Family and Civilization

By Carle C. Zimmerman, 335 pages, ISI Books.

“There is little left now within the family or the moral code to hold this [atomistic] family together. Mankind has consumed not only the crop, but the seed for the next planting as well....Under any assumptions, the implications will be far-reaching for the future not only of the family but of our civilization as well. The question is no longer a moral one; it is cultural. The very continuation of our culture seems to be inextricably associated with this nihilism in family behavior.”

The author's above words reflect his broad view. He focuses not so much on the sociological theory of the family and its disintegration over the last decades and centuries. Perhaps he goes too far by mocking the theorists as lonely or in “sterile, or unhappy marriages.”

Rather than building theories divorced from reality, Zimmerman finds from history that family and resulting civilizational patterns repeat themselves. The trustee family system, with weak religion and outside political authority, establishes itself first. The family essentially rules itself and maintains its own religious traditions. This is the time of extended family feuds and polytheism, as in the beginnings of ancient Greece, then ancient Rome, and lastly the Germanic tribes of the Dark Ages.

Next, Church or state limit the power of kinship, especially the never-ending feuding, and implement political and religious laws. In the European Middle Ages, canon law and feudalism determined who could marry whom and what kinds of households they could have. Beginning in the eleventh century, urban development limited family power even more, severely punishing blood feuds.

Historical eras with a mixture of trustee and domestic families feature many children and obedience to rules of right and wrong out of respect for one another and common decency. This allows the state to grow increasingly powerful by, for instance, taking the many male offspring for the army. The great Greek and then Roman armies that conquered vast lands and peoples were built at such times.

The downfall of both of these great and powerful civilizations was not caused by the barbarians, since barbarians had always been around. Instead, when atomized families developed, people no longer cared for kin or nation. They focused on pleasure and money. Women refused to stay at home to tend to their offspring, and wanted to travel and live independently instead. With fewer sons serving the army, building businesses, and working he fields, the nation could no longer fight off invaders. Empires fell, first the Greek and then centuries later, the Roman.

For Zimmerman it is as simple as that. The ancient Greeks, then the ancient Romans, were great because their families were great. After the atomization of households, these civilizations imported people to fight in the army, look after the crops, and do menial work in the cities. This led to societal tensions and a lack of social cohesion and shared values.

Zimmerman spends a great deal of time on the development of the intellectual and sociological basis for the modern atomistic household, which started to develop with the Reformation. He warns that civilizations without meaning die off because people refuse to have families, and invest in immediate pleasure rather than in having children.

Books like Family and Civilization that offer sweeping generalizations usually fall prey to hefty criticism. Yet Family and Civilization prophetically examines the spiritual crises of Western countries, something best analyzed from this broad view. If readers can stop themselves from picking apart minor inconsistencies, this book makes satisfying, challenging reading.

The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square

By Joseph P. Viteritti, USD 27.95, 273 pages, hardcover, Princeton University Press.

“Once it was determined that we should all go to school together and learn from a standard curriculum, education became political” because people assumed that school would teach “fundamental values.” Who would decide those values? Increasingly, it has become the feminist-liberal-secularist group with the deciding power, and organized religion has been losing out in America (and Canada).

The Last Freedom recounts America's cultural battles between those who want to limit the role of religion and religiously-inspired institutions in society and people protecting those agencies. Focused on the judiciary and politics, the author examines the liberal-feminist-secular ideology behind much of this anti-Christian movement. He believes that secularism, though claiming to minimize religion's public face in the name of freedom, is impinging on people's freedom by replacing religiously-based, non-governmental “mediating organizations” with the state and state-dependent agencies.

“When such a narrow view of the world is emboldened by the power to govern what and how other people's children are taught, it represents a particular threat to personal freedom. When it is supported by a more pervasive popular disposition, it is a symptom of a larger problem. Ellwood Cubberley, an influential education professor at Stanford University who idealized education as an instrument for social engineering, summed up the prevailing attitude in 1909 when he rejoiced, 'Each year the child is coming to belong more to the state and less to the parent.'”

This is a thought-provoking book, because much of the same secular-inspired statism has become deeply entrenched in Canada and Europe. What will happen to society when every institution must bend to the worldview of anti-Christian liberal-feminist secularists? Though outside of the book's scope, one can turn to the experience of Central and Eastern Europe before 1989 to see the result: Everyone completely dependent on the all-powerful State and its single-minded, power-oriented ideology that served itself rather than people. Lifeless, cold bureaucratic procedure, Pope John Paul warned, replaces human relationship at this point.

The Last Freedom recounts this process of totalitarian governance in America, as the state slowly overtakes all else in the public arena.

For instance, 1950s U.S. Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter in an important decision “was claiming, in no uncertain terms, that a state-imposed uniformity in thinking had to take precedence over the religious preferences of parents...Frankfurter portrayed religion as a divisive force that could undermine the unifying role of the public school.”

This book finds echoes in John Paul's writings such as Centesimus annus, which claimed that the problem with communist regimes was foremost the lack of mediating organizations. These are organizations, largely non-governmental, that fill out the many layers of society and take care of people's needs. They work best the closer they are to the roots of social and personal problems, and work poorest when functioning from a distant bureaucracy.

Viteritti writes: “I am troubled by the animosity that so many good people exhibit towards religious observers and institutions.” Religiously-inspired mediating institutions are in for a rough ride indeed.