When I read recently about the Democratic Party being informed by SAM, code-name for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.” I know I had to do a blog on an effort to influence men. Again, my focus in life is threefold: Scripture, Jesus and the Kingdom reign of Jesus (incarnational reality). This focus cuts across political parties and cultural issues. There will be times when I will view a subject through this threefold Prizm that will be critical of one of the political parties. In this case, it is the democratic party.
It was revealed that this prospectus, costing $20 million, was being studied in order to find ways, “to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online.” The plan was to “study the syntax, language and content that gain attention and virality in these spaces.” As former Democratic staffer, Rotimi Adeoye noted, “Democratic donors treating men like an endangered species on a remote island. The need to study probably won’t rebuild trust.” He added, “People don’t want to be decoded, they want to be understood and met where they are.” Another strategist said frankly, “We need authenticity, and you can’t manufacture it in a lab, a war room or a donor meeting. We can’t figure this out in a week or two. It has to be part of an ongoing conversation, and we’ve just not there yet.”
I contrast this report to a recent essay by catholic sociologist, Mary Eberstadt, entitled “Beyond Jeremiads: Signs of Cultural Revival, Circa 2025.” She wrote, “Perhaps the time has come to set aside jeremiads. Perhaps the time for recitation is over, and the time for joyous defiance has begun………Christianity today is being rejected in large part because it is more demanding than people weakened by the sexual revolution’s indiscipline want it to be.”
She goes on to point out that living in opposition to religion is not liberating people. It is rather making people miserable and lonely. “Today’s troubled voices do not rage in vain. …..They amount to primal screams for a world more ordered than many of today’s people now know – a world ordered to some of Christianity’s essential principles, like mercy, community, and redemption.” She quotes Pope Benedict, “when the trial of this shifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.”
Ms. Eberstadt wrote back in 2020 on the “The fury of the Fatherless.” She sees a wide spread of social disorder as a “crisis of filial attachment that has beset the Western world for more than a half a century. Deprived of father, Father, and patria, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before.” She goes on the say, “father, Father, and filial piety toward country …….[are] the sinkhole into which all three have collapsed is now a public hazard. The threefold crisis of paternity is depriving many young people – especially young men – of reasons to live as rational and productive citizens.” America’s youth have been “left alone in a cosmos with nothing to guide them, not even a firm grasp of what constitutes their basic humanity, and no means of finding the way home”
Young men are not an “endangered species.” They are looking for authenticity. It could be, that in our day, we are witnessing the defiance of young men. The “primal screams” and “the fury of the fatherless” is being heard. Through all the voices of our cultural wars, the voice of the heavenly Father is calling men home. Men are not left alone in the cosmos. Jesus is saying, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep” (Luke 15:6).
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