Summary: Holidays reveal the inner life of a society. Especially Father’s Day, at the center of key changes being made to America. This analysis of that mutated holiday is an edited compilation of Dalrock’s brilliant articles (links at the end).
The unmentionable aspect of Father’s Day.
Compiled from posts by Dalrock at his website.
Father’s Day is a difficult day for modern Christians. It is set aside to honor fathers, something Christians are explicitly commanded to do. Most Americans would be quite surprised to learn that Father’s Day is generally viewed differently by conservative Christians than by secular Americans.
Most secular Americans accept Father’s Day for what it is. But modern Christians have contempt for fathers 365 days a year. Christian leaders often express this on Father’s Day with sermons tearing down men in front of their families. Those who need more contempt for fathers can supplement those by showing Christian movies like Courageous
Sunshine Thiry was skeptical of my statement that tearing down fathers is a modern Christian Father’s Day tradition. Her pastor confirmed the tradition, explaining to the congregation why he was deviating from it. Thiry quoted her pastor’s explanation in her post Do pastors tear down men on Father’s Day?
“It’s our goal on this Father’s Day weekend to lift you up and encourage you. Father’s Day is one of the worst days that dads can ever choose to go to church because often it’s the only time churches feel like they’re going to have the ears of dads. So what they do is beat them up royally for all they’re not doing right.
“Ever been to one of those Father’s Day service? In the early days of my ministry here, we planned for you guys. We sang ‘Cats in the Cradle and the Silver Spoon.’ We’d talk about how you have so royally blown it, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and then we’d try and help you recover. We wondered why dads didn’t like Father’s Day at our church.”
Honoring fathers doesn’t translate into modern Christian culture because honoring fathers is an alien idea to them. For example, Thiry’s pastor doesn’t say that he will honor fathers. He says he will encourage them.
Keep in mind that this isn’t about one sermon, or just sermons on Father’s Day, or even about pastors. This is about modern Christians feeling profound discomfort with the idea of honoring fathers. This isn’t a biblical tradition, because the Bible is clear on the importance of honoring fathers. This is about modern Christian culture. Even when modern Christians set out to honor fathers, what they end up doing is tearing fathers down in front of their wives and children.
Even worse, this is so deeply ingrained that no one notices. It doesn’t seem out of place because that is what they always do: blame men for the sins of women and issue men an endless series of challenges to man up. This is cowardly and easy, but feels heroic.
Most people give their father a Hallmark™ card on Father’s Day. Conservative Christians celebrate Father’s Day by telling their dad to promise to be a better dad.
For example, see the website of Honor Your Father Today. Their goal was noble, but the concept of honoring fathers was just too disgusting for modern Christians to accept. So instead of honoring fathers, they taught that we should not call God the Father, refocused the day to only apply to fathers honoring their own fathers, offered a list of cringe-worthy social media ideas, and generally focused on telling men to man up. They give helpful advice for Fathers’ Day.
“In a society where fatherlessness (or at least dads who aren’t stepping up to the plate) runs rampant, one thought must race through the minds of so many men and women out there: ‘How do you honor someone who isn’t honorable?’”
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My conclusions
The liberation of women has changed the fundamental dynamics of our society. The changes continue to ripple out. The delegitimization of fathers is one result, and it in turns creates more waves of change.
This is one of the big stories of our time. Bigger than most of the stories that dominate the headlines. The Left is creating a new America, doing so without plan or testing. Let’s hope it works better than their previous project – communism in Russia, China, and other unfortunately nations used as lab rats.
Dalrock’s posts about Fathers’ Day
These are brief and all well worth reading.
- How to be a good Christian dad: Hair shirts and chest thumping!
- Modern Christian culture’s deep antipathy for fathers.
- A radical Father’s Day proposal: honor Fathers on Father’s Day.
- Don’t refer to God as the Father, call him a “Best Friend”.
- Ideas on how to honor your father on social media for Father’s Day.
- Man up and honor your father – by telling him to be a better dad.
- Films that denigrate husbands and fathers – So common no one notices.
- The bottom line: to many conservative christians, Fathers are jokes.
- Father’s Day sermons are the symptom, not the disease.
- Kickass single moms deserve Father’s Day gifts.
Also see my post: For Father’s Day: revolutionary words that will forever change the American family.
A Father’s Day gift from Disney
For Father’s Day, a film about a great wife, mother, and superheroine – and her doofus househusband. The critics say it is bold and innovative. We have seen this many many times before. I hope to review this tomorrow.
Have you ever reviewed The Croods?
