SECULARIZATION AND SECULARISM: A CHRISTIAN CRITIQUE
FOR OUR POSTMODERN CHRISTIAN CULTURE
The Latin root of the term secular (saeculun) occurs in the Vulgate translation of the New Testament in place of the Greek word aion (e.g. Titus 2.12, "worldly desires"). The notorious ambiguity of its synonym kosmos/mundus: the "world", fallen into sin as well as God's creation and objects of His love.
As is widely known and acknowledged the meaning of Secular is poly valent. The meaning load moves from "religious propaganda to be based in psychic utility." (See D. Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (NY: Harper, 1978), pp. 272-273).
Our postmodern cultural maze is way past the problem of ecumenism. And one of, if not, the central issues facing the Church today is the problem of Secularism: Every intellectual/cultural development in the 19th and 20th centuries derive from Kant's Perspectivalism. The secularization process is not comparable to the incarnation or kenosis of Christ. The secularization process expresses cultural deterioration. The Secularization and Secularism concerns the very existence of Christianity and its institutions.
What is Secularization (Process) and Secularism (Product) and how should the Church respond to them? In order to propose a Christian response we first must examine the nature of secularization, secularism, and the secular and then critically consider their prospects and then offer possible responses by the Church.
Historical Perspective and the Nature of Secularization and Secularism
The essence of Christian concern for the history and extent of the subject matter itself is crucial for extensive critique. Karl Heim and J.H. Oldham and the participants of the International Missionary Council of 1928 meeting in Jerusalem were perhaps the first to address the problem directly. Heim especially sought an answer to the question of why Secularization and Secularism would spring up and spread so extensively in the area of Christendom itself. Scientific developments enabled Western theologians to marginalize the God of creation. Nature was an autonomous entity. The God of the gaps (Deism/Atheism) precluded God's immanence in the world of nature, history, etc. The positivistic model of science provide an exhaustive explanatory system which precludes God. All forms of pantheism saw the world as an extension of God incapable on His own (a la Hegel's geist, etc.). Only where there is a duality between God and the world and between God and man can a dualism develop, a corruption of the original and intended community (K. Heim, The Battle Against Secularism, 1981; Klaus Bockmuehl, Secularism and The Christian Faith, 1985).
Secularism did not develop with the same intensity in Judaism and Islam, which shares the presupposition of the transcendence and Deity of God. In fact, these faiths, by not allowing for the incarnation, hold to God's transcendence even more vigorously. Christendom's medieval antithesis between the holy and secular is a crucial factor in the development of secularism.
Monastic theology produced the contemplative life of the monk and nun, which encouraged the separation from the evil world. Monastic theology ravaged the classical doctrine of the Christian life, until the monastery became the Church and the monk was the only true Christian, leaving nothing for the believer whose wall was "in the secular" (Bockmuehl, pg. 8,9).
Out of this juxtaposition of Church and world, sanctum and saculiua, grew the process of secularization. It begins in the middle ages when the withdrawal or dismissal of an individual monk from the monastery or a priest from the ranks of the clergy is called an act of "secularization."
During the Reformation monasteries and Church estates came into secular hands - became secularized. In the peace negotiations ending the Thirty Years War in 1648, the French delegate suggested the "secularization" of certain Church territories. The year 1804 witnessed the dissolution of The Holy Roman Empire of the German nation and at the same time the alienation (or secularization) of the remaining ecclesiastical territories with which Napolean meant to compensate the princes whose lands he had taken for himself and members of his family. We observe on the level of laws and institutions an ever-growing circle of objects drawn into the process of "secularization" (Hermann Lueffe, Saekularisurismus, 1975 p. 23ff).
The same secularization process as expressed in the history of ideas:
The secularization implications of the philosophical schools of Averroiam — the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris during the 13th century. This school postulated the liberation of philosophy from the supremacy of theology and the disjunction of rational and revealed truth; its representatives spoke of "twofold truth;" and they already held most of the tenets of the modern catalog of unbelief (C. Coipe "Averroismus," in Die Religion—Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. I, Tuebingen, 1950), pp. 796ff).
The intellectual movement of the Italian Renaissance continued this effort and in the famed Principle of Machiavelli proclaimed in effect, the secularization of political ethics. Thomas Hobbes and Hugo Grotius established the framework for a "secular conception of political theory and the law" and Adam Smith as well as Karl Marx effectively did the same for the whole world of economics.
