Dabney on the Decline of Protestantism
I'm often asked what by those making transition into the Reformed faith what authors I recommend they read. A great deal of them are typically advised to consult the one-dimensional Reformed writers of today. I won't name names, but if you tuned in to their radio programs, you'd likely hear another discussion about predestination or puritanical sanctification. I tell them, "Well, read that and get it out of your system. Then you can move on to the writers that'll turn your whole mental apple cart every which way but loose." I point them to the "applied Calvinists." I point them to the underground volumes by Dabney, Warfield, and Rushdoony.
I've heard Presbyterian pastors dismiss Dabney as "angry and embittered." Others have dismissed him as a racist and unworthy of consideration. I deem him a giant, and one of the greatest warriors the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ has ever produced in its history. Like Rushdoony, a genuine prophetic mantle rested upon Dabney's noble, Southern shoulders. If you can read Dabney, and remain indifferent, you might want to check your conscience for the scars of searing. In that spirit, I'll spend a few posts to dump some Dabney on you:
"The best argument for any creed is the godly living of its professors. Protestantism used to have a grand and victorious advantage on that point. She is ceasing to wield it. The wealth begotten by her very virtues of industry, thrift, and probity has debauched many of her children. 'Jeshurun has waxen fat, and kicked.' And unbounded flood of luxury sweeps Protestant families away. A relaxed and deceitful doctrine produces its sure fruits of relaxed and degraded morals. Church discipline is nearly extinct. Meantime spurious revivalism, relying upon all species of vulgar clap-trap and sensational artifice, upon slang rhetoric and the stimulating of mere animal sympathies, instead of the pure word and spirit of God, is hurrying tens of thousands of dead souls into the Protestant churches. These evils have gone so far that a profession of faith in these churches has come to mean nearly as little as a professed conformity to Rome means." (R. L. Dabney, Discussions: Secular, Vol. IV, p. 545f)
I've heard Presbyterian pastors dismiss Dabney as "angry and embittered." Others have dismissed him as a racist and unworthy of consideration. I deem him a giant, and one of the greatest warriors the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ has ever produced in its history. Like Rushdoony, a genuine prophetic mantle rested upon Dabney's noble, Southern shoulders. If you can read Dabney, and remain indifferent, you might want to check your conscience for the scars of searing. In that spirit, I'll spend a few posts to dump some Dabney on you:
"The best argument for any creed is the godly living of its professors. Protestantism used to have a grand and victorious advantage on that point. She is ceasing to wield it. The wealth begotten by her very virtues of industry, thrift, and probity has debauched many of her children. 'Jeshurun has waxen fat, and kicked.' And unbounded flood of luxury sweeps Protestant families away. A relaxed and deceitful doctrine produces its sure fruits of relaxed and degraded morals. Church discipline is nearly extinct. Meantime spurious revivalism, relying upon all species of vulgar clap-trap and sensational artifice, upon slang rhetoric and the stimulating of mere animal sympathies, instead of the pure word and spirit of God, is hurrying tens of thousands of dead souls into the Protestant churches. These evils have gone so far that a profession of faith in these churches has come to mean nearly as little as a professed conformity to Rome means." (R. L. Dabney, Discussions: Secular, Vol. IV, p. 545f)