I thoroughly enjoyed the original Incredibles and look forward to I-2. There is already a review on Pajamas Media. Of course I’ll wait till it hits RedBox.
10 Dads who became canonized saints.
https://aleteia.org/2018/06/16/10-dads-who-became-canonized-saints/?utm_campaign=NL_en&utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=mail&utm_content=NL_en
Thank you Larry.
Dalrock,
Rather it is my privilege to bring your work and insights to another audience!
In secular America moms and dads spend Mother’s Day and Father’s Day weekends at baseball and softball tournaments. No idea who the clowns are who schedule these events but that’s what they think of the events. I’ve never heard a sermon at my church where men were bashed – especially on Father’s Day. Heck, my church makes it a point to be manly.
Anyways, happy Father’s Day to all.
Gute,
“I’ve never heard a sermon at my church”
Twenty years ago nobody heard such a thing on Father’s Day. While watching an infection spread, don’t rejoice that it has not spread to your church. That’s missing the point.
“The Left is creating a new America” ….
No, no, no… Dalrock himself says clearly it is ***conservatives*** who participate in this, although it is different and some years behind the leftists, feminists, etc. The solution (if there is one) looks very different depending on the statement of the problem. So, get this part right first.
It’s the strong instinct in men and resultant cultures to prioritize and protect women over men. I’m uncertain it can be sufficiently trained out of men. If not, the result will likely be our eventual replacement with a culture that deals with this better.
Allan,
“Dalrock himself says clearly it is ***conservatives*** who participate in this,”
The feminist revolution is a leftist project, designed and promulgated by them. They have the Right on the run, the pursuit phase of battle. Conservative institutions bow before the superior prestige and force of the Left’s project.
That’s how politics work.
“It’s the strong instinct in men and resultant cultures to prioritize and protect women over men.”
Missing the point. Almost every culture across the world since forever has been largely patriarchal. It’s absurd to say that the radical feminist revolution has its origins in a “strong instinct of men.”
“Missing the point. Almost every culture across the world since forever has been largely patriarchal. It’s absurd to say that the radical feminist revolution has its origins in a “strong instinct of men.””
Isn’t the distinction a little subtler? Yes, most societies have been (and many still are) “patriarchal” in structure (though very few in History have really been that to the tune often proclaimed, and none as described by feminists), but gynocentric and/or family/clan centric in focus.
The “feminist” revolution hasn’t been opposed very hard by men, or by institutions led by men: the timeline of it is quite short, especially once the levels of security and technological level (for example, modern house appliances, on the small scale stuff) allowed for safety to be widespread on the land and for a one individual household to be easily viable. One hasn’t seen that much obdurate opposition by hordes of men or gigantic organizations, and actually a lot of support for the “revolution” which, like much “movements” since the 60s (not counting the civil rights movement), gives itself the appearances of hard struggle and heroic combat when it is more often the case that groups of over-indulged and pampered 20 somethings are throwing tantrums in a rather safe environment (overall: that doesn’t exclude the possibility of some nasty things happening here and there).
So isn’t the point here to say that this revolution has succeeded because the aforementioned “instinct of men to protect women” (and the empathy men have for them that they don’t have for other men) has not opposed it, and has even in many instances helped it, and quite fast, as soon as the overall environment was more secure, less demanding of traditional male roles (defense of people, town and country first and foremost)?
Tancrede,
(1) “So isn’t the point here to say that this revolution has succeeded because the aforementioned…”
“Why” is the most difficult question to answer. All we can do is guess, not prove. But some aspects are clear.
(a) Saying an ancient “instinct” of men is responsible makes no sense to explain a historically unique phenomenon.
(b) Technology made new forms of society possible. Most importantly, safe effective contraception and the shift from physical to mental work.
(2) “One hasn’t seen that much obdurate opposition by hordes of men or gigantic organizations”
People are slow to react to phenomena that radically change society. The common reaction is to believe it won’t make a big difference, and ancient forms will remain despite the change. To take the obvious example, there was little resistance to the Nazis from Jewish and Christian institutions.
(3) “as soon as the overall environment was more secure, less demanding of traditional male roles (defense of people, town and country first and foremost)?”
The Soviet Union fell in 1991, ending the Cold War. The Long War began in 2001. Perhaps that ten year long period of peace played a role. But the feminist revolution began during the heart of the Cold War, amidst fear of nuclear annihilation — and continued to accelerate during the Long War. Hence my skepticism that peace played a role.
As for crime rates, they are down from their peaks — but still higher than in the traditionalist 1950s and early 1960s.
