[This review first appeared in the July 1988 issue of Chronicles.] Hatred of the past ill becomes a historian. Yet it is hard not to detect this disfiguring animus—paired with an overweening love of contemporaneity—in the works of many modern historians of family life. In recent decades, men such as Philippe Aries, Edward Shorter, and...
Author: Bryce J. Christensen (Bryce J. Christensen)
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Petty Squabbles
Political Correctness continues on many of the nation's campuses. Many Americans still regard the whole affair as a petty squabble among eggheads, unrelated to their daily lives. However, a recent skirmish in the PC wars illustrates only too well why all Americans, especially parents, have a stake in . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
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The Streetwalker’s Story
Prostitution may not deserve its reputation as the world's oldest profession, but it has been around for millennia, appearing in virtually every society. In this revised edition of a book originally published in 1978 (under a slightly different title), Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough document the ubiquity and . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
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By Blab Befuddled
Words cannot take us everywhere, nor should they. Before the most sublime truths, we grow reverently still. Confronted with bestiality, we shudder at the unspeakable. But in the Age of Blab, everything must be talked about." Indeed, modem journalists consider it progress to be able to chat endlessly about . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
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Raising Concerns
Child abuse has become a national issue. But close scrutiny of the problem raises doubts about the current crusade to combat it. Before expanding the power of the state to intervene in the home, concerned citizens ought to take a hard look at the evidence. While it . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Updating Paley
Like many Englishmen of his generation, Charles Darwin in his youth was an avid reader of William Paley's The Evidences of Christianity (1794). As Darwin formulated his theory of evolution, he lost his faith in Paley's argument that nature manifests God's wisdom and foresight . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
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Dead Souls in the Classroom
“Thanatology” or “death education” now competes with driver’s ed and “social problems” for the attention of the nation’s high schoolers. First introduced on America’s college campuses in the 1960’s by such luminaries as Edgar Jackson, Richard Kalish, Robert Kastenbaum, and Herman Feifel, death education has, like many other dubious pedagogical experiments, trickled down to the...
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Prayer by Numbers
When sociologists look at religion, what do they see? Inevitably, they see statistical clusters of churchgoers sorted through ecclesiastical, geographic, and demographic grids. People who want to assess contemporary social trends in American religion would do well to consult this new volume by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
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Galileo Brought to Book, Again
Galileo Galilei lives in the imagination of every high-school atheist as the archetypal champion of Truth, standing heroically against the malice and superstition of the ecclesiastical authorities who condemned him. This version of the events works wonderfully as melodrama but fails miserably as history—the Italian scholar Pietro . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Recovering the Medieval Family
Hatred of the past ill becomes a historian. Yet it is hard not to detect this disfiguring animus—paired with an overweening love of contemporaneity—in the works of many modern historians of family life. In recent decades, men such as Philippe Aries, Edward Shorter, and Lloyd DeMause have . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Shadows in the Limelight
An American television viewer will witness more violence in a single evening than an Athenian would have seen during a lifetime of theatergoing. Acts of violence were virtually prohibited in Greek drama, and Aristotle goes so far as to argue against the use of "mere spectacle" to produce the . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
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Cut-Flower Moralists
"Tell me, can you find indeed Nothing sure, no moral plan Clear prescribed, without your creed?" —Matthew Arnold Awaiting trial for a murder he did not commit, Dmitri Karamazov is visited in jail in the closing pages of Dostoevsky's
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An American Prometheus
Sprawled on the sands of the New Mexico desert, Isador Isaac Rabi was witness on July 16, 1945, to a demonstration of scientific power so spectacular that neither his welder's glasses nor his analytical training could fully shield him from its awe-inspiring effects: Suddenly, there . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
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Plummeting Rates
America's fertility rates plunged in the early 1970's, falling well below the minimal Zero Population Growth (ZPG) of 2.1 children per American woman. Never before has this happened to the nation while enjoying peace and relative prosperity. But a decisive rebound in the birthrate does not . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
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Invasion of the Child-Snatchers
Who has more rights in the American judicial system—a man accused of murder or one accused of child abuse? The accused murderer is guaranteed the good old English right of trial by jury; he's presumed innocent until proved guilty. He may even demand a court-appointed lawyer . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
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Catastrophic Health Insurance
Catastrophic health insurance—already endorsed by the President and now on the fast track to approval in Congress—will soon shift the economic burden of huge unexpected medical bills from the elderly to the federal government. But already some members of Congress are complaining that a much more inclusive . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Players of the Game
" . . . to chase the rolling circle's speed Or urge the Hying ball . . . " —Thomas Gray The Puritans, who once condemned stool ball, quoits, and bowls, would stand in stern judgment of the millions of Americans who every Sunday choose a ball game . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
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Out of the Closet, Into the Morgue
Homosexual activists will not like this book. For if ever there were an empirical refutation to the "gay rights" agenda. Gene Antonio has written it. In convincing (sometimes nauseating) detail, Antonio explains why the homosexual movement has provided the ideal conduit for one of the most lethal diseases ever . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
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Clipping the Angel’s Wings
" . . . Words strain, Crack and sometimes break. . . . " —T.S. Eliot The ancients, wiser than modem theorists, recognized language as a gift and (at Babel) a curse from the heavens. Even pagans recognized a Word behind words and a Muse beyond music. The . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
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A Fragile Blossom
Feng Jicai's volume of short stories is truly a remarkable work. It is one of the first publications by a writer in the People's Republic of China in which the writer has allowed people to be people. The reader does not find the stereotypical characters of proletarian . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Affliction and Redemption
Fyodor Dostoevsky is among the pioneers of modern literature. However, like so many of the pioneers—particularly T.S. Eliot—he is acknowledged with ambivalence and even reluctance. Like The Waste Land, Dostoevsky's works are prized for their subtle exploration of modern despair and alienation. Like . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article...