The materialist of the 18th and 19th centuries from Holback to Haeckel looked after the Secularism of the philosophy of nature while historians during this same period did the same thing by producing Historicism, i.e., epistemological and cultural relativism or radical contextualization. This process technically began with Kant's First Critique, i.e.. The Perspectivalization of all reality, i.e., all interpretation of reality is contingent on the perspective of the individual.
It has been often observed that secular viewpoint is largely independent of empirical arguments both in the natural sciences and in history (see especially Owen Chadwich, The Secularization of The European Mind in The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 155-217; Emil L. Fockenheim, God's Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (NY; Harper, Torchback, 1982), pp. 36-41; Karl Lowith, The Meaning of History (University of Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1958 printing); J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (NY, 1932); and the seminal work of Paul Hazard, La Crise de la conscience europeonne (Paris, 1935, E.T. in pb); F. Nietzsche's resurgent neo-Gnostic Pagan "eternal recurrence" (cyclical view of history vs. progress). Rather it represents a paradigmatic shift in worldview assumptions. Owen Chadwick pointed out that "the onslaught upon Christianity owed its force ... not at all to science" (i.e., of the 19th century). It was made "not in the name of knowledge, but in the name of justice and freedom." (Chadwick, Secularization in The European Mind) p. 155; E.L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity (NY: Holt & Rinhart, 1965); Science was in the hands of the "elite", not the "people."
Karl Marx reacted against the concept of creation (e.g. in favor of the self generation of the universe) precisely for reasons of human independence and astronomy. In his early notebooks he picked up on the argument of the French materialist Holback, who resurrecting the pre-Christian critic Lucretius, described religion as man's undignified subjection to and worship of the deities of nature, lightening and thunder. Marx correspondingly heralded Prometheus, the ancient symbol of rebellion against gods (Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. I (NY: International Publishers, 1975), PP. 30-31, 102). Sharing Marx's refusal to distinguish between religions, Feuerbach, Bakunin (the anti-Christ), and Buchner, the materialist, all proposed similar arguments at the end of the 19th century (Fackenheim, God's Presence in History, 57,59; Chadwick, Secularization of The European Mind, p. 10).
In the 19th century another development in the thrust toward secularization occurred. Early in the second half of the 18th century, the Enlightenment was the undertaking of the intellectual elite. Voltaire among others, refused to talk atheism "in front of the maids" because he felt that religion upheld the morality of servants; and this could only result in his own profit. (Chadwick, p. 10) The same attitude promoted the notorious edict of 1788 written by F.W. von Wollner, the Prussian minister, in which enlightened pastors were constrained from preaching anything in discord with the teaching of the Church, notwithstanding their own personal convictions. Secularity is here a private matter of the mind, not the public mind; neither the masses nor the institutions were as yet secularized (a la Postmodern Secularization via Public/Private dichotomy).
By the 19th century, the situation is quite different. As Chadwick has shown, this is likely due to the victory of Marxism and Darwinism over other schools of thought within the European workers movement. Workers took a long time to acknowledge that social renewal could be achieved only by the defeat of religion, i.e., Christianity. But with the ascent of Marxism socialism as well as the liberalism of the bourgeoisie became the vehicle of secularism. The enormous success of the various new sciences grounded the secularistic mind. Thus Chadwick can say, "Marxist theory is the most influential of all symbols for the process of secularization in the 19th century (Chadwick,- pp. 69, 79) The elite situation of The Enlightenment a century later had reached the general public. It is one of the central ideas of Marx to "become a revolutionary force as soon as they grip the masses." The final deinstitutionalization of religion was only a matter of time.
Secularization of the social institutions and public life and the secularization of ideas human consciousness and "ideation" which historians seem to be concerned with are two inseparable ranges of influence. It is also important to perceive the process of secularization as a mass departure of individuals from Church and religion in general. We presently are experiencing the day by day breakdown of the growth of Christianity in certain Western countries and the loss of faith as a concrete process made up of individual people.
Secularization and secularism differ from one another in that Secularization denotes the actual process of "becoming worldly" — it can effect individuals of worldliness, or the "will to secularization" as a practical worldview. As such and similar to other "isms" it is unified. We don't tend to think of secularism in the plural and it seems limitless in its thrust. There is no pluralism of Secularism in our postmodern culture!'!
