Christian Nation?

"...
Only a few years ago, if a person was found lying on the sidewalk, someone would stop to help. The only exception was skid row on Saturday night, when drunkenness was common. Now hardly anyone stops, even at midday in the "best" neighborhoods. Homelessness, drug abuse, and AIDS are common, and no one wants to get involved. Besides, civil libertarians have taught us that autonomy is the highest value. Stepping over a prostrate individual truly expresses how highly we value autonomy, at least our own. It says less for the value we place on human life, and still less for the example we are giving our children and the society we are leaving for them. A study of non Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust showed that rescuers tended to have a strong religious background and sense of community. We seem to be doing our best to rid our society of such persons. One can only hope that we will need them again.

Even the Boy Scout Oath is under attack. What is wrong with teaching young people to do their duty to God and country, in that order? Perhaps that is the key point. Perhaps that is what irritated the editor of the medical journal. We may soon live in a country where nothing, especially God, comes before what we want, or what the experts want, or what the government wants. Despite my friends' fears, there are no pogroms. Skinheads and the Klan must be watched, true, but they are small groups with little influence and less religion. The reason we fear to go out after dark is not that we may be set upon by bands of evangelicals and forced to read the New Testament, but that we may be set upon by gangs of feral young people who have been taught that nothing is superior to their own needs or feelings. And if religious (and secular) fanatics are to be feared, what could possibly strengthen their hand more than the continued disintegration of society? When the majority religion is under attack, should a minority feel safer? Christians are resented as reminders of universal ethical rules; will Jews be better received?

That a society can preserve ethical values and transmit them to subsequent generations in the absence of a permanent source for them is a belief unsupported by historical evidence. It requires a leap of faith just as does a belief in God. Nevertheless, we are betting everything we have that it is correct. As a Jew, I occasionally felt mild discomfort living in a Christian country. As a human being and a Jew, I frequently feel real fear living in a post Christian country. A Christian country? Barely, and not for long, unless we do something about it."
- David Stolinsky (whole article here)
HT: Orthodoxy Today