The Secularization Hypothesis Is Doubly Mistaken

First Quarter 2000

by James W. Skillen

One of the apparent surprises of the last decades of the twentieth century was the explosion of religious vitality throughout most of the world. The "surprise" included the surge of Islam from the Middle East across through Indonesia and of Evangelical and Pentecostal movements in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States. The term most often used by the media and other elites for this surge of religiosity is "fundamentalism"—a term that conveys the very bias that causes them to be surprised by the phenomenon. For these religious surges can be thought of as a surprise only by those who believe that religions are supposed to weaken and gradually disappear as humans make progress through history. Religion, in their view, is an old-fashioned crutch that humans used before they could become self-sufficient through science and the organizing power of new economic and political systems.

Religions Are Not Evaporating

Most academics and other western elites still look at life through the glasses of so-called "modernization theory," which entails the secularization hypothesis. But not all. Sociologist Peter Berger writes in a recent essay that no one should have been surprised by the vitality of religions throughout the world because human beings are unalterably religious. The more difficult thing to explain is the secularism of Europe, not the religiousness of the rest of the world. Berger's essay introduces a book titled The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999), which includes essays on different world religions and different parts of the world.

David Martin, for example, writes about unprecedented growth of Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, particularly in Latin America. The major argument of his essay was reiterated by most of the speakers at a December 3 conference on the rise of Protestantism in Latin America held at The Brookings Institution and sponsored by the Civitas Program in Faith and Public Affairs. Howard Wiarda, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that U.S. foreign policy is thoroughly secular in outlook and policy makers would prefer not to deal with, or have to account for, the elusive factor of charismatic religion. Paul Freston, from the Federal University of Sao Carlos in Brazil, described the unanticipated and little-known (outside of Brazil) political impact of Evangelicals in his country (most of whom are quite different from American Evangelicals). The Washington Post's Roberto Suro said that few in the U.S. media understand the dynamics and implications of the religious life of recent Latino immigrants in the United States.

The first error, then, of the secularization hypothesis is its undergirding belief that history is, and ought to be, moving in a direction that it is not. The hypothesis simply does not explain reality.

Secularization Is Not Non-Religious

The second error is even less noticed than the first. It is the assumption that when and where secularization occurs, it truly represents something nonreligious. With this assumption, even if one admits that religion is thriving rather than declining in much of the world, one can still believe that the secularism of Europe and of the intellectual elite in the United States is a nonreligious phenomenon. Yet this is precisely what is questionable. Because, if it is true that humans are unalterably religious, and if that is why religiosity will not disappear even with the growth of science and technology, then it follows that the secularization hypothesis and secularism are also religious through and through. You may prefer to describe them as secularly religious or non-theistically religious, but they are not nonreligious.

The secularization hypothesis is, after all, a firm conviction, grounded in a deeply held faith about the meaning of life and the direction of history. Why has it held up so long even in the face of evidence that contradicts it? The reason is that the worldview of secularism is deeply religious and those who hold that faith can no more escape its bias, without conversion, than can those who hold other religious worldviews.

The point to be made—and the counter hypothesis that needs exploring—is that in the United States and Europe as well as in the rest of the world we are not immersed in "culture wars" caused by the conflict between religious and secular forces, or between fundamentalists and nonreligious modernists. No, the deep-seated conflicts are between and among people committed to different religions. Some religions are traditional, some are new, and among the new religions are those guided by a secular faith, a belief system held by communities whose gods--which they do not acknowledge as gods—are the idols of human autonomy, scientific rationality, technological progress, the nation, economic growth, a communist future, or sheer power in itself.

The political question, then, is not, How does religion relate to non-religious politics? but rather, What kind of politics—what stances, arguments, policies, and principles—flow from different religions, whether they are older or newer religions? We will not understand the political dynamics of the contemporary world until we recognize the religiousness of all peoples and cultures and the differences among their basic assumptions and diverse impacts on political and economic developments.

Sacred Distance from Secular Power?

