Forty years after Menninger’s observation that the word “sin” was disappearing, we have a potential explanation.

Menninger’s observation fits into a scenario where the Public Cult of Progressivism (which was constituting itself at the time, along with the private cults of the New Age Movement) discouraged the term “sin”.  Instead of “sin”, they pronounced a litany of objections, complaints, irritations, annoyances, insults, grievances, and false expectations.

So instead of the pejorative “sinner”, terms such as “polluter”, “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe” and similar words were coined.  That also explains why the term “politically incorrect” joined the lexicon as a derogatory catch-all word.

Ironically, this new litany of Progressive perjoratives was acceptable to Behaviorists and Psychoanalysts, because, in principle, they were “descriptive” hence “neutral” terms.