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Before the Big Bang
"Oh hide the God still more!" —Alexander Pope These days orthodox Christians and skeptical physicists disagree over nothing—yet their disagreement is literally of the first importance. For the "nothing" that is at issue is the void that immediately preceded the . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access...
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Psychology Today, Psychology Tomorrow, Psychology Forever
Psyche haunted the Romantic poets and their successors. Coleridge celebrated "the butterfly the ancient Grecians made the soul's fair emblem and its only name." Coleridge was a Christian. But the pagan Keats, in his search for a private "system of Salvation," said his prayers to Psyche, "latest-born . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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A Woman’s Dreams
"Most women have no Characters at all," wrote Alexander Pope: "Good as well as ill, / Woman's at best a Contradiction still." The contradiction of womanhood will perhaps never be fully solved, but it has generally been considered manageable within marriage and family. Outside of the home . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Love is everywhere the theme of popular culture, but only rarely a subject for serious contemporary philosophy. Irving Singer, professor of philosophy at MIT, attempts to remedy this imbalance with these two volumes, the first two parts of a trilogy. Laudable in breadth and clarity, his work nonetheless reveals . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
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Writing Without Letters
Whatever happened to the old middle-to-highbrow American culture? Once upon a time, there was a fair-sized literate class that kept up on fiction and verse by reading the great organs of literary opinion. These days there is a great gulf between serious literature and general-interest . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
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The Great Cham at Prayer
For Samuel Johnson, imperatives were dictated by literature and religion. The two were closely tied together in his mind. Indeed, in his laudable study of Johnson's religious life, Charles Pierce Jr. concludes "that Johnson came to regard his own work as a professional writer with religious seriousness. [H . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Stretching Angles and Banishing Angels
Geometry, most high school students will attest, is a dull subject. This dullness, however, is not only inescapable but essential. Memorizing theorems and deriving proofs is no fun, but doing such tasks teaches us—as "relevant" and "creative" courses in "communication" or "personal development" do not—that the mind . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
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Mormons and Modernism
"So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight, So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light." —John Dryden Leonard Arrington: Brigham Young: American Moses; Alfred A. Knopf; New York. Richard L. Bushman: Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism; University of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a...
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Scrambling the Schools
"With the same cement, ever sure to bind, We bring to one dead level ev'ry mind." -Alexander Pope John Dewey: Types of Thinking; Philosophical Library; New York. William C. Ringenberg: The Christian College: A History . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive...
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Private Faith & Public Schools
A Martian attending Inauguration Day ceremonies might be curious about the book upon which the President lays his hand as he takes the oath of office. "That," we would tell him, "is the Bible, a book of Scripture sacred to most American citizens." "I . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article...
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Making a Morass of Metaphysics
Thomas Carlyle by Fred Kaplan; Cor nell University Press; Ithaca. Most people know nothing about metaphysics and wish to know less. The case is not that they do not actually govern their lives in harmony with a set of metaphysical principles, for that is simply . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access...
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Liberal Worship and Conservative Judgment
Joyce Carol Oates: The Profane Art: Essays and Reviews; E. P. Dutton; New York. Kenneth S. Lynn: The Air-Line to Seattle: Studies in Literary and Historical Writing about America; The University of Chicago Press; Chicago. Beyond any reasonable doubt, Matthew Arnold knew far more than did Samuel Johnson. Curiously, however, he was far less confident...
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Of Women and Wanderlust
Elizabeth Arthur: Beyond the Mountain; Harper & Row; New York. Blanche d'Alpuget: Turtle Beach; Simon &Schuster; New York. Janet Turner Hospital: The Ivory Swing; E. P. Dutton; New York. by Bryce Christensen . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain access to other exclusive features. Already a subscriber? Sign...
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Of Strife and Speeches
A New Birth of Freedom: Lincoln at Gettysburg by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr.; Little, Brown; Boston. On November 19, 1863, after Edward Everett had completed a now-forgotten oration of almost two hours at the dedication of a national cemetery on one of the Civil . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
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From Berlin to Beruit
In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. According to numerous speculative historians and novelists, Hitler did not die in a Berlin bunker almost 40 years ago. He escaped, they theorize, to Brazil—or Argentina, or Paraguay, or New Mexico . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
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Of Death and Diapers
Our Endangered Children: Growing Up in a Changing World by Vance Packard; Little, Brown; Boston. Who Will Take the Children? A New Custody Option for Divorcing Mothers—and Fathers by Susan Meyers and Joan Lakin; Bobbs-Merrill; Indianapolis. Secular liberalism is the supreme . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and gain...
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Liberal Worship and Conservative Judgment
Joyce Carol Oates: The Profane Art: Essays and Reviews; E. P. Dutton; New York. Kenneth S. Lynn: The Air-Line to Seattle: Studies in Literary and Historical Writing about America; The University of Chicago Press; Chicago. Beyond any reasonable doubt, Matthew Arnold knew far more than did Samuel Johnson. Curiously, however, he was far less confident...
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Strange Gods
For most modem Westerners, the word idolatry conjures images of distant lands or times: saffron-clothed Oriental monks prostrate before golden Buddhas, ancient Aztec priests plunging their daggers into helpless virgins atop monumental temples, or iniquitous Israelites cavorting before Aaron's golden calf in the Sinai . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
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Making a Morass of Metaphysics
Most people know nothing about metaphysics and wish to know less. The case is not that they do not actually govern their lives in harmony with a set of metaphysical principles, for that is simply not an option. As Aldous Huxley perceived: "It is impossible to live without a . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...