How the West Really Lost God (A New Look at Secularization)

Hoover Institution | June/July 2007 | Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt

[AlbionGirl]

For well over a century now, the idea that something about modernity will ultimately cause religion to wither away has been practically axiomatic among modern, sophisticated Westerners.1 Known in philosophy as Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous story of the madman who runs into the marketplace declaring that “Gott ist tot,” and in sociology as the “secularization thesis,” it is an idea that many urbane men and women no longer even think to question, so self-evident does it appear.2 As people become more educated and more prosperous, the secularist story line goes, they find themselves both more skeptical of religion’s premises and less needful of its ostensible consolations.3 Hence, somewhere in the long run — perhaps even the very long run; Nietzsche himself predicted it would take “hundreds and hundreds” of years for the “news” to reach everyone — religion, or more specifically the Christianity so long dominant on the Continent, will die out.

As everybody also knows, much about the current scene would seem to clinch the point, at least in Western Europe. Elderly altar servers in childless churches attended by mere handfuls of pensioners; tourist throngs in Notre Dame and other cathedrals circling ever-emptier pews roped off for worshippers; former abbeys and convents and monasteries remade into luxury hotels and sybaritic spas; empty churches here and there shuttered for decades and then re-made into discos — even into a mosque or two. Hardly a day passes without details like these issuing from the Continent’s post-Christian front.4 If God were to be dead in the Nietzschean sense, one suspects that the wake would look a lot like this.

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Bookmarked!

[AlbionGirl]

Thank you. Especially for posting the whole thing instead of just a link. It gets its proper due that way.

[GoLightly]

Maybe. But I think once the Empire became the Church and the Church became the Empire, something magnificent was gained, but something plain, but essential was lost, or at the very least, deeply buried.

I think you're reversing cause & effect. Something plain & essential was overpowered by human nature, just as it has been since the fall. Empire swallowed the Church & the Church allowed it to happen, because it fits within man's comfort zone.

The Jews felt they needed an earthly King. Many of us believe that our rights are derived from the state, instead of from God. The West is drifting back to "the Law" ruling the hearts of men, not because of the will of God, but because men think they can be as gods & control good & evil. Power grabbers among us do what power grabbers always do, while the rest of us will mostly go along to get along.

Have you read any commentaries on, "The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de la Boétie"? For all I know, you're the one who originally posted the link to it at FR. LOL Anyway, here's a link, but you're gonna have to C&P it if you wanna read it.

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/boetie.asp#_ftnref61

I just finished reading The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan. It moved me a lot. He denied the Incarnation, the Trinity, etc., and at first I was worried about reading it, thinking it would adversely affect my Faith. But just the opposite happened -you can't be afraid to read things, that's a mark of fear and servility.

I agree. Can't know if there's any tensile in your beliefs unless you've tested them & when you find that they've stood the test, they're stronger than ever.

Anyway, he does a masteful job of bringing the human Jesus into the fore. But as he does it, the main thought that accompanies everything is this Human must needs be Divine.

There's no doubt in my mind.

It was also a sad read, because I sensed that he wanted to believe, but his logic forbade it. And because of that there was a melancholy strain through the whole thing.

I've come across people like that. In fact, one of my sons is like that. It's like, they're hollow, crying out to be filled up.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

As people become more educated and more prosperous, the secularist story line goes, they find themselves both more skeptical of religion’s premises and less needful of its ostensible consolations.

Part of the problem is that the modern mind cannot make a distinction between individuals and persons. You can have individual rocks and individual buffaloes, but these are not persons. Stalin may have been a great individual, in the sense that Ayers rock is a really great individual rock, but he was not a great person. The concepts of individual liberty and individual greatness are nothing like personal liberty and personal greatness. And yet it is the former which everyone runs after, not the latter. As Solzhenitsyn says in this thread: a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil... and this would correspond to what people call "individual liberty", whereas personal liberty follows naturally from the freedom to do what is good.

[Condor 63]

if that's true, what kind of children are we?

Flawed, insecure and human ones.

[Kolokotronis]

“During that time, everyone did need one another, but it didn’t make them better people or better Christians, when all is said and done. A very contracted nature and an abiding jealousy was part and parcel of the peasant class. And while I think jealousy is not a defect known only to peasants, to peasants who really are bright, energetic and hard workers but who can’t climb out of that pit of misery because of economics, it gnarls them.”

Americans don’t generally understand this about peasant societies, all peasant societies. By the way, what part of GREECE did you say your people were from? :)

[AlbionGirl]

I wasn't aware of the commentaries you mention, but thanks for the addy and the very good reponse to my post.

