain into a conspicuous fault line with prosperity to the west and wretchedness to the east. (See also American exceptionalism.)

academic/intellectual validation process. Intellectuals, academics, the intelligentsia, the cognoscenti, the literati, and the professoriate all enjoy a uniquely safe and comfortable peer review validation process. They live in a world void of accountability because the product of their endeavors is not subject to the consequential feedback that the rest of us must deal with. I say void of accountability because the academic community functions within a self-referential validation loop; the props bolstering academics are their campus colleagues, who make up a mutual-admiration society. These internal props afford them a privileged personal construction of reality within their insular communities. They work within a liberal-to-radical echo chamber of progressive ideas, and these ideas are typically considered to be more important than people.

Academics tend to live in a world of moral equivalence—or what might be called the Plessy-Ferguson theory of ideas—that is, separate but equal, as declared by the Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. In the academic world, ideas are considered to be social constructions, with one individual’s construction as good as another’s. Into this abyss of subjectivity, the intellectual can project any idea he or she wants, fully anticipating support by uncritical colleagues, and these ideas are especially welcome if they are deemed new, exciting, cutting edge, prescient, nuanced, chic, avant-garde, or outré.

This stands in strong contrast with the validation processes of the larger society. After all, brain surgeons with a high patient mortality rate are invariably forced to make changes. Coach Nick Saban has to win football games at Alabama or else get a pink slip. Bill Gates has to be productive, or his stockholders will rebel. These are the external props of the standard validation loop, and because they involve consequential feedback, they elicit an accountability that augments productivity. Such accountability is missing in academia. (See also intellectuals, characteristics of; liberalism, evolution of.)

acculturation/assimilation. The modification of one culture as a result of mingling with another, typically more advanced culture.

Although the terms acculturation and assimilation do not appear in the Bible, their subject matter is succinctly addressed. In fact, the Bible teaches that there should be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you (Exod. 12:49 RSV). However, for the foreigner, the stranger, and the sojourner to enjoy these privileges, they must accept Israelite culture and adopt Israelite customs. In other words, they must acculturate or assimilate. For example, if a stranger sojourns among you, and will keep the Passover to the Lord … you shall have one statute both for the sojourner and the native (Num. 9:14 RSV). In these and other Old Testament passages, the Bible teaches that the foreigner, the sojourner, and the stranger are to be welcomed if they acculturate or assimilate.

So the next question is, do immigrants assimilate? Historically, early immigrants did assimilate into American society. This was also true for the Ellis Island generation of immigrants (the second wave of immigration from 1892 to 1943), so the first- and second-wave immigrants made every attempt to assimilate or acculturate. They respected the traditions dear to the hearts of Americans.

What about today? Several studies on Latino assimilation show there is little or no assimilation in first and third generations and just mild assimilation in the second generation.

The notion of assimilation or acculturation is opposed by the advocates of multiculturalism, who claim immigrants should retain the identity of their country of origin. (See also Crusades; immigration; irredentism/revanchism; Lazarus effect; multiculturalism.)

Achilles’ heel. A metaphor for one’s weakness or window of vulnerability. The notion comes from the ancient Greek warrior Achilles, whose mother dipped him in a magic river during infancy. This gave Achilles protection from the slings and arrows of war except for a small place around his ankle where his mother held him suspended in the river.

act vs. hedonic utilitarianism. See utilitarianism.

Acton’s law. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. English Catholic historian Sir John Acton wrote this line in a letter to a Catholic bishop in which he complained about authoritarianism by the church.

Foreign-policy expert Henry Kissinger said, Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Power may begin as an idealistic means to an end, but given the proclivities of the natural man, the will to power may become an end in itself.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), seen as the original precursor of postmodernism, said the will to power was a virtue, while the humility of Christianity was a vice and the signature gesture of a slave religion.

Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power has caused considerable controversy. For example, Hitler appropriated the notion as part of his philosophy of National Socialism.

Christianity disdains doing anything through coercion or force. This is because Jesus taught agent-centered morality rather than utilitarian-centered morality, which is characterized by force and coercion.

On the subject of power, Christianity is an inversion of the ways of the world. God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise (1 Cor. 1:27).

The Mormons get it right in their Doctrine and Covenants, section 121, verse 39: It is the nature … of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority … to exercise unrighteous dominion over others.