“The Soviet Union fell in 1991, ending the Cold War. The Long War began in 2001. Perhaps that ten year long period of peace played a role. But the feminist revolution began during the heart of the Cold War, amidst fear of nuclear annihilation — and continued to accelerate during the Long War. Hence my skepticism that peace played a role.”
If I put the date at the end of the Cold War, I’d also be a skeptic on that, but I was alluding more to the era beginning in the fifties, that of mass consumption and pacification of mentalities within the developed world, that of comfort and leisure/entertainment as the cardinal goods, the “middle-classization” or “petit bourgeois” mentality as a dominant trope. Add the cultural revolution of the sixties, and, maybe even more, the gradual end of conscription in many places (or its less forceful or absolute character in others), and you have a confluence of trends especially from the 70s onward, that helps said feminist revolution more than mightily. No need to wait for the wall to crumble. The 80s were quite characteristic of this less than central place of the Cold War in most mentalities, despite various propagandas and the occasional crisis in the medias. War was not that present in the mentalities of the west as a social imperative, or a tangible risk (with the need for personal involvement) governing lives. Despite conscription still existing. The overbearing presence of the nuclear risk no doubt operated a degree of “de-coupling” between the existential risk of a nation and the individual requirement to get involved or be ready for it. Of course, it was a gradual process, reaching certain places and categories of population before others. But a reality nonetheless.
It’s one thing to live with war as a very real prospect, a normal aspect of life that can happen anytime (as before WWII), another to have it become a reality happening only overseas, and still another to see it as an overseas reality reserved only for professionals It doesn’t take that long for a population to see it more as an abstract object (even if it is happening…. Somewhere else) than a lived in risk or reality. Is this change an absolute factor? No of course, especially because it happens gradually. But it quickly gives enough breathing space for “alternative” ideologies to grow and take a big chunk of space in a society’s mentalities.
“As for crime rates, they are down from their peaks — but still higher than in the traditionalist 1950s and early 1960s.”
Were the 50s (and before?) that much more secure, or are we idealizing the past? Wasn’t it the case that more violence and insecurity went unreported, or was swept under the rug (in the case of the US, racial violence in certain regions for example)? I actually have difficulties reconciling many things I have read on the topic. But otherwise, yes, clearly, the big crime wave from the 60s to the 90s in developed societies remain to this day a partial mystery as for its causes (no definitive theory to explain its coming and going).
“The feminist revolution is a leftist project, designed and promulgated by them”
I can see why people would think that, what with feminism having ensconced itself in liberalism for over a century. But that is misleading. Today we can see clearly that feminism does not create for itself, it can only invade and take over existing structures. That is most likely what happened generations ago. The more one reads about feminism’s founders the less liberal they are revealed to have been. Many of them were profoundly racist and elitist, and perfectly happy to have the government quell any aspect of society they did not care for. That might best be exemplified by Frances E. Willard, president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She wanted white women to be able to vote so that they could help suppress black Americans as well as ban alcohol.
PAT,
“The more one reads about feminism’s founders the less liberal they are revealed to have been”
That conflates two very different meaning of “liberal.” The first refers to the one-dimensional view of the political spectrum, used since the opening of the French National Assembly in 1789. It’s still used because it is simple and clear.
The second is the false believe that “liberal” and “conservative” are fixed doctrines, and so today’s “liberals” and “conservatives” are not “true liberals” etc. It’s chaff, meaningless and confusing, in any political debate.
I find the focus on religious conservatism objectionable as we are all atheists and fanatics are offensive
Notwithstanding that we are traditional in the division of household work and fathers day is a day for father’s to be appreciated and indulged. It’s simple and doesn’t meet anyone’s political agenda.
Zemtar,
“I find the focus on religious conservatism objectionable as we are all atheists and fanatics are offensive”
Always interesting to hear from a hater.
The traditional legal presumption in divorce courts has been that men are responsible for payment of child support following divorce and that the mother is entitled to custody barring extraordinary circumstances such as drug abuse. A logical consequence (perhaps unintended) of gender equality is the removal of these presumptions.
John,
“A logical consequence (perhaps unintended) …”
That can be said of almost all aspects of our great gender experiment. We’re lab rats testing the Left’s new grand theory. Let’s hope it works better than Communism.
Rejoice? Larry, find a new church.
Gute,
“Find a new church.”
That’s so modern America. Avoid the problem and walk away, hoping that the rising tide won’t reach you or your children. Good luck with that.
On the other hand, our rulers rejoice at such statements. It’s what makes us so easy to rule.
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