Kresta in the Afternoon – June 25, 2019 – Hour 1

Kresta in the Afternoon – June 25, 2019 – Hour 1

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+  The Rise and Fall of the American-Judeo Consensus

  • Description: During the early 20th Century, the prevailing American Protestant consensus splintered, and some liberal Protestants responded by reaching out to make common cause with Jews and Catholics. The result was the "Judeo-Christian consensus" that sought to ground American identity and public policy in the values shared across Protestant, Catholics, and Jews. The Judeo-Christian consensus became ascendant during the 1930s, reached its peak during the early 1960s, and began its decline during the 1990s. We talk about it with Dr James Patterson.
  • Segment Guests:
    • Dr. James Patterson
      Dr James Patterson is an associate professor of politics at Ave Maria University and the author of Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, and Falwell. His areas of research include race, religion, and American political development. He has held research positions at the Program for American Values and Institutions at Duke University and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, as well as teaching positions at Hampden-Sydney College and Gettysburg College.

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    • Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, Falwell

      In Religion in the Public Square, James M. Patterson considers religious leaders who popularized theology through media campaigns designed to persuade the public. Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Rev. Jerry Falwell differed profoundly on issues of theology and politics, but they shared an approach to public ministry that aimed directly at changing how Americans understood the nature and purpose of their country. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Sheen was an early adopter of paperbacks, radio, and television to condemn totalitarian ideologies and to defend American Catholicism against Protestant accusations of divided loyalty. During the 1950s and 1960s, King staged demonstrations and boycotts that drew the mass media to him. The attention provided him the platform to preach Christian love as a political foundation in direct opposition to white supremacy. Falwell started his own church, which he developed into a mass media empire. He then leveraged it during the late 1970s through the 1980s to influence the Republican Party by exhorting his audience to not only ally with religious conservatives around issues of abortion and the traditional family but also to vote accordingly. Sheen, King, and Falwell were so successful in popularizing their theological ideas that they won prestigious awards, had access to presidents, and witnessed the results of their labors. However, Patterson argues that Falwell's efforts broke with the longstanding refusal of religious public figures to participate directly in partisan affairs and thereby catalyzed the process of politicizing religion that undermined the Judeo-Christian consensus that formed the foundation of American politics. (learn more)

+  The Sexual Revolution and the Abuse Crisis (2 segments)

  • Description: The sexual revolution has had an incalculable effect on our society, but there are now entire generations of adults who don’t even remember when it began. We look over the history of the revolution and its effects on today, along with the latest data on the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, with Jennifer Roback Morse.
  • Segment Guests:
    • Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
      Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder of the Ruth Institute, a global non-profit organization equipping advocates for the family, in their homes and in the public square. She's the author of several books, most recently The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and How the Church was Right all Along
    • Resources:

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    • The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along

      The Sexual Revolution—and the breakdown of the Family—has brought misery to millions. In The Sexual State Jennifer Roback Morse shows that the Sexual Revolution did not just “happen” like a force of nature. Rather, it was deliberately created by “elites,” harnessing the power of the State, allowing them inflict three false and calamitous ideologies—contraception, divorce, and gender—that have led to widespread and profound unhappiness, and worse. The ideas of the Sexual Revolution did not emerge from the lived experiences of ordinary people, the government has been imposing the morality of an out-of-touch elite class on the rest of us for decades. The Sexual State turns the conventional wisdom on its head to reveal how:

      • The Sexual Revolution is and always has been a creation of the State
      • Social issues are unified and can be understood as the outgrowth of a few simple (but gravely flawed) principles.
      • The Sexual Revolution hides its totalitarian objectives behind seemingly modest demands.
      • Children have identity and relational rights with respect to their parents…and how the Sexual State denies children these rights
      Social conservative ideas and traditional Catholic morality are getting clobbered. And the dirty secret that no one wants to acknowledge—until now!—is that the progressive social elites have rigged the system. Most people don’t love abortion, or divorce, or single-parent families! Thankfully, Dr. Morse, and the Catholic Church, have the answer. It is vital that those who would change the culture understand how we got there, otherwise, the countering tactics will remain impotent. In this masterful take-down of the Sexual Revolution and its promoters, Morse calls for a widespread adherence to the principles of the Church. Only then will our society recover from the misrule of the “elites” and the “managerial class.” (learn more)

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