TWINS IN THE PUBLIC ARENA: SECULARISM AND ATHEISM
Secularism seems to be the "positive" equivalent of atheism, a de facto atheism, a forgetfulness of the things of God as compared with the belligerent denial of God in atheism proper. Marx and Engels advocated this stance when they berated their atheist mentor, Ludwig Feuerbach. Secularism intends to live "without God in the world." (Ephesians 2.12) Secular distinguishes between ecclesiastical authority and divine authority. We must at no time necessarily identify God's purpose and presence with given socio-politico, economic, or psychological perimeters of culture.
Reformers toppled the monistic antithesis between the secular and the holy. It recovered the Christian relevance of lay life in the secular world. Civil vocation overcame the monistic devaluing of life in the normal workday; the reformers moved from the holy precinct into the market place. The secular sphere was non-claimed for God. (Augustine's "Two Kingdoms") The Augustinian Reformation tradition broke away from the Roman Catholic dichotomy—Sacred/Secular. The Reformation is not the beginning of the secularization process. The entire debate between Secularization and secularism hinges around the question of autonomy. But autonomy was set over against Biblical/Church authority!!
Why was not the earlier schism of Christendom into Eastern and Western Churches the ground cause of Secularism? These two spheres were subject to two different sets of rules -- Paradigms and Legitimization structures. Luther's Bondage of the Will stressed the role of reason in early concerns, but only to denounce it more for questions of God and salvation. Was Luther a proponent of the Renaissance and thrust toward secularism? Luther's two kingdoms is a viable third option between an ecclesiastical hierarchy and a secularism that is regarded as an inevitable reaction to it. The doctrine clearly differentiates between Christianity and Churchianity. The Reformation did precipitate a pluralism of confessions within the State (e.g. Separation of Church and State in the United States; egs. the first, fourth and fourteenth amendments).
Two types of secularism become crystal clear, (1) emancipation from ecclesiastical guidance and (2) withdrawal from one's responsibility to the judgment of God. Only the second factor is expressed in our post Christian modern culture.
TWO PHASES OF THE SECULAR WORLDVIEW
(1) There is a day of exhilaration and euphoria because of scientific and technological progress; (2) The optimistic sentiments do not last. The atrocities of the French Revolution and its tyrannical pursuit of virtue had a sobering effect (e.g. the storming of the Bastille--contra Roman Catholic Church/Jesuit Order and Religion's control of culture). French historiography changed from the optimism of Michelet to the dejection of Hypolyte Taine, and how the public reception of Darwinism turned sour (see Thomas F. Click, The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (University of Texas, 1974), esp. pp. 127ff.).
World War I had similar effects. Evangelists of materialism around the turn of the century made way for culture critics who brooded over the relativism and meaningless of the technological age. Karl Heim had observed the sobering of Marx in the leading scientists. (K. Heim Per Kampf gegen den Sakularismus, p. 89) Already at the time many people felt that the "Roaring Twenties" was a dance on a volcano that was ready to erupt. They attempted as Thornton Wilder characterized the mood, to "eat their ice cream while it is on their plate." Many theologians of the time captured the cultural climate in a startling manner. "Fear of God had died but a new fear replaces it; fear of everything (Weltangst). . . . Adoration of culture turns into disdain. The dark gate, to which all secularization leads, is pessimism." (H. Schreiner as cited in Lubbe, Sakularisierrung, p. 89). Humanity, having abolished God, now bemoans its fate as a "cosmic orphan."
Peter Berger says "there is no telling what outlandish religiosity even one dripping with savage supernaturalism, may yet arise in these groups" (Berger, Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and The Rediscovery of The Supernaturalism (Doubleday-Anchor, 1970), p. 24; resurgent New Age Pantheism and now Western religions, sex revolution, drug culture, resurgent Satan worship, etc).
By the 1960's it is apparent that secular optimism in Western Europe and the USA is at an end. Economic encouragement of limitless progress and human abilities, the first oil crisis, public awakening of intractable ecological problems, a period of economic decline and the renewed perception of threatening nuclear war completely changed the picture. Ultra moderns develop a new belief in fate, "turn to superstition in search for meaning" (Berger) and make enlightenment perfect in a new obscuration. Easterners perceive gloom and doom in the faces of Westerners. Problems may be greater in India or in Latin America, but it is "Euro pessimisism," "the disappearance of hope," that characterizes the old countries often people in despair speak of themselves as "the no future generation." Sartre's prophecies of "Hius Clos" and "la Nausie" is fulfilled. One wonders what happened to the "principle of hope" and the "theology of hope" that were expressed throughout the 1960's. Hope has turned to cultural despair in less than thirty years (see my paper, "Theologies of Hope").