I analysed three broad forms of belief and their associated ways of life: atheism, non-religious ‘spirituality,’ and organised ‘religion.’ The overarching message of the three talks was that ‘religion’ is the only stable option of the three, and that we therefore need to prepare to engage with the coming religious resurgence.
Because God really exists, atheism is radically wrong – it is wrong about the fundamental, foundational realities of the universe, therefore wrong about everything else – and is therefore unsurprisingly in rapid retreat everywhere. Spirituality, understood as a relatively individualised, personalised, non-institutional, non-dogmatic openness to the supernatural, is on the rise. But its highly individualised, voluntary nature means it does not possess religion’s ability to build stability for individuals and communities.
The difference between what I mean by ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ is that religion is more consciously communal in and through time. A ‘religion’ tends to hold certain beliefs as possessing inherent authority. These beliefs become that religion’s boundary markers. They are not open to negotiation but must be accepted to belong to that religion. This doctrinal confidence, this tendency towards possessing some sort of ‘orthodoxy,’ gives the religion the stability to build communities of people who hold those beliefs, and to teach those beliefs to the next generation. And these stable communities are able to build institutions – schools, temples, mosques, and churches – not just the buildings, but the social organisations associated with those buildings – which reflect their beliefs and contribute to the continued reinforcement and propagation of those beliefs.
This is why I think religion in general, expressed through various religions, will always be on the right side of history. Only religion possesses the internal organisational resources to propagate itself sufficiently, in and through time, to form distinct communities, which may develop or coalesce into nations or even empires or civilisations.
And so it was rather gratifying, having just presented the above argument, to read this article in the UK’s New Statesman on the rise of cultural Christianity. It makes many of the same points I did at the weekend away.
Committed faith in Christ – the personal act of trusting him as the only expression of God, and the only way to be forgiven for turning away from God; becoming 'born again' to become a 'new creation in Christ' – is different from recognising Christianity’s value system and the depth to which those values have become ingrained into ‘western’ culture. Many church leaders throughout history have recognised that even within a ‘Christianised’ culture, those who are actually converted are probably a minority. The article notes the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther’s pessimism about conscientiously converted vs. merely ‘nominal’ – ‘in name only,’ not in substance – Christians.
Similarly, there has been through history, and continues to be in the present, unconverted people who recognise Christianity’s contribution to the common good. The article mentions UK prime ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee from the recent past, and Tom Holland, Jordan Peterson, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali today. But those theological beliefs, which Clement Attlee apparently disparaged as “mumbo-jumbo,” ground the value system, so the denial of those beliefs will necessarily cause the decline of those values. Ideas like the universal equality of humans, which underpins the entire ‘western’ legal concept of human rights, depend significantly upon irrationally “mad” beliefs about “a guy who got nailed to a cross and then rose from the dead and [who] offers the promise of eternal… life.”
Historically, ‘secularity’ did not mean the complete denial of God and the supernatural realm. It meant the denial of theocracy. Secularity used to mean the refusal to use the coercive powers of law and government to impose a particular religion upon anyone. Instead, people were permitted freedom of conscience to discover God for themselves. This kind of anti-theocratic secularity did not censor religious communication. If anything, it encouraged free, vigorous, but respectful debate about God, theology, and religion.
But the loss of a Christian religious centre to ‘western’ society has permitted the rise of a new, and ironically intolerant and censorious, quasi-religion. The article calls it an “elite Gnostic theology” enforced by “a new priesthood” who “polices conformity to [its] new dogmas and doctrines” and thereby creates a “new progressive [quasi] theocracy.” I call it a ‘seculocracy’: the intolerant imposition of secularity in ways which contradict freedom of conscience and honest religious faith. The NSW Presbyterian Church’s Gospel, Society and Culture committee, of which I’m a member, foresaw the rise of this kind of quasi-religious seculocracy back in 2015.
The philosophical materialism and nihilism implied by atheism has proven existentially implausible and unlivable. If God and the supernatural realm do not exist, you and I really have no more value, meaning or purpose than the fly I squished this morning. To be a consistent atheist, you have to believe that the emotional dispositions – the yearnings, the longings – and the ratiocinations – the intellectual activities of philosophy – which convince us of our value are nothing more than evolutionary self-deceptions intended to propagate the species. But of course, this belief that we mean nothing is also an act of ratiocination. Why should a ratiocination of despair be more epistemically valid than ratiocinations of hope? Even Descartes thought that he was, not that he was not.
It is therefore completely unsurprising that, as the article says, “there [has been] a backlash [against] materialism and a greater openness to considering the possibility of “things unseen,”” and that in the public square, the aggressive atheists have been superseded by those who “speak positively about the influence of Christian faith upon culture.”
But the article also notes how this renewed use of religion to bind people and communities together – the rediscovery of religion’s therapeutic, formative, informative, creative, and social values – has become associated with seemingly contradictory attitudes of exclusion and hostility. From my perspective, this stems from a wrongful application of religion’s boundary-setting nature. Any nation can and should benefit from Christian doctrine and virtue, and thereby become Christian influenced. But any nation can also benefit from the teachings and virtues of other religions, and thereby become a genuinely open, tolerant, inclusive “multi-faith democracy.” There is no such thing as a Christian nation. There is only the church of God, from every tribe and people and nation.
How should Christians respond to this renewed interest in religion? Jesus really is the answer. He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance - see Matthew 9:9-13 // Mark 2:13-17 // Luke 5:27-32. Christians can be positive about religion's individual and social benefits, while simultaneously decrying the adequacy of these virtues to make us right before the holy and almighty God. Jesus poured out his harshest condemnations upon religious people - the Pharisees, who thought their religious obedience made them good enough for God. See, e.g., Matthew 15:1-20 and 23:13-36. In Galatians 3:10-14, the Apostle Paul contrasts the 'religious' logic of obedience to divine moral requirements - God's law - with faith in Jesus, who takes upon himself the penalty we deserve for breaking God's law. And in Philippians 3:4-10, he uses himself as an example of the difference between religion and grace, between law and faith.
Furthermore, we should also seek to make hospitality one of those individual and social virtues. If any society wants to be influenced by Christ, let it be influenced by his ability to fraternise with 'sinners' - with those who were not virtuous - and simultaneously, in and through that fraternising, call them to a redemptive relationship with himself.
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