Life After Death

the most powerful forces in our lives. The consequence is that TV not only defines what is reality, but much more importantly and disturbingly, TV obliterates the very distinction, the very line between reality and unreality." Crucial decisions affecting personal and civic life are frequently made on the basis of television propaganda or in the mistaken belief that advertising depicts reality. Distortion, revision, manipulation and the blending of the real and unreal, all have serious implications for what we believe and the way we live. Is it any wonder that Americans - and they are not alone - no longer know what to believe? Pilate asked, "What is truth?" The mass media would certainly not have you believe that truth is to be found in the words addressed to America by Pope John Paul. Instead, he is caricatured as a dangerous illiberal reactionary trying to impose outmoded forms of living on people who have outgrown that sort of nonsense. John Paul is, in fact, echoing Christ in his Sermon on the Mount. Yet, in America today, notwithstanding the fulminations of America's Religious Right, traditional religious belief has been suspended as a significant factor in government policy and law-making and, via the exclusion of religious people, from public life. The evangelical, John Whitehead, Director of America's Rutherford Institute, has admirably documented this in his book Religious Apartheid (1995). Christian writers such as Jim Wallis (The Soul of Politics, Harper Collins 1994), and groups such as the Bruderhof Community (who publish The Plough) have intelligently begun to build a coherent pro-life politics to challenge contemporary American attitudes. The task is an urgent one.

The American Nightmare American post-Christian culture is arid: twenty million abortions, now accompanied by the harvesting of tiny body parts and the harvesting of brain-tissue from the unborn; armed guards and metal detectors at state schools, which make them look more and more like prisons; children returning to empty houses where they watch violent junk television, consume junk food and then down-load from the Internet. These are glimpses of a violent, materialistic, nihilistic culture.

Whitehead paints a depressing picture of parents who have been undermined; of religious people in the workplace who have been ridiculed or harassed; of college students forced into lifestyles which they do not desire; of intolerance in academia and the medical professions. In a number of cases in recent years, the Rutherford Institute, which specialises in the defence of religious freedom, has mounted legal challenges. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which governs all American college football teams, issued a directive penalising any individual display of religion, such as prayer, during a game. After Rutherford filed their lawsuit, it was subsequently withdrawn. In Michigan, an eight year-old boy was subjected to psychological counselling against the express wishes of his parents.

An untrained school counsellor used techniques which led to the child developing a separation anxiety so severe that he will require long-term medical care. The lower courts ruled that the parents had no rights to demand prior parental consent.