Only thing I want to add is that even those wanting that "the law" should rule the hearts of men can't run from Jesus' comprehensive Founding of all that they deem worthwhile.

Hippies were a prime example of trying to take what Jesus left, throw in a little of Jesus himself for good measure, and then setting him aside as some sort of incidental comrade. Hence the vanity of the thinking that Jesus was a democrat, and the even greater vanity of the fundamentalists who assert the oppposite.

When I was reading The Life of Jesus, it struck me how much we all really want to find the veritable and touchable Historical Jesus. And, I think that's because our knowledge of Him through Scripture really is like looking through a glass darkly. We can't really lay hold of His Divinity in a way that's touchable, so we look for the human to make it more easily apprehended. It's a never ending search for those who feel the call to Imitation.

[AlbionGirl]

I've been on a life-long quest for beauty and never knew it until recently. And I don't think it's a conscious quest. It may follow from Baptism, I don't know. The following from David Hart, an Orthodox genius who writes of God and beauty, and who speaks, I think to your idea on personal liberty.

Hell is the perfect concretization of ethical freedom, perfect justice without delight, the soul’s work of legislation for itself, where ethics has achieved its final independence from aesthetics. Absolute subjective liberty is known only in hell. [H]ell is the purest interiority. [I]t is a turning in, a fabrication of an inward depth, a shadow, a privation, a loss of the whole outer world, a refusal of the surface.

Before I ever knew who Mr. Hart was though, I was a big fan of Leonard Cohen, who wrote the following song. At first glance, it may seem at odds with the ideas of Mr. Hart, but I think they are similarly beautiful.

I Came So Far For Beauty

I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned
I thought I'd be rewarded
For such a lonely choice
And surely she would answer
To such a very hopeless voice
I practiced all my sainthood
I gave to one and all
But the rumours of my virtue
They moved her not at all
I changed my style to silver
I changed my clothed to black
And where I would surrender
Now I would attack
I stormed the old casino
For the money and the flesh
And I myself decided
What was rotten and what was fresh
And men to do my bidding
And broken bones to teach
The value of my pardon
The shadow of my reach
But no, I could not touch her
With such a heavy hand
Her star beyond my order
Her nakedness unmanned
I came so far for beauty
I left so much behind
My patience and my family
My masterpiece unsigned

[AlbionGirl]

By the way, what part of GREECE did you say your people were from? :)

In whatever part they gather around the table to eat together, shout together and weep together.

[Kolokotronis]

“In whatever part they gather around the table to eat together, shout together and weep together.”

Ah, the good part...which is to say my part! :)

[Greg F]

Thanks for the link to Weber, I’d been meaning to read him for about 2 decades . . .

[Greg F]

2 Corinthians 12:9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

[AlbionGirl]

Thanks for this post and ‘welcome regarding the Weber link.

[redgolum]

Warfare has gone through many phases. We are currently in the “high tech” phase, much like the medieval period.

Which means the generals (or the nobles) make decisions in a vacuum more often than not.

[redgolum]

Not just money, but material things.

I know a few rich people who could walk away right now with their families, start over with nothing, and be joyful. I know many who could be given everything they desired, and it wouldn’t be enough.

As St. Paul said, we should learn to be content in all situations. That is very hard.

[redgolum]

Americans don’t generally understand this about peasant societies, all peasant societies.

Indeed. My great grandfather fled Germany to come here with his older brother (why he ended up in Nebraska I will never know!), and some of his earlier life made an impression on him that found its way to my grandfather. Because of that, my Grandpa and Dad were very happy about life, even when things were very bad. Because they knew that things could get better.

[Alex Murphy]

The Belmont Club posted the most unforgettable speech by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

You might also enjoy this poem, titled "Prayer", found at the end of Solzhenitsyn's Pictoral Autobiography:

How easy for me to live with You, O Lord!
How easy for me to believe in You!
When my mind parts in bewilderment
or falters,
when the most intellegent people see no further
than this day's end
and do not know what must be done tomorrow,
You grant me the serene certitude
that You exist and that You will take care
that not all the paths of good be closed.
Atop the ridge of earthly fame,
I look back in wonder at the path
which I alone could have never found,
a wonderous path through despair to this point
from which I, too, could transmit to mankind
a reflection of Your rays.
And as much as I must still reflect
You will give me.
But as much as I cannot take up
You will have already assigned to others.

[VOA]

bump