The crisis of the natural family represents a crisis for freedom, a crisis for the transmission of culture and a crisis for civilization. The French philosopher Hypolite Taine described the family as “the only cure for death,” and in the same vein the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner observed that the fifth commandment (on honoring parents) is the Magna Carta of tradition. The overall crisis of the family needs no exposition. From permissiveness of the hookup culture to the pill that separates sexual pleasure pleasure and procreation, to no-fault divorce, to abortion on demand, to alternative forms of marriage, to assisted suicide, to the collapse of the family dining table, and to all the sex education materials for students in public schools, all these recent trends have joined forces to undermine the Jewish and Christian view of the family as the bedrock nurturing and transmitting institution of civilization.
Os Guinness, Impossible People, pg.189
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