Down But Not Out
Stumbling Toward Utopia: How the 1960s Turned into a National Nightmare and How We Can Revive the American Dream by Timothy S. Goeglein
In 1967, I set off for what was then still called my freshman year at college. I had enrolled in a school founded 107 years earlier by Scandinavian immigrants and now affiliated with the recently merged Lutheran Church in America (LCA). While clear only in retrospect, the faculty members at that time were mostly conservative and faithful, and the curriculum was broadly guided by the principles of Western Christian civilization. The college president was a good fellow dedicated to Christian learning as well as to the important “informal” purposes of a church school. “Look around you,” he told incoming students and their parents at the welcoming convocation. “You may be sitting next to your future in-laws!”
Indeed, courtship was encouraged, albeit within strict lines. For example, women had to be in their dorms by 10:00 p.m. Sororities monitored would-be suitors, while fraternities serenaded the young women with sweetheart songs. I pledged a fraternity and gained a fine “big brother” or “friendly active”: tall, handsome, smart, and a champion tennis player. Long drawn by instinct to “ordered liberty,” I happily entered the system, applying to become a dormitory proctor and gaining appointment to the student judiciary, charged with dealing with the minor miscreants within the student body.
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Allan C. Carlson is the John Howard Distinguished Senior Fellow at the International Organization for the Family. His most recent book is Family Cycles: Strength, Decline & Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630-2000 (Transaction, 2016). He and his wife have four grown children and nine grandchildren. A "cradle Lutheran," he worships in a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He is a senior editor for Touchstone.
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