In today’s New York Times, University of Chicago professor Mark Lilla offers a disquieting historical essay, Church Meets State. In his conclusion, he says:
The leading thinkers of the British and American Enlightenments hoped that life in a modern democratic order would shift the focus of Christianity from a faith-based reality to a reality-based faith.
American religion is moving in the opposite direction today, back toward the ecstatic, literalist and credulous spirit of the Great Awakenings.
Its most disturbing manifestations are not political, at least not yet. They are cultural.
The fascination with the ''end times,'' the belief in personal (and self-serving) miracles, the ignorance of basic science and history, the demonization of popular culture, the censoring of textbooks, the separatist instincts of the home-schooling movement -- all these developments are far more worrying in the long term than the loss of a few Congressional seats.
No one can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so.
If there is anything David Hume and John Adams understood, it is that you cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and in Baton Rouge.
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)
To be sure, a reality-based faith is unquestionably the preferred option. But some of the things Professor Lilla bemoans can be seen as understandable reactions to the dismissal — indeed, the demonization — of faith in anything other than secular humanism.
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I have posted a critique of Lilla's essay, his narrowness of definitions and his misunderstanding of early 20th century German church history at the Confessing Reader.
My thanks to the Questioning Christian for bringing the essay to our attention.
Posted by: Todd Granger | May 17, 2005 at 05:35 PM
Who's reality?
Is it the reality that God created, or the reality that man creates for himself in NYC?
The Prof. cites, "the fascination with the ''end times,'' the belief in personal (and self-serving) miracles, the ignorance of basic science and history, the demonization of popular culture, the censoring of textbooks, the separatist instincts of the home-schooling movement," as DISTURBING trends.
However if you truely believe that Christ is returning to Judge the world and set up the New Jerusalem, why wouldn't you like Jesus, be conserned about the end times and pray daily Marana Tha? If you believe that, anything you ask in my Name the Father will give you, how could you not be interested in miracles, which are not so much a good in themselves as an sign to help our unbelief? Is it Christians who are ill versed in science and history (although undobtedly some are) or is it those who choose to see everything in the light of a Marxist, Feminist, Socialist, Historicist, etc. optic who are biased. Is it really censoring textbooks to put the history of Christianity or Christian ethics back into the texts and to remove, or to present more accurately, the biased ideologies that replaced these?
An if the Secular Humanist Ideology is the dominant power in our Public schools, as the head of the National Association of Teachers said not too long ago, then is it wrong to have a separatist inclination if you don't want your child re-programed in school. E.g. is it censoring or bad science to remove texts that suggest that homosexuality is normative, that the arrival of the Spanish in the Americas was less just than the human sacrifical culture they stumbled upon, or that there are no "credible" doubts about Darwinism (like the cambrian explosion)? Is it biased to teach about God, if he exists? Is it biased to teach about his self-revelation? Of course the premise of this article is that He doesn't exist, that He didn't reveal Himself, that religions are all the same and that they are just a tool to help people adjust (opiate of the masses, that sounds familiar, its too bad I am not well versed in history)?
By the way, anyone who generalizes that all Christians don't know their history and/or science seems to be stretching themselves a little thin. I mean it was Christianity that invented the University, the Hospital, etc, etc, but I guess we overlooked this fact in our historical awareness?
Posted by: romani | May 20, 2005 at 04:50 AM
Romani
Quote "By the way, anyone who generalizes that all Christians don't know their history and/or science seems to be stretching themselves a little thin. I mean it was Christianity that invented the University, the Hospital, etc, etc, but I guess we overlooked this fact in our historical awareness?"
Actually I think you made the author's point. Christianity did NOT invent universities. Plato taught one long before the birth of Christ.
Likewise the ancient Romans in the 2nd Century AD had hospitals. perhaps you need more historical awareness? :)
Posted by: Bosk | January 01, 2006 at 02:17 AM