{"id":47817,"date":"2021-01-22T13:24:06","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T18:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/?p=47817"},"modified":"2021-01-22T13:24:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T18:24:07","slug":"family-as-the-final-bastion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/family-as-the-final-bastion","title":{"rendered":"Family as the final bastion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At this pivotal time in America, my mind goes back years ago to what I learned as part of a quasi-official delegation on a family-policy tour of Central America. Led by Ellen Sauerbrey, US Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, we met with civil society, religious leaders, press, and even presidents, one of whom told us that the colossal problems confronting his country\u2014soon thereafter to be labeled a failed state\u2014all resulted from the breakdown of the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Equally memorable was what we were told by one of that nation\u2019s families, who recounted the challenge it faced years earlier under a prior government that had taken power by a military coup and imposed a godless anti-family culture. As some families fled the country to protect their children, this father and mother decided to rebuild the country by strengthening their own family as a fortress. They did so, and the values they inculcated and the children they raised are a testament to their success\u2014and to the powerful truth that the family can indeed be the final bastion against a hostile society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I learned in Central America is an illustration of what decorated historian Will Durant pointed out: \u201cThe family has been the ultimate foundation of every civilization known to history. It was the economic and productive unit of society, tilling the land together; it was the political unit of society, with parental authority as the supporting microcosm of the State. It was the cultural unit, transmitting letters and arts, rearing and teaching the young; and it was the moral unit, inculcating through cooperative work and discipline those social dispositions which are the psychological basis and cement of civilized society. In many ways it was more essential than the State; governments might break up and order yet survive, if the family remained; whereas it seemed to sociologists that if the family should dissolve, civilization itself would disappear.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In journalist Rod Dreher\u2019s recently published Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents<\/a><\/em>, he reports having had numerous conversations with families throughout the former Soviet Bloc whose stories demonstrate \u201chow the Christian family was naturally the bedrock of forming faithful resistance to communism.\u201d Particularly noteworthy was the experience of a Czech father by the name of V\u00e1clav Benda, who \u201cbelieved that the family is the bedrock of civilization, and must be nurtured and protected at all costs. He was acutely conscious of the threat communism posed to the family, and he thought deeply about the role the traditional family should take in building anti-communist Christian resistance\u2026 and what must be done to help the family endure in the face of a government and a social order bent on its destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerned for their six children, Benda faced the harsh reality that in times past, \u201cthe family could depend on the outside world to support its mission\u2014and in turn, strong families produced citizens capable of building strong civil societies. Under communism, however, the family came under direct and sustained assault by the government, which saw its sovereignty as a threat to state control of all individuals,\u201d so that \u201cmarriage and the family became extremely problematic institutions.\u201d To counter such hostility, Benda realized that the family home must become a place \u201csheltered from the outer world,\u201d even \u201ca haven in a heartless world,\u201d for when a \u201cnation and its people are held captive by a totalitarian order, then Christians and their families must push as hard against the totalitarian world as it pushes against them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson remains as relevant today as it was during the Soviet era, Dreher insists, for \u201cthe left-wing assault on traditional marriage and family [that] commenced in the West with the sexual revolution in the 1960s\u2026 continues today in the form of direct attacks by the woke Left, including law professors advocating legal structures that dismantle the traditional family as an oppressive institution. More ominously, it comes from policies, laws, and court decisions that diminish or sever parental rights in cases involving transgender minors.\u201d What all this points to, according to Dreher, is a \u201ccoming soft totalitarianism\u201d in which \u201cChristians will have to regard family life in a much more focused, serious way. The traditional Christian family is not merely a good idea\u2014it is also a survival strategy\u2026 in a time of persecution.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dreher\u2019s bottom line\u2014his book was published shortly before last November\u2019s presidential election\u2014could not be timelier: \u201cChristians should stop taking family life for granted, instead approaching it in a more thoughtful, disciplined way\u2026. Christian parents must be intentionally countercultural in their approach to family dynamics. The days of living like everybody else and hoping our children turn out for the best are over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family is the ultimate foundation of every civilization; if it dissolves, civilization disappears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":48463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"Family is the ultimate foundation of every civilization; if it dissolves, civilization disappears.","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"single_blog_custom":"","sidebar":"","second_sidebar":"","share_position":"","share_float_style":"","post_date_format":"","post_date_format_custom":"","post_reading_time_wpm":"","zoom_button_out_step":"1","zoom_button_in_step":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"","single_post_gallery_size":""}],"trending_post_position":"","trending_post_label":"","sponsored_post_label":"","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"510"},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[510,695],"tags":[5701,962,911,6681],"class_list":["post-47817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-opinion","tag-christianity","tag-communism","tag-family","tag-family-values"],"yoast_head":"\nFamily as the final bastion - IFN<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/family-as-the-final-bastion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Family as the final bastion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Family is the ultimate foundation of every civilization; if it dissolves, civilization disappears.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/family-as-the-final-bastion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"IFN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/iFamNews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-01-22T18:24:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-01-22T18:24:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/beach-1867271_1920.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"E. 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Douglas Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4f01991614cc9086457280e0279d7da9c1c6dd2774eca1bf16e9e24005c6feb0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4f01991614cc9086457280e0279d7da9c1c6dd2774eca1bf16e9e24005c6feb0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4f01991614cc9086457280e0279d7da9c1c6dd2774eca1bf16e9e24005c6feb0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"E. Douglas Clark"},"description":"E. Douglas Clark is an attorney and Director of UN and International Policy at the International Organization for the Family. For two decades Doug has been on the forefront of defending the family at the United Nations as a lobbyist and strategist, leading teams and consulting with policymakers in New York and around the world. His writings include the World Family Declaration and articles in The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy and Ave Maria International Law Journal. After earning MBA and JD degrees from Brigham Young University, he practiced banking law and served as director of content of the original Law.com.","url":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/author\/dclarkifamnews-com"}]}},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47817"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48477,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47817\/revisions\/48477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}