Those of you familiar with the history of universities will remember that the first and oldest one in Europe is the University of Bologna (Italy) started in 1088 by monks of the Catholic Church. The church continued founding universities in Europe and Great Britain for several centuries.

Because they were started by the church, the hub of the academic curriculum was theology. Think of university curriculum as a wheel with theology as the hub and the other disciplines (logic, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, etc.) as the spokes of the wheel. Nothing taught in the spoke disciplines could disagree with the hub theology of the church. Some centuries later, thanks to Aristotle, philosophy gained importance in the theology of the church until philosophy became the hub and theology a spoke. Nothing taught in the university could disagree with philosophy’s metaphysics, logic, and realism. Sometime later, philosophy became natural philosophy and gave way to natural science (coinciding with the transition of the Renaissance to the Early Modern era.) and by the 19th Century, science became the hub of university education. That would seem appropriate since the word science came from the Latin word Scientia, meaning “to know.” However, science doesn’t really know, it has theories that can be, and usually are, replaced later.

That brings us to the 21st century and suddenly sociology has replaced science as the hub in university education. It is in the news almost every day that some university lecturer has been fired because of teaching or even expressing an opinion that contradicted the prevailing sociology of the day. So, let’s look at sociology a little deeper.

Sociology traces its history back to Karl Marx (1818-1883), Max Weber (1864-1920), and Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). Weber and Durkheim studied Karl Marx but differed from him at certain points. With its roots in Marxism, is it any wonder that the Sociology of today promotes total equality of everything in society. But we are not all equal. We are not all equal in our birth circumstances, in the resources we have available to us, in the climate we grow up in, in our likes and dislikes. We should all be equal in our right to express our differences.

What is sociology? When looking for a definition, most people start with the Merriam-Webster in the US and the Oxford in the UK. They have similar definitions calling it a scientific or systematic study of the nature and development of society and social behavior. That general definition has been consistent from the inception of sociology. Max Weber defined sociology as “the science which aims to the interpretative understanding of social behavior in order to gain an explanation of its cause, its course, and its effects.” We can see that sociology started out as a scientific study in order to seek understanding of society and social behavior.

Around 2015, that changed. Sociology adopted a new mission beyond studying and understanding. I have a book titled, Essential Concepts in Sociology by Anthony Giddens and Philip W. Sutton. This is one of the latest books on sociology and was published in 2021. The authors give a very different agenda for sociology. They write on page 1:

Concept development in sociology is usually linked to theories and empirical studies, both of which often demand new concepts to make sense of their findings. Some concepts, such as status, class and risk, are already in circulation in society, but when lifted out of that context into sociology, they are debated and refined, becoming more precise and useful in the process. Others, including alienation, moral panic and globalization, have been created by sociologists to orientate and help them to study social phenomena, after which they can ‘slip’ into everyday life, where they may influence or change people’s perceptions of the world in which we live.

(I have put certain words in bold to draw your attention to them.)

So you can see that in the last few years, Sociology has gone from studying and understanding society to modifying and directing people’s sociological thinking—a type of mind control. Three areas we currently see this in action come to my mind.

One is the idea of a generation. At their inception, anthropology and sociology used the term generation to refer to a body of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor (i.e. father-son-grandson). As a time period, it was the average span of time between the birth of parents and that of their offspring. Thanks to sociology, generation has become a label dividing people by behavior rather than by birth decendency. Did the people born 1883–1900 know they were the “Lost Generation”? Did people born 1901–1924 know they were the “Greatest Generation”? Did people born 1925–1945 know they are the “Silent Generation”? Do the labels fit? Since I have been born we have seen the “Baby Boomer Generation”, “Generation X”, “Generation Y”, “Generation Z”, and “Generation Alpha”. These generations are social constructs used mainly by advertisers to target their products based on refined demographics. This is not science; it is sociology.

Another area that sociology has dictated is the area of homosexuality. Up until the 1970s it was medically classified as a mental disorder and is still illegal in some countries. Today, the opposite view is accepted by society and laws are in place to make sure no one calls it a mental disorder. I am not saying it is right or wrong, only that it is not science; it is sociology.

Lastly, I will deal with the concept of gender. That is changing so fast the dictionaries have not caught up with it and probably never will. Dictionaries still use the traditional definition of gender to mean “the state of being male or female” biologically. The Oxford English Dictionary goes on to give the usage in psychology and sociology as “the state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinction and differences, rather than biological ones.” What has sociology decided? The state of being male or female has been surpassed. A sample from the internet gives the answer. The Healthline website gives 64 terms that describe gender identity and expression. ABC News website lists 58 gender options for Facebook users. The Psychology Today website says there is no definitive answer as to how many genders there are and that some experts suggest that there may be 100 genders or more. Sociologically speaking, there could be as many genders as there are people that buy into sociology. The basic sociology, propaganda says, “Gender is a term that relates to how we feel about ourselves.” Feelings change, so gender is fluid, not fixed, and changes over time. In other words, the term gender is egocentric and meaningless today because it can change. That is not science. That is sociology.

And woe be to anyone that disagrees. As mentioned before, almost daily we hear of someone in education being disciplined or even fired because they dared to express an opinion that transgenderism or deviants from gender binary are not real but imaginary. The hope is that freedom of expression will be denied until people give up and start thinking alike. It is now against the law in some governments to express such contra opinions, bowing to the sovereignty of sociology. That is the main reason Christians are hated so much in the 21st Century. We claim to have an objective, sovereign standard of truth and morals over and above ourselves, the state, sociology, science, and philosophy that tells us what is true and false, right and wrong.

Science seeks to understand the physical universe. Psychology seeks to understand human behavior. Sociology seeks to influence human behavior. Social constructs are not real! They are based on the mind and they change as often as people change their minds.

Why has sociology trumped science as the hub of public education? It is because sociology is based on the whims of autonomous man, science is based on the fact of the physical universe. Sociology seeks to direct human thinking and behavior. Toward what? These later “generations” do not know who they are, where they came from, their purpose for being here, other than personal gratification, or where they are going. They are attached to floating anchors and are drifting toward despair. We Christians have the peace of having definitive answers to those questions and therefore, are tolerant and pity those who hate us because we do have the answers.