In Depth:  Gene Edward Veith

Parents, have your teenagers changed from being sullen and morose? Have they started sharing their feelings in long, babbling monologues, and giving you emotional hugs?

Are they asking if they can stay out all night at dances billed as 'alcohol-free'? Have they given up body piercing, and dug up their old teddy bears? Instead of dressing in black and painting their room black, are they draping themselves with fluorescent glow sticks? Have they abandoned their death metal T-shirts in favour of wearing baby pacifiers around their necks?

The sexual revolution in the Western world that began in the 1960s has entered a new phase.

Just as other kinds of objective reality - truth, morality, aesthetics, religion - have been drawn into the black hole of subjectivity, now it is happening to sex. First, sex was divorced from marriage; now, it is not even necessary to have a partner at all.

Are you a 'Family Limited' or a 'Renaissance Elder'?

No sooner had churches got baby-boomers with their narcissism and '60s music' figured out than they were asked to adjust to Generation Xers, with their cynicism and hunger for authenticity. Whereupon churches were told to get ready for Generation Y, with their cheerful materialism.

A few decades ago, the mainline Protestant churches did not necessarily want their members to find out what was being taught in their colleges and seminaries.

The extent of their theologians' rejection of the truth of Scripture would not sit well with the average church member, even in the more liberal denominations.