The Christian understanding of the natural man’s will to power, along with Jesus’s preference for agent-centered morality, forms the basis of the Christian argument for limited government and for voluntary (not forced) charity. Romans 3:23 reminds us that all have sinned and come short, and so we never know when a leader might be tempted to abuse his authority.

Theoretically, one could argue that a benevolent despot would make the best leader. But how long will he remain benevolent? And even if he does, will his successor be similarly benevolent? If not, the first benevolent despot may have begun an irreversible tradition. After all, power is like saltwater. The more you get, the more you want. (See also agent-centered morality vs. utilitarian morality; Christian argument for limited government; natural man; postmodernism; Shaw’s law.)

ad hoc. For a specific purpose. An ad hoc committee is formed for a specific purpose and is given a specific charge to accomplish a specific goal.

ad hominem abusive. A personal and abusive attack on an opponent, usually undertaken as a substitute for an objective assessment and therefore considered to be a fallacy of inference.

The ad hominem abusive usually takes the form of demonization and dismissal, which have become the default or last-stand argument of liberals and secular progressives. Their tendency toward demonization and dismissal rather than substantive argument is best explained by the good-faith differential and the ego-stake differential.

According to the good-faith differential, while conservatives tend to extend a presumption of good faith to liberals (their hearts are in the right place), liberals tend not to return the favor. Rather, liberals tend to assume that conservatives are morally and intellectually lacking. The result is an elitist attitude of differential respect that encourages demonization and dismissal rather than substantive argument.

Another generator of demonization and dismissal is what Thomas Sowell in his excellent Intellectuals and Society (2009) calls ego stake. Liberals and liberal intellectuals aggressively defend their larger ego-stake investment with a testiness or feistiness that frequently morphs into demonization and dismissal at the expense of substantive argument. (See also demonization and dismissal; elitism; good-faith differential; guise of moralism; ideology vs. myth; intellectuals, characteristics of.)

adiaphora. Those things for which a Christian is no better or no worse off whether partaking or abstaining.

advantages of backwardness. A phrase originally coined by economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) and later popularized by Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) to refer to the economic advantages of third world countries as they compete in the global marketplace.

For example, China and Mexico do not have a workers’ compensation program to cover on-the-job injuries. They don’t have equal protection of the law as required by our Fourteenth Amendment. They can bypass safety standards, pay low wages, work employees for long hours, and require children to work.

Because of this backwardness, their cheaper production costs give them an advantage over their competitors in the United States.

As a result of the proliferation of rights typically occurring in Western democracies, US courts have required expanded workers’ compensation coverage. Now, companies must cover cumulative trauma disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis resulting from repetitive physical stress on the job.

These high costs make it difficult or impossible for American companies to compete with foreign plants that enjoy the advantages of backwardness. (See also creative destruction; Schumpeter’s law.)

Aesop’s Fables. Short stories that teach an underlying moral lesson.

Aesop was a Greek slave who lived in the sixth century BC. He was said to be ugly and hunchbacked (probably a stereotype).

In the Greek society of the time, Aesop represented low culture, and his subversive folk wisdom ran counter to the high culture and philosophy of the nearby oracle of Delphi.

The characters in Aesop’s Fables were animals, and each story represented a moral lesson intended to positively influence growing children.

Examples include The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Tortoise and the Hare (teaching the importance of patient persistence), and The Fox and the Grapes, from which we get the term sour grapes and its obverse, sweet lemons.

From Aesop’s Fables we get the term Aesopian language, meaning a specialized patois, argot, or cant understood only by certain in-groups but not by the general public. (See also cant; dog-whistle politics; lingua franca vs. lingua esoterica.)

aesthetics. The branch of philosophy that purports to identify the sublime (what is beautiful or worthy).

The five branches of philosophy include metaphysics (what’s real?), ethics (what’s right?), aesthetics (what’s beautiful?), logic (what’s rational?), and epistemology (how do we know what we know?).

affinity scam. A scam pulled off by a person with whom one has an affinity, such as a relative or a church friend.

An affinity scam in Utah in 2012 involved a Mormon bishop who bilked church members out of millions of dollars. (Utah is considered the affinity-scam capital of the world.) The bishop, Shawn Merriman, was able to pull off the scam because he was a trusted church official and because 60 percent of Utah residents are Mormons.

