We can compare this chapter on “what is wrong?” to elements in An Archaeology of the Fall.

The litany of complaints, the implication of a malaise, and the self-serving diagnoses parallel the image of a Union-god separating the heaven-god of Christianity and the earth-goddess of the Founding Documents & Marketplace.

The Progressive Movement re-enacted the denudation of An (the waters-above god) and the rape of Ki (the waters-below goddess) by Enlil (the air god).  This claim highlights the archaic features of the rise and establishment of the Public Cult.  We are not experiencing “progress”.  We are experiencing a Sumerian drama.

In 2012, American discourse is saturated with fear and loathing.  Christianity stands “naked” in the “public square”.  The Constitution lies raped by lawyer’s tongues.

Progressive complaints often follow the logic of “projection”.  The French Protestant complaint actually describes society after the success of the Progressive agenda.  The “strong” include “the central government, conformist media, self-anointed academia, government unions, crony capitalist bankers and lawyers, and so forth”.   The “Weak” include “small businesses, churches, two parent families, non-governmental non-union workers, and so forth”.

The roles have changed 40 years after this now-forgotten Projection – er – Declaration, revealing a lesson that should have been apparent long ago: Progressive complaints tell the world their unconscious, denied intentions.

Progressives see the world through the mirror of projection and denial, just like the now-forgotten (another projection) Public Cults of Communism and Fascism.

The second chapter of Menninger’s book layers further echoes Progressive complaints.  An editor asks: “What ails the American Spirit?”  Answers come from professors of government, history and humanities.  Menninger calls them “prophets”.

Menninger recounted the French Protestant’s Declaration (1972) of the unacceptability of the present economic and political system.  “The Strong dominate and manipulate the Weak in socioeconomic activities radically incompatible with the gospel”.

Then, Menninger asked: Who is to blame?  He suggested a re-reading of the parable in Matthew where the Master’s fields were sown with weeds after the grain was coming up.  In Menninger’s re-telling, the Master himself, unconscious, in his sleep, went out and sowed weeds into his own fields.

What to make of Menninger’s “brief and biased view of moral history”?  Consider chapter 1 in An Archaeology of the Fall, written in a similar stream of consciousness, 40 years later.  Both

-Identify that “something is wrong”

-Note the spiritually disfiguring growth of the United States of America

-Identify Lincoln’s death as a turning point (In Whatever: A cryptotheological formula – an immortal leader martyred: In An Archaeology: the Union was born)

-Envision a movement that results in self-serving and incomprehensible people who are resistant to prophets (In Whatever: the movement is towards affluence: In An Archaeology: the movement is a social construction in service to the Union god)

What is a difference between these two works?  An Archaeology of the Fall (2012) was written after the Progressive Movement has consolidated. Whatever Became of Sin? (1973) was written in the process of that consolidation.

In 2012, one cannot be both a Christian and a Progressive.

In 1973, Menninger was both a believer and a Progressive.

In 2012, the Progressive does not care about Menninger.  He served his purpose.  The Progressive has moved on.  The Christian, however, can look back – almost in amazement – at this hybrid Christian Psychoanalyst whose book went through at least 7 reprints.

The first four chapters of this book are devoted to picturing a change in the American (also, Western) civilization during the third quarter of the twentieth century.

In the first chapter, Menninger wrote – in almost free association – his impression of the ancient Jewish prophets.  The Jewish prophets spoke to uncomprehending prosperous folk.

Then Menninger considered how America came to be.  America was settled (by Europeans) through betrayal (of the Natives) and conflict (with each other and the crown).  At some point, they turned on each other in bloody warfare.  An “immortal leader” was martyred.  Territorial expansion resumed, bringing human misery and ecological devastation.  Now, America is full of uncomprehending prosperous folk.  And, just like in ancient Israel, prophets have appeared to affluent America, raising their voices: “Something is wrong”.

And, amazingly, Menninger’s “prophets” includes Professors of Government.

Hmmm.

Menninger’s prescient ironic “almost hitting the nail on the head” pays tribute to the difficulty of figuring out “what is going on” during the emergence of a new symbolic order.  Key features to look for are:

Certain words disappear (with no apparent replacement) or change meaning.

New institutions are formed. Established institutions are “captured” by “like-minded people”.

Individuals within institutions undergoing “capture” lose nerve.  They do not know how to “dissent”.

David Gelennter in American Lite (2012: Encounter Books) independently attests to the consolidation of the Public Cult of Progressivism during this period (from the 1960s on).   Gelennter calls this consolidation “the rise of the PORGI” (Post-Religious Global Intellectual).

