This is a MUST READ for those who are considering worldviews, politics, and the future of this nation.

PhD thesis puts spotlight on evolution of social standards in NZ

(Contact: david@davidlindsey.co.nz)

Garth George

NZ Herald, 11/10/07

It’s not a matter of the separation of Church and state any longer, it’s a matter of the state taking over from the Church as the arbiter of the nation’s truths, morals, ethics and values. That’s the contention of David Lindsey, a PhD candidate at Auckland University, in a proposal for his thesis, which came my way this week.

It is a fascinating document, for it lays out comprehensively what many of us have intuited over the past few decades. It says the Judeo-Christian philosophy of truth, morality, propriety and personal responsibility has been progressively replaced by governments making decisions on matters that were once considered off limits because of their “private” or “moral” nature.

Mr Lindsey holds a masters degree in social geography and spent 10 years in local government and two years in private consultancy before returning to university to acquire a doctorate by researching in great depth how the Church has retreated from the public sphere and Parliament has filled the gap.

“I don’t think there was a conspiracy to get Parliament involved in the family and other institutions,” he says. “I think it just happened because the Church abdicated its responsibility in that area.”

And that, he contends, has led to Parliament’s role being transformed in an unprecedented manner.

“On the face of it, Parliament’s increasing involvement in private issues represents a significant expansion of its role, and raises a number of issues of import to government and society.

“In light of this, society’s comparatively mute reaction to the flurry of recent moral legislation is remarkable,” Mr Lindsey says.

“Concomitant with this silence, however, is the absence of any substantive scholarly interrogation of either the principles by which Parliament has handled these issues or the Implications of its involvement.”

And that, he says, is the task he has set himself. He lists 37 pieces of legislation passed between 1985 and 2005 which either involve the “private” matters of citizens or had the potential to affect the values of society.

Among them are adoption, homosexuality, gambling and casinos, the sale of liquor, abolition of the death penalty, contraception, sterilization and abortion, shop trading hours, human rights, smoking, matrimonial property, prostitution, care of children, civil unions, relationships and child discipline.

Mr Lindsey says legislative attention is now more commonly directed towards matters traditionally outside Parliament’s mandate and that many of these issues involve the alteration of the values on which our societal relations have traditionally been based.

What might be termed the “Christian consensus has been passed over in favour of “human rights”, and some of the moral legislation that has resulted has been designed to, or had the effect of, altering public attitudes toward traditional values.

He points out that for many generations Western societies, including ours, derived their social standards largely from the Judeo-Christian tradition and, in particular, the tenets of

to Bible. This transcendent law provided consequences for disobedience at both institutional and personal levels; and provided a check on the state’s power because God was a higher authority than the state. Thus the Church provided a counterbalance to secular power.

But as Parliament has taken over from the Church the role of keeper of society’s core values and society’s concept of truth has become relative and not absolute, traditional assumptions on what constitutes morality and the basis of law, government and even democracy no longer apply.

Mr Lindsey contends that conceptions of morality as transcendent, universal, eternal, superior and consequential have given way to notions of morality as relative, dynamic and subservient.

The basis of morality has shifted to favour the will of the citizens and/or their elected representatives. Morality is increasingly conceived and codified to serve rather than to proscribe society’s members.

The notion of truth, too, has also been reshaped—sociological truth has taken over from spiritual truth and morality, with its suggestion of absolutism, is becoming an archaic concept

“The ability of citizens individually and corporately to establish their own moral code,” writes Mr Lindsey, “includes the possibility that the next generation may well decide that a different standard would suit better. Moral standards are therefore now relative and transitory…”

I hope his thesis succeeds and is given wide publicity. It won’t change anything, but at least it will tell us where we’re at—and with luck give us an inkling of where we might be heading.