The End of Secularism, Part I

Shivering in the Cold

We want to do a couple of posts on Hunter Baker's book, The End of Secularism (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2009). The animus of this book is the crucible of debate over the role of religion in general, and the Christian faith in particular, in the public square (by which is meant pretty much everything outside of church and home). It represents a rejection of the widespread idea that the public square should be free from any religious influences or arguments or impositions, but that it must remain strictly secular and scrupulously neutral toward all religions. Baker and others denote this idea as "secularism".

There are manifestations of secularism everywhere in New Zealand: the government education system being most obvious. Government schools--that is state run, taxpayer funded, public square schools--must maintain a studied neutrality towards all religions by law. At the other end of the scale, another example of the prevalence of the philosophy of secularism is the Maxim Institute--a "think tank" of Christian provenance which believes it must leave its Christianity in the backroom and make secular arguments in its advocacy of particular government policies or national directions in order to be credible.

The issue is acute in the United States because of the latter day, revisionist views of the Constitution requiring a "wall of separation" (to use Jefferson's redactive phrase) between church and state. Increasingly the secularist movement has argued that this means a complete divorce of religion and state--a very different proposition entirely.

In his book, Baker avoids dealing with the Christian doctrine and philosophy of the state, apart from a cursory historical survey. In many ways, it is left as the "big" begged question, and the meal remains unsatisfying as a result. But, Baker does give us an aperitif and a first course--and they are superb, as far as they go.

The first is his recounting of the recent collapse of secularization theory. To be influential and compelling, every philosophy or theory needs an eschatology of victory, of ultimate triumph. Troops get energized when they sense victory is in the air. Without hope, the soul withers and dies. Secularism, as a philosophy, has been no different. Developing out of the (particularly French) Enlightenment, it proclaimed the triumph of scientific rationalism and the withering away of religion (which it has always identified as superstitious ignorance). The more rationalistic science were to advance, the weaker and more irrelevant religion would become. Baker explains how secularist eschatology became the dominant paradigm by the 1950's and onwards.

By the middle of the twentieth century, secularization theory was comfortably accepted as the dominant paradigm and was clearly the working theory for the discipline of sociology of religion. Moving into a more contemporary and future-orientated mode, the theory of secularization was said to refer to "the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols." Further, secularization meant more than just the "separation of church and state", "the expropriation of church lands", or "the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority". Rather, it was said to affect "the totality of cultural life and ideation" . . . . Further still, secularization was said to indicate "the rise of science as an autonomous, thoroughly secular perspective on the world". Consciousness itself was destined to be secularized. During the heart of the twentieth to late twentieth century, sociologists such as Talcott Parsons, Thomas Luckmann, and Peter Berger offered influential works in the mainstream of the theory. (Baker, p. 99)

The asserted inevitable ascendency of secular humanism over traditional and orthodox Christianity lent cultural power to secularism for a time.

Berger (University Professor of Sociology and Theology at Boston University) offered the most memorable quote of secularist eschatology: he imagined that the end of the twentieth century would see tiny remnants of religious believers "huddled together in the final stage of decline." (p. 100). Ironically, Berger has now renounced the philosophy. From the perspective of his former secularist colleagues, he has gone over to the dark side.

(Berger) now forthrightly states that the idea the modernization leads to the decline of religion as a social force and in the minds of individuals has turned out to be wrong. (Baker, p.102)

It has transpired that those elements in Christianity that sought to embrace the secular religion have withered away, while those which have re-asserted the historic and orthodox Christian faith have grown in power, influence, and recognition. Berger has now concluded that modernization and secularization are not synonymous at all.

Another former secularist who has renounced is Rodney Stark, (Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences, Baylor University). He has argued that the Enlightenment/secularist view of the Middle Ages as primitive and superstitious because of the dominance of the Christian religion is empty propaganda and thoroughly divorced from the actual historical records. Whilst we may loosely speak of Europe in the Middle Ages as the realm of Christendom, it was certainly not a uniform golden age of Christianity. The influence of the Christian faith waxed and waned throughout the period, and at times confronted places and periods of mass apathy, heterodoxy, and agnosticism. Stark advocates the thesis that the Christian faith waned in power and influence every time it was established and supported by the civil magistrate, and prospered when it was independent of the same.

The discrediting of secularism as a philosophy and eschatology has been an encouraging development for which we thank God. It leaves the partisans of secularism in the public square somewhat naked shivering in a winter of discontent. But Baker goes on to document how the new kid on the block in the Secular City--post-modernism--has left the secularists not just exposed and shivering, but has caused them to gnaw at their own vitals. We will take that entertaining story up in our next post.