Occasionally an event erupts in society that is so shocking and seemingly incongruous, it arrests society’s attention. The phenomenon is analogous to coalminers who routinely would take canaries down into the mining shafts with them as a safety measure.
Lethal, odorless gases would occasionally escape into the underground chambers where the miners were working. If the canaries succumbed to the poisonous gases, the miners would be warned in time to escape to safety themselves.
An event occurred recently in America that appears to be the societal equivalent of the “canary in the coal mine.” First, we witnessed a healthcare executive gunned down, assassinated in cold blood on a Manhattan street because he was a healthcare executive. In a premeditated attack, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the married father of two boys, was shot in the back.
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The alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, aged 26, came from a very “privileged” background, raised in a socially prominent and financially affluent family. Mangione graduated with great distinction from a very prominent prep school and from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the Ivy League.
This was a shocking crime, a cold-blooded execution on the streets of our nation’s largest city. Once Mangione was apprehended after a brief, but intensive manhunt, he quickly became a celebrity even a “hero” to some segments of our society. An Emerson College poll found that 41% of young people (18-29) found Mangione’s purported actions to be either “completely acceptable” (17%), or “somewhat acceptable” (17%).
Some young people have held rallies supporting the alleged assassin, and justifying his actions because of reported injustices attributed to healthcare companies. Shockingly, two professors at Mangione’s alma mater, UPenn, lauded the alleged killer online, referring to him as an “icon” and proclaiming their pride in him as an alumnus. With professors like that, no wonder they are producing radical graduates! I certainly would not send my children or grandchildren to UPENN.
The Emerson College poll, while morally disturbing, did reveal a generation gap in attitudes. While among the 18 to 29 age group 33% felt the assassination was “completely unacceptable,” among people 60 to 69, 73% did so. That cavernous 40% generation gap reflects, I fear, a precipitous moral decline in American society that should warn us just as the dying canaries warned the coalminers of impending peril.
Too many younger Americans have been severely impacted by the tidal wave of moral relativism that has swept across America in the last half-century. The Emerson College poll reveals an accelerating decline in moral certitude, decade by decade. Among those 50 to 59 years of age, 65% found Mangione’s alleged actions “completely unacceptable” while the numbers declined to 60% among those 40 to 49 and 43% among those 30 to 39 years of age.
The great C.S. Lewis, writing in response to a new British textbook suffused with moral relativism in the 1940s, predicted the consequences that relativism would produce:
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst” (C.S. Lewis).
The “canaries” are dying. We must arrest this moral rot or we will continue our accelerating descent to a society where evermore heinous acts will be seen as justifiable.
When a society embraces the belief that nothing is always right and nothing is always wrong, eventually anything becomes possible.
We cannot say we have not been warned. Let us hope we have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
