God and the Party Platform
God and the Party Platform: Quotes and Comments from Owen Chadwick’s The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century
This is not a normal book review. The vast majority of those who might be interested in its premise will not be interested in buying the book, or reading it. Chadwick’s contribution to the genre is academic and scholarly. Professor Chadwick is a noted British historian and clergyman who passed away in 2015 at the ripe old age of 99. So, why mention this historical work to the general public? For several reasons: (1) the full consequences of someone’s philosophic or religious ideas incubate for generations before societal fruition, (2) Christian education about the fundamentals of the Faith is never optional if the Church is to remain spiritually healthy and culturally virile, and (3) a continued refusal to deal with the secular mindset will not kill Christianity, but it will lead Christians into a catacomb-like existence once again.
Secularism is not an absence of God-talk! The political conventions of the republican and democratic parties give witness to this reality. How many times did we hear God’s name invoked at the end of a political speech- “God Bless America.” What is that supposed to mean when delegates insisted on God being removed from the party’s platform or included in order to impress the public that their party is “God’s” party? How did the country come to such a state of political schizophrenia?
Cursory analysis of societal trends or tendencies can be misleading, even confusing, if the big picture remains clouded. Chadwick clears the air by focusing on long-term realities which transform society’s mind. For the author, the ultimately important questions concern space and time. The ending of a nation’s insularity, or its becoming “gradually internationalized,” eventually brings about a global skepticism of religious things in general. Additionally, the gradual diffusion of new and opposing ideas to traditional religious expressions has an eroding effect on the Church. This fact can be represented visibly by collecting data on church attendance, etc. The writings of Marx, Darwin (and a host of others) in the second half of the 19th century have already cauterized Europe’s mind, and subsequently, America’s. Churches are empty; many congregants who still remain are shallow in their faith, at best. Chadwick concludes, “The start [secularization] is an intellectual fact and the end a social fact.” In other words, what gets into the head (individual hypothesis) can eventually end up in the feet (societal praxis).
Part 1: The Social Problem
Quotes and Comments on Part 1:
On Liberalism- “The Reformation in dividing Europe by religion, asked for a toleration which hardly anyone at first thought right. Men believed that society could not cohere if it permitted difference in religion…Christian conscience was the force which began to make Europe ‘secular’; that is, to allow many religions or no religion in a state, and repudiate any kind of pressure upon the man who rejected the accepted and inherited axioms of society...[My conscience] shows me that I cannot trample upon other people’s consciences, provided they are true to them, provided they do not seek to trample upon mine, and provided they will work with me to ensure that our differing consciences do not undermine by their differences the social order and at last the state.” (23-24)
Chadwick’s reference to the “Christian conscience” would be better termed the “Protestant conscience” which is subject to a deficient view of authority. The anthropocentrism of Martin Luther, and Protestantism in general, results in a minimalist view of the Christian Faith. It also lends itself to an individualistic belief system which equates to spiritual anarchy. On the other hand, a true “Christian conscience” can only be formed by adherence to God’s Law (The Ten Commandments). Historic Church catechisms as well as confessional guidelines are designed to foster a proper formation of the human conscience. Sin is still sin! God’s Law alone is the glue which holds individual sin and societal barbarism in check.
Karl Marx- “If we want to change men’s ideas, or to dissolve their illusions, we shall not do it in preaching atheism, or in undermining their beliefs by philosophizing. We shall change their conditions of work and life. To make religion vanish, we need not science but social revolution.” (59) “Marxism was the most powerful philosophy of secularization in the nineteenth century…Its power was intrinsic: the systematic and original exposition of a theory of secular society, based partly upon philosophical axioms and partly upon theories of contemporary economics.” (66)
In other words, Marxism undermines the moral order of society. Did not the 60’s Revolution accomplish a breakaway from traditional religious (Christian) practices? The erosion of our moral fiber has dehumanized our culture. Have you not noticed that Christian beliefs are continually vilified and ridiculed or ignored in the public square these days? Marxist thinking dominates public thinking today: on Sundays, is it sports or spirituality that is a priority; for your reading pleasure, would you choose Fifty Shades of Gray or the Ten Commandments to reflect upon; and lastly, which is more important to civility, family or government?
