The United States has become increasingly divided in many ways, but no divide has affected more people or caused more damage than the divide in culture between middle to upper-class and working class Americans. As Charles Murray argues in his new book, Coming Apart, this divide is something new. Income, he says, once meant nothing when it came to culture and values. America's poor and wealthy alike saw marriage, children and faith in the same light. Now, all that has changed. This week on BreakPoint, Chuck Colson, John Stonestreet, T. M. Moore and others address the deterioration of working class American values and families, and propose solutions rooted in the Christian worldview.

"Whatever Happened to Fishtown?" asks Chuck Colson in this week's Two Minute Warning. Referencing the two-town parable in Charles Murray's book, Coming Apart, Chuck talks about how values, not economics, are at the heart of the widening gap between the two Americas.

"Things Fall Apart," says T. M. Moore in Wednesday's Talking Points. "We are becoming what Arthur Schlesinger referred to as a “disunited society” in more ways than one. Ethnic tensions are heating up, but so are conflicts of class, politics, sexual orientation, and economic interests. In many ways it seems the country no longer possesses and integrating core of values, ideals, traditions, and aspirations."

In Wednesday's BreakPoint Commentary, Chuck calls on Christians to admit a fundamental truth: personal values and economics are inextricably linked. This, he says, is at the root of the cultural divide.

The Theme of the Week this week is "Speaking Out Courageously." Chuck Colson continues a topic he has often spoken on lately in the "Two-Minute Warning" video. It is "Breaking The Spiral of Silence," taken from the mass communications phenomenon publicized by the German communications scientist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. Noelle-Neumann began her career in journalism during the Hitler years in Germany and noticed how easily people allowed themselves to become convinced that they were in a minority when holding more ethical viewpoints than the Nazis were promoting, even though, in fact, they were in the majority.

T.M. Moore has a "Talking Points" column called "Breaking the Spiral of Silence."  He introduced the idea the week before in "Oversteppers."  He says: "Christians today are in danger of being sucked into such a spiral of silence. But this is not inevitable..."

Colson Center and BreakPoint see this issue as so critical for the church that it has become the theme for the entire upcoming Wilberforce Weekend conference in Lansdowne, Virginia (March 30th - April 1 2012). You can get more information on that at WilberforceWeekend.org.

In Wednesday's BreakPoint Commentary, Chuck Colson deals with the Obama Administration's Health and Human Services Department's modified contraception mandate, and how the battle for religious freedom is far from over.