The rise of the Public Cult of Progressivism (along with the private cults of the New Age Movement) accounts for the expansion of career opportunities for psychoanalysts (approximately, 1955-1965) and mental health workers (1960 on) plus the loss of nerve of seminarians at Princeton Theological Seminary (between 1965 and 1972).

Menninger did not know this.  However, as a psychoanalyst, he was trained to “listen”.  He chastised members of his own discipline for “sins of omission” (219), but that is the hazard of the profession.  Psychotherapy is difficult because the analyst does not know how to “label” what he is “hearing”.  Her interpretations must always be provisional.

Ironically, Menninger’s book came out precisely at the time when an answer to the “morality gap” (that he identified) appeared within the Progressive consolidation itself.

Menninger “heard” – with his “analytical ears” – that the word “sin” was disappearing.  This indicated that “something” was missing (hence, “the morality gap”).  He did not realize that the “something” was already being constructed, in various guises, without label.  Twenty years later, the replacement to the word “sin” was popularly referred to as “political incorrectness”.

The question in 1973: Whatever became of “sin”?

The answer by 1993: It was replaced by “political incorrectness”.

In my view, 40 years after Menninger published, a single phenomenon accounts for both observations: the social construction of the Public Cult of Progressivism.

Even though Menninger could not name the social construction, he picked up on key features.  That explains the eerie title.

Notably, Ted Peters, on the West Coast, writing in 1994 (20 years after Menninger), appeared completely unaware that the private cults of the New Age Movement complemented the Public Cult of Progressivism (or Secular Fundamentalism, the label is still yet to be fixed).  Both private and Public cults belong to the same emerging symbolic order.  Peters “saw” only one side of a Janus-faced phenomenon.

What does this indicate?  Individuals immersed in the historic social construction of the Public Cult of Progressivism did not recognize what was happening.

Menninger, a Freudian psychiatrist, wrote in America during the 1960s.  Two of his observations are the subjects of these first few blogs.  They set the stage for examining Menninger’s book in greater depth.

Page numbers come from the sixth printing of the paperback version in April 1977.

One observation described a (economic) bubble within a bubble that extended from 1945 to the time of writing (219).  The bubble started in the discipline of Psychoanalysis.   Early on, many students tried to enter the field.  There was plenty of opportunity.  But not enough analysts could be trained to meet demand.  Then, the “psychoanalyst” bubble was swept into a larger bubble in the field of mental hygiene.  Universities minted mental health “sub-professionals” who found ready employment in various state institutions.

A second observation portrayed the collapse of confidence at Princeton Theological Seminary.  When Menninger spoke there, presenting his 1966 book The Crime of Punishment, he found clergy students bewildered and disillusioned (224).  They asked: Had they embarked on the right career?

Menninger did not link these two observations.

However, he suggested a role for the clergy in addressing a “morality gap” (192) that could not be handled by psychoanalysts or mental care workers.  This book was intended to inspire clergymen (and now, women) to address this “morality gap” by recovering the Christian notion of “sin”.

Whether Peters knew it or not, his treatment of the topic was very narrow.  He examined Satanism as the opaque magic complement to the transparent magic of the New Age Movement.  He was not aware that both constitute the private cult complement to the Public Cult of Progressivism.

Because Progressivism claims that it is “not religious” that does not mean that its claim is true.  It means that the claim fits a “language” where “religion” is “defined in a particular way”.  This “language” deserves to be challenged.

However, Progressive’s grasp of Sovereign power makes a challenge difficult for many reasons.  One of those reasons is step 6.  Without a doubt, individuals who crave the thrill of domination without conscience have been entering into Progressive Institutions for the past few decades.  The more Progressives consolidate power, the more attractive their Institutions become to these perverted individuals.

In as much as Progressive Ideology defines “Higher Goods” that “One may become the Instrument of”, there will be no deficit of cruelty.

What does this mean?

This means that Peters’ intuitive schema has general applicability.  It certainly extends beyond his narrow treatment of the topic.

This concludes my blogs on Ted Peters Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (1994).

In addition to fitting into a Peircean system, many of the features of Peters’ discussion resonate with ideas in An Archaeology of the Fall, especially the notion that the serpent was a reification of Eve’s own unconscious thoughts and the notion that we project referentiality into words that are only systems of differences.  Both these themes deserve more consideration.  They form a novel scaffold onto which we may hang Peters’ insightful nested steps.

At the same time, one of the plot elements, the jinn that Keller made a deal with, did not come to mind.  This deserves further thought.