The attitudes of the worker- “[T]he European working-man was interested in bread, and drink, and the next meal, and the pub on the corner. So far as truth meant a concern for abstract ideas, he was too near subsistence to care much. The secularist argument, though an argument about truth, did not thrive on truth…It was hard for secularist leaders to bear, but the worker was too tired for education and came, if he came, because he wanted entertainment. They spread their light more by catering for men’s leisure than by appealing to their minds. The churches were not different.” (103)
Truth is too kind a word for the secularists; deceit and intimidation are better ones. Use of the educational system to dumb down the general populace also furthers a secularist agenda. The more ignorant the population, the more easily manipulated they become. Secularists’ catering to leisure is booming in the new 21st century. With the explosion in the telecommunications industry, entertainment is what we work for and what preoccupies our minds most of the time. One can only imagine what Sundays in the U.S. would be like without the NFL, or the outrage over restricting access to internet pornography. Most churches, being non-liturgical, rush to provide entertainment as a means of increasing attendance at worship services. Christian worship is not designed to get a good feeling, but give genuine worship to the one, true, living God.
The rise of anticlericalism- “…the Reformation rested the sacred upon the Bible alone, instead of a breadth of sacramental universe. Then it only needed historical criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to shake the sacredness of the Bible, and we had arrived at the ‘disenchantment of the world’.” (138)
Martin Luther and Reformation theology are egocentric in essence. Since liberalism promotes the liberties of the individual, Protestantism fits that political viewpoint. The principles of sola scriptura and sola fide have guided much of Protestantism into the natural consequences of private interpretation of the Holy Scriptures: division, and ultimately, compromise or death. Perhaps the coming persecution of Christians in the West will bring the Church to a more unified, historical position. Modern America has gradually compartmentalized and criticized Christianity out of the public square. The way forward for the Church is to stand strong for the fundamentals (essentials) of the Faith, resist the urge to entertain parishioners, and not be influenced by secular neighbors.
Part. 2: The Intellectual Problem
Quotes and comments on Part 2
Voltaire in the Nineteenth Century- [It is] "the preconditions of society which make old ideas obsolete and new ones magnetic...Away with doctrines of our evil human nature. Man is good, the world desirable, evil in the world comes from bad education and bad institutions...Human nature is good. This...is the key that secularizes the world." (143, 152)
[Voltaire's philosophy] "attacked Christian Churches not in the name of knowledge but in the name of justice and freedom...It was a contrast of unnatural ethics versus God-given ways of life. [This onslaught] had not overturned the Church but replaced it...stripping the essentials of the old religion and reforming it for us; Christianity secularized but still Christianity." (155-156)
The heart of secularization is the magnification of man as the center of the universe. The accomplishment of this goal could not abide the Christian understanding of human nature, i.e. the Fall of human beings and thus, original sin. The liberal belief is that human nature is essentially good and, therefore, Christianity needed to be tweaked in order to stay up with the "progress" of knowledge. It is the subtle shift of rescuing doctrine from the dark and superstitious days of the past. Now, Christians do not worry about their sins separating them from God. Now, God is "love" and human beings only make occasional mistakes which God gladly overlooks.
Science and Religion- "This antagonism between Religion and Science...is the continuation of a struggle which began when Christianity first attained political power. A revelation from God is absolute. It can brook no change, no modification, no improvement. But knowledge is always growing, always modifying opinion, always in movement. Faith is stationary, science progressive...[This is] not just science simpliciter, of science in contrast, and the contrast is with Catholicism." (161-162)
The struggle for superiority in the culture is no longer a battle as much as it is a capitulation of one to the other. With the advancements of DNA research, the chip revolution, and all other technocracies, humanity is now obliged to bow to the genius of scientific experts who are the new drivers of future civilizations. Even the Catholic Church has joined in the effort to bring about a one world government led by the ultimate technocrat, the anti-christ. While there will always be a faithful remnant, the Church, for the most part, is in cahoots with the secularists. The ultimate end-game will be the Church, not science. The Protestants have long-since been co-opted by secular culture by either being relegated to the private sphere, or the "social justice" crowd.
