'Stumbling Toward Utopia': How we got to a national nightmare (book review)

I remember the 1960s began stable — almost boring — and ended in social chaos. The  normativity of family, church, work, and school retained an outward sameness, but you were aware of a subtle hollowing-out of these institutions as the years passed.

Why did these changes take place? What happened to the America where patriotism was celebrated, traditional Christianity and Judaism were honored, and confidence in a good future inspired aspiration, diligence, and hope?

In Stumbling Toward Utopia, Tim Goeglein engages in a systematic evaluation of how the 1960s were the years when the seeds of social radicalism, sexual profligacy, and political division hybridized and produced a harvest of cultural disarray. Goeglein, the vice president for external and government affairs with Focus on the Family, writes that the 1960s “placed America on an increasingly slippery slope toward rejecting the values that first strengthened it into a beacon of light for the rest of the world.”

This rejection of those things that made America what some of called (correctly) “the indispensable nation” is both ironic and tragic. In the name of progress, we have regressed into a state where a recent Supreme Court nominee (and now Justice) refused to define what a woman is, pleading, “I am not a biologist.” The retrograde arguments of the radical left — children don’t need a mom and dad, only two (or three or four) adults; pornography is fine as long as it is viewed in private; asserting that there are such things as rights and wrongs is oppressive — have, in Goeglein’s words, “turned America into a dystopian nightmare.”

While that grim diagnosis seems overstated, it is more accurate than not. In our time, we are witnessing the presidential candidacy of a person who proclaims she will initiate legislation to require access to elective abortion in all 50 states. Her opponent, despite feints to the social right, now says he supports same-sex marriage and approves of the widespread distribution of mifepristone, the drug responsible for 60% of abortions in the United States. If not dystopian, then our country is headed in a terrifyingly wrong direction.

Goeglein begins with letters written by a friend to an imaginary pen-pal cataloging the changes in his Northern California community. Its downtown reduced to “rows of marijuana dispensaries, tattoo shops, and New Age bookstores,” the letters capture the aching question of many: what happened to our country?

Goeglein traces the transformation of America’s social and political life to the progressivism of Woodrow Wilson and his heirs, men who believed that the Declaration and Constitution were archaic and that they should be able to govern as their own self-inflated wisdom demanded. This diagnosis holds true; the anti-constitutionalism of the Progressives has led to a disregard by many in the legal profession for an honest reading of our charter text. The result? What the late Harvard law professor Raoul Berger called “government by judiciary.”

The author reviews the rise of the cultural dissonance in academia and popular culture, ranging from Nietzsche to Kinsey. He helpfully categorizes the areas where what he calls “the stumbles” have occurred: morality, education, entertainment, economics, family life, religion, and civility. Each chapter catalogs the ways in which in all of these critical aspects of private and public life have been swayed by the arguments of the radicals of the 1960s.

It is important to note that Goeglein also celebrates one of the bright spots of the 60s, the major civil rights victories achieved by African-Americans and their allies. Additionally, he highlights America’s technological ascendance as another worthy achievement, one represented by our moon landing and the dynamism of the computer revolution.

Despite the decay Goeglein presents cogently and succinctly, he concludes a note of hope. “Christians bearing the imago Dei,” he says, and “energized by the Holy Spirit possess far greater creativity than any demonic force.”

This needed and inspiring reminder should help animate renewed effort by Christians who wish to bring the grace and truth of the Lord Jesus to all arenas of life. Goeglein’s forceful, persuasive, and fluidly written book is more than a compelling diagnosis — it is a call to urgently needed action which followers of Jesus would be wise to hear and follow.