In response to this article, my friend Pat Garvey wrote the following piece, and with her permission, I offer it to you:

Oh, Tom, that is such a depressing article, and I believe it's true. Anyone who thinks the US is exceptional in a positive way these days is an arrogant fool. Those days are long gone. The American Dream has always been to get rich quick and then get richer. Was it always based on greed, like it is now? Get rich and powerful and to hell with the weak, stupid "little people"?

How can we claim superiority when we can't even give our kids a decent education? High schools are turning out graduates who can't write or do math, and just forget about science. We have become a culture where education is not valued. What's important? Sports. Entertainment. Celebrities. 15 minutes of fame. Electronic gadgets. Consumerism. We are overweight and lazy. We are in a terrible mess, and are so divided, I don't know if we can ever get out of it.

"America has been and continues to be exceptional. At first we were exceptional because of circumstances that conferred on us enormous advantages over other nations. Today we are exceptional because of our culture, a culture born of our unusually fortunate history and now perhaps the single biggest handicap to our collective survival and prosperity in the less favorable circumstances of the 21st century."

Conservative Church Decline?

40 years ago, Americans began leaving mainline churches, either to go nowhere, or to affiliate with a newer version of the big box church. But the newer version is now experiencing high levels of chaos, heresy trials and uncertainty, as large numbers of children reared in conservative churches are raising hard questions (especially about homophobia), and many of them are opting out. Some are finding new life in mainline churches with their focus on justice. Others are experimenting with house churches and "emergent" kinds of communities. Everything is up in the air, but one thing is clear: we're shifting from an age of belief (creeds and dogmas) to an age of experience and service. The revealing studies done by Willow Creek a few years back and the Barna Institute document this. The pride of the conservative churches is coming back to haunt them, as is did with the mainline churches 40 years ago. Pride goeth before the fall; it always does. Thanks be to God!