The more virtuous a person is, the more likely he or she can be scammed. This is explained by Cicero’s law: The nobler a man is, the harder it is for him to suspect baseness in others. So the sequence of events takes the mark (victim) from nobility to naïveté to vulnerability to predation to scam. (See also Cicero’s law.)

affirmative action. Programs designed by legislative fiat to overcome past discrimination by giving preference to minorities.

The Equal Opportunity Act of 1972 set goals and timetables and provided augmented reimbursement to contractors and universities that observed the parameters of the program. The act set up a commission to enforce the program’s provisions.

Objections to reverse discrimination were considered in the case of University of California Regents v. Bakke in 1978. The Supreme Court ordered that Allen Bakke be admitted to medical school because the university’s 16 percent minority quota wrongly discriminated against the white applicant. While the decision did away with minority quotas, the court said race could still be taken into consideration with respect to admission policies.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked that blacks be evaluated by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin, a perfectly intuitive request. But affirmative action goes further, seeking to rectify procedural injustices by erecting systems of counterprocedural injustices.

Several insightful black leaders have pointed out how welfare and affirmative action programs hurt black citizens by suggesting that they are weak and need help, a gesture that soon becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. For example, Ward Connerly, a black businessman from California, has been a staunch opponent of racial-preference policies, arguing they hurt more than help the black community.

Black academic Shelby Steele articulated this notion in the now-famous statement that bounty from another man’s guilt hurts rather than helps minorities.

John McWhorter, conservative black scholar and author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (2000), says, An ideology of anti-intellectualism and victimology is self-sabotaging the black community. After many years of teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, McWhorter concluded that black students typically consider academic achievement to be a white thing. Some even try to prevent other blacks from succeeding—a phenomenon called the crawdad effect because when one crawdad tries to crawl out of a bucket, another will try to pull it back down. It’s also been dubbed black schadenfreude.

A definitive and objective study of affirmative action is Mismatch (2012) by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr., academic and journalist, respectively. The authors, just left of center politically, are not opponents of affirmative action but want to see reforms.

Mismatch is subtitled How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help. The authors note that affirmative action was intended to create equal opportunity through fair and equitable selection standards for admissions, hiring, and housing and to employ outreach and recruitment to correct past patterns of exclusion. However, the authors note that affirmative action quickly morphed into a program of racial preferences and quotas that harmed blacks by creating an acutely painful mismatch between foundational skill sets and rigorous demands. When the black student can’t keep up, the results are self-doubt, dropout, career change, panic, and injury to self-esteem.

A particularly interesting finding was that when blacks got racial preferences to enter prestigious law schools, only 50 percent passed the bar exam compared with 90 percent of whites. However, when blacks entered less prestigious law schools based on a fair admissions policy (no quotas or racial preferences), 80 percent passed the bar exam, approximately the same figure as whites. In other words, fair and nonpreferential admission procedures yielded far better results for black students than did coercive racial-preference admission policies.

The most celebrated case of affirmative action litigation in recent years involved Jennifer Gratz. She applied to the taxpayer-funded state University of Michigan at Ann Arbor but was rejected because of the color of her skin. At first, she was dejected, but she later found out that less qualified black students had been admitted to the university for the same reason—the color of their skin.

It took six years for the Gratz v. Bollinger case to reach the Supreme Court, which decided that the bean-counting quota system was illegal and ordered that Gratz be admitted. But by that time, she had graduated from a less prestigious school and had moved on with her life. Just as in the Bakke case, the court indicated that the university could use race as a factor in the admissions process. (See also circumlocution; Jim Crow; political correctness; raisin in the sun; reversibility; root-causes theory; schadenfreude.)

affirmative action bake sales. See political correctness.

affluenza defense. The claim that wealth buys privilege and that children growing up in this environment may be unable to link their actions to consequences.

The theory got public attention in April 2014 when a judge sentenced seventeen-year-old Ethan Couch to a rehabilitation facility for treatment of his affluenza.

In June of 2013, Couch, driving illegally on a suspended license, intoxicated with alcohol, and speeding, plowed into a group of people who were assisting with a disabled vehicle. Four people were killed and nine injured.

In December of 2013, Couch, indicted for intoxication manslaughter, was defended by attorneys who set forth the affluenza defense, claiming that because he was raised in an atmosphere of wealth, privilege, and permissiveness, he was unable to connect his actions