This one is not available yet from our local library, but it’s on my medium-short list for books I’d like to read. It was mentioned on the front page of the Christian News. The author is Dinesh D’Souza, and it’s called The Enemy at Home. Here’s from the book’s web site, revealing an observation that has profound implications for the mission of the Church, specifically for the preaching of the Law which must precede the Gospel.
What has changed in America since the 1960s is the erosion of belief in an external moral order. This is the most important political fact of the past half-century. I am not saying that most Americans today reject morality. I am saying that there has been a great shift in the source of morality. Today there is no longer a moral consensus in American society. Today many Americans locate morality not in a set of external commands but in the imperatives of their own heart. For them, morality is not “out there” but “in here.” While many Americans continue to believe in the old morality, there is now a new morality in America which may be called the morality of the inner self, the morality of self-fulfillment.
Is D’Souza right about this shift in the location of morality, or is he idealizing the past? It would seem closely related to the rise of postmodernism. I’d also like to hear what my self-labeled “liberal” friends think of D’Souza’s reasoning relative to the major thesis of this book.