The rise of secular religion

Try arguing, in a society that is fixated on the extension of life, that there are some things worth dying for.

Try arguing that the self-created individual has been born out of a fantasy of empty freedom, or that antidiscrimination has become the name of moral relativism, or that multiculturalism forbids debate about culture: because all must be accepted in the name of inclusivity.

Do any of the above and you will be convicted of heresy against the prevailing religion of the day and the punishment could be the loss of employment and certainly the distain of the keepers of public morality, as Michael Leunig found out when he published a cartoon questioning the placement of young children in child care.

But, more tellingly, try these out on the floor of the Synod of liberal Protestant churches and you will find out where the land lies. You will find that where peace and tolerance and good intentions are preached most strongly, there resides a different orthodoxy that will condemn you to outer darkness.

This different orthodoxy has taken over the social responsibility councils of mainline churches to the extent that the gospel values of faith, hope, love and patience have been replaced by the Enlightenment values of tolerance, egalitarianism and liberty.

When a large part of community life cannot be discussed for fear of recrimination then that community is weakened to the point of paralysis. There is no longer a place for truth telling and honest debate and we begin to resemble those totalitarian regimes that we all despise. This means that public policy is decided along ideological lines to the detriment of the community.

It is curious that when we attempt to build the ideal society out of our feeling for fairness and justice we are liable to create something sinister. In the Bible this is known as the attempt to take the kingdom by violence. We miss the point that the peaceable kingdom can only be brought about under the tutelage of the one who is both creator and redeemer.

When we repeat the conditions of the fall and declare ourselves to be “like God” we fall into all of the traps set by the devious human heart.

The optimism that we found when we thought we had shaken off the oppressive superstitions of religion is now waning, instead of a new age of reason and enlightenment we find we have to do battle with the same old foes (that used to be called sin) that distort the human person.

Avarice and lust is celebrated on coarse quiz shows and Big Brother. Advertisers (those manipulators of the human heart) appeal to the lowest common denominator without censure. No talk about the importance of human rights or values or what is “appropriate” or responsible or sustainable will break the prison that we have created for ourselves.

The argument that secular religion is based on myth leaves us open to the accusation that Christianity is also similarly based. Casey’s answer is interesting:

It is important to recall how the West was set on the long trajectory of reason and freedom. The appearance of Christianity in the ancient world was decisive to this. From the beginning, as the former Cardinal Ratzinger has argued, Christianity based itself not on the poetry and presentiment that gave rise to myth but on philosophical rationality. It was not content to rely on a social or political justification and to worship in the absence of truth. Instead it appealed to knowledge and to the rational analysis of reality, displacing myth "not by virtue of a type of religious imperialism but as the truth which renders the apparent superfluous". The West today refuses to countenance Christianity's "claim to reasonableness", but a consequence of this has been the displacement of reason by myth, and the rise of irrationalism at the heart of democratic life.