REVIVAL DELAYS, MORAL DECAYS: Between Dewey’s well vs Wesley’s words
Posted by Deji Okegbile
While John Wesley’s life parallels many religious trends today, John Dewey, born in 1859, the same year Darwin published his Origin of Species, continue to be the source of much of today’s moral education and social reform. Wesley, a master of 18th century social media and a prophet way out ahead of others faced an era in which many bright people walked away from the church. In the midst of skeptical winds of the Enlightenment that had been blowing across Europe especially after Wesley’s death, John Dewey particularly did more to shape educational methodology in the twentieth century.
Dewey, influenced by his mother, was born and grew up in an evangelical home and experienced conversion he called a ‘mystic experience.’ In college, he went through a spiritual decline under the influence of a ‘liberal form of theology shaped by German idealism.’ Similar to Process theology that teaches that God and the world are both in a process of constant change and evolution, Dewely who later adopted a naturalistic philosophy offered himself ‘as a quite-spoken evangelist of a redeeming form of humanism and naturalism.’ His acceptance of Social Gospel that redefined salvation as social progress where humans were merely biological organism seeking to control the environment through scientific inquiry.’
Revival delays, moral decays because many have imbibed deeply at the well of Dewey. According to Pearcey, ‘teachers are rigorously instructed not to be directive in any way, but only to coach students in a process of weighing alternatives and making up their own minds. Any value that students choose is deemed acceptable, whether or not it comports with accepted moral standard … each individual has to become an autonomous decision maker, determining his values strictly on his own.’ Philosophical naturalism liberate students from the moral standards they bring in from home and church and acknowledge whatever the individual values. Moral education that inspires most civilisation no longer matter so as not to offend or upset anyone. Professor William Kilpatrick in his book titled Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong, explained the danger of drinking from the well of Dewey including moral illiteracy. Today’s generation are drinking from Dewey’s well hence, they cannot tell right and wrong, ‘they are encouraged to develop their own values, with no right or wrong answers.’[2] Gospel and knowledge has become social construction, the goal of salvation and education is to guide people how to construct their own faith, reality, and knowledge. Continue Reading…….