Secularism in the Twilight

The Mermaids Sing, But Not to Me

It's always amusing and gratifying when Unbelief has gnawing doubts about its so-called emerging ascendency. A profound belief in the inevitable triumph of the cause has always proved deeply motivational to all chiliasts. Secular humanists have been no exception.

For the past forty years or so the ideology of secular humanism has included a belief in the inevitable triumph of its cause. The West was becoming progressively more secular, less religious; scientific rationalism would inevitably reign supreme. It was just a matter of time. The tide of history was running strongly down secular main street. But no longer, it seems.

In a recent article in the New Humanist, entitled, Battle of the Babies, Caspar Melville captures the gradually emerging despondency amongst the secularists. A prescient few are starting to realise that, far from achieving ascendency, their anti-Christian ideology is going to fail.

The reason: non-secular fundamentalist groups (by which is meant anyone whose religious beliefs are held sufficiently seriously that they actually shape one's life) are reproducing well above their replacement rate, whereas secular humanists are (demographically) a dying breed.

His article is based on an interview with "political scientist Eric Kaufmann, a reader in politics at London’s Birkbeck College, and the author of the new book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, out in March from Profile Books." Kaufmann is "joining the dots", as it were, between the undeniable fact of far higher birth rates amongst serious religious people in the West, and the demographic death spiral amongst secular humanists.

What Kaufmann is arguing is that the secularisation thesis, the assumption that modernity leads inexorably to a lessening of religious belief and a day when we are all rational humanists, is wrong – at one point Kaufmann approvingly quotes Rodney Stark and Roger Finke’s view that this is “a failed prophecy”. Further he is saying that there is something about our current form of liberal secularism that contains (here’s another headline) the seeds of its own destruction. Since the birth rate of individualistic secular people the world over is way below replacement level (2.1 in the West), and the birth rate of religious fundamentalists is way above (between 5 and 7.5 depending on sect), then through the sheer force of demography religious fundamentalism is going to become a much bigger force in the world and gain considerable political muscle. Literalist religious conservatism is being reborn and we secular liberals are the midwives.

In this view, secular humanism is self-destructing. The first reason is that it is narcissistically individualistic. Children are "rug-rats" which spoil the indulgent lifestyles of the secularists. Secondly, the toleration ethic in secular humanism means that it tends to indulge fundamentalists, not oppose them up front. In former days, he notes, governments went to war to deal with religious zealots, such as Mormons. Hardly acceptable today, he admits somewhat wistfully. Finally, and in our view, by far the more serious reason is that secularism has nothing "big" to live for any longer. It is a broken down ideology which is unable to stand for much any longer. It no longer has any "big ideas".

These three things mean that secularism is anaemic and weak in the face of people with fundamental religious beliefs.

The article notes that committed Christian groups and movements in the United States are linking together fecundity and larger families, with a longer term plan to make the United States part of a new Christendom. This agenda is identified as being "sinister".

What can be done? Well, firstly there could be active policies to restrict people having lots of children.

“Well, I don’t think we want to get in a population footrace. It may be necessary for secular people to have slightly more children but it would be nicer if we could get fundamentalists to have fewer children.” A strangely authoritarian notion to fall from the lips of a self-confessed liberal. “Yes,” he admits, “imposing restrictions would be condemned as discriminatory. But there are carrots as well as sticks."

Secondly, there is the option of converting the Christians.

Another scenario he imagines in his conclusion is that secularism might start to do a better job of winning over the children of religious fundamentalism. But at the moment he sees no statistical sign of this, and he seems gloomy about the prospect. Why? “Part of my argument is that religion does provide that enchantment, that meaning and emotion, and in our current moment we lack that. This is the challenge for secularism: can it come up with such an ideology?”

To my mind this looks a worrying prospect. Counter religion by producing a new kind of secular enchantment? Doesn’t it also betray a lack of conviction about the values that underpin our current society and the appeal they might hold for anyone who comes into contact with them?

Secular enchantment? Good luck with that. The only enchantment it will ever have is the age-old enchantment of sin itself--and that will not get any traction amongst truly converted Believers. Secular humanism is now world-weary. It has nothing left to live for, as one of its cheerleaders has noted:

Kenan Malik undercuts the scaremongering that so often accompanies discussion of demography by suggesting that we already have a powerful weapon against the trends, if only we could see it. “What has eroded,” he argues, “is faith in the idea that it is possible to win peoples of different backgrounds to a common set of secular, humanist, enlightened values. And that is the real problem: not immigration, nor Muslim immigration, but the lack of conviction in a progressive, secular, humanist project.”

What Kaufmann and Malik are certainly in accord on is the need to displace the multicultural “celebration of difference” model of toleration with one that contains a far more robust sense of common values and a far more stringent rejection of reactionary fundamentalism. “We need a stronger sense of liberal values,” Kaufmann told me. “We should answer back to all fundamentalisms.”

But secularism and values are always uneasy bed-fellows. Values have to be based upon something other than brute matter. Go too far down that track, and the foundations of secularism crumble, and it ends up looking more and more as it truly is--just one more faux-fundamentalist religion, albeit one lacking any cultural power.

Kaufmann wants to give a final bit of advice to salvage the cause: secular humanism needs to find common ground with "moderate" religious people (by which is meant, religious people who keep their religion strictly private and to themselves, and who have eschewed bringing their religious beliefs with them into the public square.) New Zealanders will recall that this was attempted recently by the Labour government under Helen Clark. It failed miserably, as one would have expected. Such folk are really just secularists in drag. Their cultural enervation is already complete.

(S)ecularists might need to collaborate more with religious moderates – find common cause in the way fundamentalists are doing. “The issue is not belief in God, but organised religion, especially fundamentalism. Non-believers can still have a rich conversation with moderate people who believe in God. You can’t have a conversation with a fundamentalist.”

If Kaufmann admits that his scary headlines somewhat belie the provisional nature of his findings, he has an answer: “I am trying to force a certain rethink of the idea that we are moving naturally toward secularism. To shake up our complacency and, perhaps, stir up some debate.”

Secularists may well be shaken by his book, but will they be stirred?

We believe secularists will be neither shaken, nor stirred. Once its inevitable attendant narcissism has captured the soul, one's attention span can only have an ever diminishing half-life.

Welcome to the world-weary existence of J. Alfred Prufrock.

Meanwhile, the people of God will go from strength to strength because Zion has already been established as the greatest, above all mountains.