Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

Outcomes
Freedom of Speech
When did freedom of speech become freedom from speech?

That’s the question Camille Paglia addresses in a lecture delivered at Drexel University and published in The Smart Set (“Free Speech & the Modern Campus,” 5/9/16). Ms. Paglia has been a university instructor for 40 years, and began her work during the height of the freedom of speech movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s. She takes to task the political correctness so rampant on college campuses today as a betrayal of the movement that gave rise to it.

She says of the early days of the free speech movement on campuses, “it challenged, rebuked, and curtailed authority in the pursuit of freedom and equality; it did not demand, as happens too often today, that authority be expanded to create special protections for groups reductively defined as weak or vulnerable or to create buffers to spare sensitive young feelings from offense.”

Take that!

Ms. Paglia provides a concise history of the free speech movement, showing that its intention was to break the stranglehold on speech that was gripping the nation following the communist scare, Congressional hearings, and black-listings of the ‘50s. College students, entertainers, publishers, Hollywood, and pharmaceutical companies helped to spur a renewed openness to ideas that had been long considered not only taboo but even dangerous to voice.

Not all of these ideas, I hasten to point out, were beneficial.

Ms. Paglia summarizes, “In short, free speech and free expression, no matter how offensive or shocking, were at the heart of the 1960s cultural revolution. Free speech was a primary weapon of the Left against the moralism and conformism of the Right.” She continues, “How then, we must ask, has campus Leftism in the U. S. been so transformed that it now encourage[s], endorses, and celebrates the suppression of ideas, including those that question its own current agenda and orthodoxy?”

She describes how political correctness swept “like a plague” through humanities departments across the country, transforming them from departments of classical instruction to agencies for political maneuvering as “new highly politicized departments and programs were created virtually overnight”. She adds, “I maintain, from my dismayed observation at the time, that these new add-on programs were rarely if ever founded on authentic scholarly principles; they were public relations gestures meant to stifle criticism of a bigoted past.” These programs – focused on gender, race, pop culture, and the like – have become the platform on which the new freedom from speech movement has raised its banner and is enforcing its agenda.

Political correctness is a betrayal of the university’s instructional mission, and turns the classroom into a community organizing strategy session. The lack of any alternative voice – among faculty, students, administrators, or donors – has ensured the entrenchment of political correctness for the foreseeable future. The result is growing blindness to any views other than those of the established agenda, as Ms. Paglia explains, “because of the failure of American colleges and universities to seek and support ideological diversity on their campuses, the humanities faculties have trended so far toward liberal Democrats (among whom I number myself) that they often seem naively unaware that any other beliefs are possible or credible.”

But are Leftist faculties solely to blame for this? Or have those who hold “other beliefs” – such as Christians – simply failed to live those beliefs and proclaim and argue them in ways suggesting they are truly “possible or credible”? The shameful reticence of most Christians to speak up for their faith, and the timidity with which most Christians cower beneath the braggadocio and balderdash of those who loudly boast of their atheist convictions, and who point to “science” as “proof” we don’t need God – these, together with our inconsistent and often hypocritical lifestyles, have created the breach through which political correctness has raced, unopposed, to foist the Lie on every aspect of contemporary life.

The way out of the Lie is through sheltering and immersing in, consistently living, and boldly proclaiming the truth that is in Jesus (Ps. 12). When will pastors and church leaders take up the challenge of taking every thought captive for Christ, and then teaching the people entrusted to their care to think with His mind? And when will we, as followers of Christ, begin to demonstrate and insist, by every means and at every opportunity, that He and His Kingdom are not only possible and credible, but real?

For reflection
1.  Do you find that your time with God each day is fitting you to live for and proclaim His Kingdom? Explain.

2.  What does your church do to equip and encourage its members to proclaim Christ and His Kingdom?

3.  How can we expect the Christian faith to continue in the generation of our grandchildren if we will not proclaim and live it in ours?

Next steps: Consider your answers to the three questions above in an extended season of prayer. Ask the Lord for one step you might take to become a more consistent and effective witness for Christ.

There’s no telling what God might do if only men – Paul is specific about this – will take the work of prayer more seriously. To find out how you can do this, and how you can begin enlisting other men for more serious prayer, order a copy of If Men Will Pray from our online store (click here).

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