History and the Secular- Ecclesiastical history sired history. Then the Enlightenment interested men in the secular past...History can be poetic, dramatic, larger than legend, because it represents real human beings and human beings when real are more interesting than human beings when fabricated. But history is also 'scientific', in the sense of analysis, and stripping of documents, and statistical enquiry, and techniques of dating, and use of spade or computer. Its business is not legend but accounting for legend, not the beauty of the story but what happened (if anything happened) that lay under the story...the great question of the nineteenth century was the question whether historians, by probing the moments of time associated with religion, could affect its meaning." (189-191)
"History is powerful in forming minds because it forms them without the mind being conscious that it is being formed, and the reader thinks himself to be following only a story...History is a dangerous discipline because it surrounds self-deception with dulcet odors of antiquity, and anything which has stood there a long time has claims to respect...Our age sees the method of natural science as the way to truth. The supernatural is unverifiable, therefore the supernatural is not." (201-202, 217)
Truth is in short supply; it is a mass casualty in the war for the hearts and minds of people. History as an academic discipline, has been railroaded by Marxist historians who rewrite the narrative as exploiters vs. the exploited. Facts of the past are not important. Understanding the past without present prejudices is impossible. As a whole, Western civilization is to be loathed and discarded because it impedes the historical progress toward utopian, classless existence. Modern historians delight in their distortions of the past. In the educational settings of today's schools, history is reserved for coaches who teach at the lower levels and liberal or Marxist professors in the universities. A fair presentation of the Christian religion's contributions and stabilizing influence on the West is either excluded or derided.
For a more complete analysis, consult Jarrett Stepman's, The War on History, or Mary Grabar's Debunking Howard Zinn.
The Moral Nature of Man- "[M]orality never had been separated from religion in the entire history of the human race; and therefore those who undertook to provide a system of morality which should have no links with religion, because they were convinced that the prevailing religion was in ruins, had a task of exceptional difficulty, a task which was perhaps beyond their power if they wished to make their system of morality no mere theory but a system which would touch the conscience of a large number of ordinary men and women. To look for an 'autonomous' morality was nothing extraordinary. (229-230)
Comte asserts: "Moral standards can be seen to develop down the centuries as knowledge grew. They are modified by new circumstances, new understanding, better information; while they preserve what is good and permanent in what went before...The making of a system of ethics is nothing but looking back down history, and seeing what principles led to the moral progress of man. (225)
"The complicating fact for the late nineteenth century was the claim that you could have morality without Christianity while the morality which you must have was Christian morality. But men were good Christian men morally without possessing Christian faith...The Enlightenment freed morality from religion. But the problem is not solved. It hangs about us now. We still do not know whether we can preserve the moral order when we have lost the religious aspirations which were its end and its crown. (237, 241-242)
The predicament of this chapter on morality borders on insanity. The regress has moved from reconstructing Christianity to redefining Christianity to being a Christian without Christianity. Now, any semblance of authentic Christianity is an impediment to progress. Christianity is associated with hatred, bigotry, and backwardness. Either God's Word is true and timeless, and to be obeyed by the Faithful, or replaced by human, scientific "wisdom". Human-made morality is, by its origin, relativistic. Morality for one is not morality for all. The difference is fundamental. The absolutes of God never change and are not subject to cultural changes or new scientific knowledge. One thing is for certain. Modern and post-modern societies have moved the sure "Thou shalt not" to "I can and I will". What is immoral today will be accepted and practiced tomorrow. Guaranteed!
On a Sense of Providence- "The reason of the Enlightenment, after jerking its way in the turmoils of revolution, came again into its own, and remade philosophy, and sought to reconstruct society...But its confident mood could not last. Men who expect the impossible run into disillusion...They had thought their confidence due to great learning, and saw now that it sprang from too little learning; that as the questions were solved more questions multiplied. In the reconstruction of thought the old metaphysical questions refused to lie down." (252)
In discarding [orthodox Christianity] ...men won a new faith - in Science, or Progress, or Humanity, or Liberty...In jettisoning faith they jettisoned all faith....Now the dream was sour, and men were mediocrities, and society refused to be refashioned, and romance died." (255)
The long-term goal of placing man at the center of God's universe has reached its logical conclusion: increasing chaos, strident rhetoric, partisan divide, violence, emboldened revolutionaries, etc. The supreme symbol of Christianity, the Crucifix, has been effectively dismantled by secular thought within and without of the Church. No longer is the human soul important enough to save. The Gospel has been replaced by the human religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity (the official motto of the French Revolution). To the secularist, God does not exist. In truth, the true God is hated. We humans are the new gods. A last word to the faithful remnant: Stay faithful! (Ephesians 6:10-18).
Secularism is marching down your main street!
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