Humanism and the Future of Christianity
E-Book, Englisch, 206 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-73219-528-8
Verlag: Isaac Publishing
Format: EPUB
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1 INTRODUCTION - THE NEW CIVIC RELIGION “Although … we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” US President Barack Obama, 2009 Since the Second World War, Western societies have been undergoing a transformation. From societies founded on Biblical principles and resting on a Christian foundation they are changing to societies resting on humanism and a civic religion with its own theology, ideology and morality. This has resulted in the gradual erosion not just of faith but also of a Christian moral basis. Following mass killing by so-called Christian nations in two world wars and the gross inhumanity against Jews in the Holocaust, questions began to be raised about the validity of societies based on Christian principles. If Christians can do such things to each other and commit such horrendous crimes against Jews, then what use, people asked, was Christianity? New ideas began to be explored about Christianity, other religions and the wider world. Karl Rahner (1904-1984), a German Jesuit priest, believed in “anonymous Christians” by which he meant that non-Christians who behaved like Christians had God’s grace at work in their lives and would gain salvation. Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), a minister in the United Church of Canada and a professor at Harvard University, questioned the whole concept of religion, saying it was a relatively recent European idea, not a universal, worldwide idea. He wrote a book called The Meaning and End of Religion (1962). Don Cupitt (born 1934), a British Anglican priest and a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, has described himself as a Christian non-realist because he does not believe that God and Christ are real. His 1984 book The Sea of Faith challenged traditional Christian belief and led to a Sea of Faith movement whose aim is to “explore and promote religious faith as a human creation”. He sees traditional faith as ebbing away. These new ideas marginalised traditional Christian belief in favour of a pluralist multi-dimensional type of Christianity. Furthermore, a new civic religion was gradually developed to replace Christianity at the state level. President Obama described America in 2009 as a nation whose people were bound together by ideals and values, but not by Christianity or any other religion. This civic religion, which has its own moral and ethical values and no belief in the supernatural, lies at the heart of humanism. THE CONCEPT OF JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY – HOW IT BEGAN AND WHERE IT HAS LED In his essay The Strange Short Career of Judeo-Christianity (22 March 2016), Gene Zubovich, writes on how a liberal Church, influenced by a humanist culture and ideology, has allowed the Christian moral framework, which had shaped Western societies for centuries, to be watered down. In America during the Second World War it began to be popular for Christians to celebrate the similarities between Christian and Jewish morals and values. This was done mostly as an act of solidarity with and support for Jewish people in light of the atrocities being committed by the Nazis against the Jews. In this way the idea of a Judeo-Christian moral heritage and identity was created. Zubovich goes on to explain that what started off with good intentions has now been taken too far. Recently it has become popular to expand the Judeo-Christian value system to include the moral values of the Islamic religion. Church leaders often try to find common ground between the three religions, sometimes called the Abrahamic religions. However, Christianity and Islam differ very much from each other in their moral teaching. Therefore, in order to find common ground with Muslims, Christian leaders have compromised on many of the core beliefs and fundamental values of Christianity. Even more recently some Christians have started to speak about a common value system that Christians, Jews and Muslims share with people who have no religious belief. The quotation from President Obama at the beginning of this chapter is one example. It is a general trend in many Western churches that a civic moral system is being promoted by the Church at the expense of Christian core beliefs. HOW CIVIC RELIGION DEVELOPED IN AMERICA America’s civil religion was established at its Founding and is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence (1776). It was theistic and non-sectarian for the simple reason that the organised political system of America was made up of a variety of religious groups, all of which wished for freedom of religion. However, the American Founding can only be understood in terms of the Christian context in which it took place. On 28 June 1813 John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, about the basic principles on which the Founders achieved independence. President Adams asked: “And what were these principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity in which all those sects were united and the general principles of English and American liberty in which all these young men united… Now I will avow that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God. And that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature… I could, therefore, safely say consistently with all my then and present information, that I believe they would never make discoveries in contradiction to these general principles.” America understood itself in these terms well into the twentieth century, especially in respect to its struggles against the two forms of totalitarianism – Nazism and communism. But the American civil religion has now changed. As moral and cultural relativism (or subjectivism) became accepted, so confidence was lost in the objective truth of the “eternal and immutable” principles of Christianity. This loss can be seen in The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama’s book written in 2006 before he became president, in which he stated: “Implicit in [the Constitution’s] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or ‘ism’, and any tyrannical consistency that might block future generations into a single, unalterable course.” In other words, Obama is saying that, the truth does not set you free; the truth enslaves you. According to this argument, it is necessary to reject objective truth in order to have freedom. Gone are the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” (as described in the Declaration of Independence) on which the United States was founded. Humanism is their replacement. The American civil religion has now been transformed into a weapon against the very truths that made it possible. The state is now being used to enforce the doctrines of humanism. This is being replicated in many other countries, creating situations where the government controls all the religions through an overarching civic religion that effectively side-lines God and puts humans at the centre. C.S. Lewis had warned in 1943 that such moral subjectivism “must be the destruction of the society which accepts it”. If people believe there is no such thing as objective truth or objective morality, then they do not teach virtue to their children. Worse still, they tell their children there is no such thing as virtue. This erodes both the practical and the theoretical foundations of democracy and free government. With each person “a law unto himself”, anarchy is the logical result. Anarchy will swiftly be replaced by tyranny because, as Robert R. Reilly (1983, p. 21) says, “People have always shown their preference for despotism over disorder.” HUMANISM The collapse of Christian morality in society has been partly the result of deliberate, orchestrated and intentional humanist efforts, subtle yet aggressively effective. This “humanist missionary movement” is described in chapter 5. Humanism believes that there is no God and so it is up to humans to save themselves by creating their own morals and way of living. Unlike Christianity, humanism teaches that humans are by nature good. Humanism does not say anything about a fallen nature that needs to be redeemed, Humanism also holds that moral standards that are right for some people in some situations may be wrong for other people in other situations. This is called “situational ethics”. There is no God to guide or command, so there are no absolute rights and wrongs. People can and should choose how they live and cannot be blamed for what they do. There is no such thing as sin in humanism (except the “sin” of believing in God). Humanists believe that everything can be explained by science and rational thought. Not all atheists and humanists are actively opposed to religion. Some even recognise and affirm the value of Christian morals and the positive effect they have had on society, and wish to see these moral values continue. However, fundamentalist atheist and humanist movements have emerged whose beliefs and activities are as extreme as those associated with the worst forms of religious extremism. This fundamentalist type of humanism opposes the Christian way of living, and seeks to remove all religious influence from society, especially...