Consider, in this regard, a point made by Stephen Carter in his book The Dissent of the Governed. Carter is a Christian who defends the legitimacy of religious expression in public life, and recognizes that faith is so central to most believers that "there is no sphere of life in which acknowledgment of that faith is deemed inappropriate." Nevertheless, his view of the proper place of religion in the world is still largely shaped by an Enlightenment worldview or faith.

Religions at their best, he writes, act as "public moral critics" from outside the corrupt sphere of "secular authority." They are most truly religious when they remain "at heart and in practice . . . separate dissenting communities of meaning . . . away from the temptations and incentives of the secular sovereign." Electoral politics, on the other hand, is the setting in which religions show their worst side. Religions "that drive for secular power," says Carter, "lose their best selves, for once one is able to tell others what to do, the incentive for inspiration disappears, replaced with the incentive for violence that is a characteristic of the secular sovereign, and so the religions begin the process of losing their souls."

The difficulty internal to this view becomes apparent when one realizes that the very same Americans who are members of religious communities also happen to be American voters and citizens. Carter is asking such people, when they act religiously, to think of themselves as part of a dissenting community, and, when they act as voters, to think of themselves as secularized, power-mongers. When they do the former, they are saving their souls; when they do the latter they are losing their souls.

This may appear at first glance to reflect a high view of religion, but in fact, it reflects a low and highly confining view of Christianity and a dualistic view of human nature. Essentially Carter encourages Christians to stay out of public life, which he pictures as a nonreligious, secular business. One can only speak and think like this, however, from a standpoint that tries to hold religion and secularism together on some other basis—on the basis of a more comprehensive view of life. Carter imagines himself standing somewhere, outside of all religions and secular life, where he can distinguish and connect religious communities and the secular world. In truth, however, this is simply another religious standpoint, a dualistic, rationalistic standpoint in which the supposedly transcendent human interpreter sets the boundaries of life between private piety and secular politics. Yet this view of life only makes sense to those who share such a faith, who belong to a community which shares that dualistic view of life.

From a biblical standpoint, such a dualism is radically mistaken. Only God transcends and holds together all spheres of life, and everything depends on God. Humans do not stand above both religion and secular life, able to confine God to one half of life and to hold the two halves together in themselves. Moreover, the biblical story has a high view of governmental authority in which God holds the "sovereign" accountable to do justice to all—with special concern for the poor and the weak. Indeed, government is authorized to use force in order to protect the innocent and to thwart or punish the evil doer. Not every Christian should hold public office, but Christians as a community and those who hold public office ought to be expressing their true souls of complete commitment to God when they act as citizens and officeholders. In fact, as Christian citizens they ought to be seeking justice by and through government. In democratic societies, Christians ought to be involved in elections for just such a purpose, not as selfish power-mongers. In other words, a Christian point of view, in contrast to an Enlightenment view, entails a different understanding of politics and government as well as of religion.

What Carter helps to illustrate is the difference and incompatibility of conflicting religions or ways of life in modern America where nothing is non-religious. A radical secularist who holds Carter's view would claim that his view is not religious at all. Carter openly confesses his Christian faith and does not claim to be a secularist. Nevertheless, with regard to his view of religion and politics, Carter and many secularists share the same dualistic worldview. The argument or conflict I have with Carter, then, is not because I don't share his Christian faith; it is precisely because we are both Christians that I want to contend with him over his reduced view of Christianity and his secularistic view of politics. I want to expose the dualism, which is rooted in Enlightenment faith, not in Christian faith. That view of life offers no Christian guidance to citizens throughout the world who are trying to be whole-hearted followers of Jesus Christ in all areas of life. It tells them, essentially, to let their Christian passion flourish in worship, evangelism, family life, perhaps education, and in political dissent. It tells them nothing about how to seek justice in and through politics.

If it is true, as Berger argues, that the world is becoming desecularized, then it is important that Christians give up every vestige of the misguided secularistic faith that undergirds the secularization hypothesis. Secularism needs to be exposed as the religion it truly is. Only in this way can Christians and people of other faiths begin to come to grips with real differences and agreements. Only in this way can a thoroughly Christian view of politics, government, and public life be developed.