Today’s
secularism is an aggressive bulldozer. It will not tolerate any competition,
pushing aside any opposition to its reign. Arrogantly, it believes that it can
retain the benefits of Western civilization, while discarding its foundation –
Christianity.
Alexis de
Tocqueville, French statesman, historian and social philosopher, wrote “Democracy in America” (1835). It has been
described as "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the
relationship between character and society in America that has ever been
written."
Tocqueville
wanted to understand why the American Revolution and American democracy had
proved to be such a success. According to Tocqueville, freedom and morality
both found their American incarnation in Christianity:
- Religion in America ... must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.
Tocqueville
had been well acquainted with the demands for freedom and equality that had
arisen from his own French revolution, ironically entailing the hatred and
murder of the clergy. This revolution had confidently sought to push aside
anything that stood in its way. However,
with the advantage of decades of hindsight, another revolution was something
that the French wanted to avoid at all costs. With the lessons of his own
French revolution in mind, Tocqueville wrote:
- The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.
He therefore
appreciated the moral constraints that he found so ubiquitously associated with
democracy in the USA:
- I do not question that the great austerity [self-control] of manners that is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, from religious faith...its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated...
Continually,
he found that the fruitful expression of democracy was inseparable from its
underlying Christian roots:
- In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people.... Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate.
Tocqueville’s
glowing observations of Christian faith and conduct do not claim that
Christianity had rooted out all evils. It certainly didn’t. Nor had any other religion
or government. Slavery remained a troubling example. This failure should not be
used to discredit the entirety of the Christian influence.
According to Tocqueville, America’s greatness
was the outgrowth of what the churches were preaching:
- I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
In contrast,
today’s secularism believes that it can retain the fruits of Christian society
without its roots. It seeks to replace the Christian foundation with its own
materialistic and relativistic presuppositions and expects that these will
support the house of their dreams. Secularism wants to retain the ideas of
equality and equal protection under the law – the Bill of Rights – but it fails
to see that their materialistic foundation can’t support this structure.
Historically,
materialism has not been able to provide the basis of these prized values. Just
look at the workers’ “utopia” of the communistic atheistic nations! Why have
these nations been so characterized by oppression and violence? From a strictly
materialistic worldview, there can be no
possible basis for equality or “unalienable rights.” Regarding humans
materialistically, we find that some are tall and some are short; some are
likable and some are not; some promote justice, while some undermine it; some
contribute to society, while some prove to be very costly, even undermining the
common good. Consequently, as seen through the materialistic lens, some have a
positive value and some a negative one. Is there therefore any basis for
equality from this perspective? Not at all!
Christians
also have a materialistic lens. However, we are not limited to this lens. We also have a transcendent one. We see
equality and the surpassing value of humanity even in the murderer, because this
is the reality that God sees. We protect, because God protects, even the most
unworthy. We maintain that all have unalienable rights because all have been
created in the image of God. We, therefore, cannot deprive anyone of their
unalienable rights, because they don’t come essentially from us but from God.
However, according
to the lens of secularism, it is secularism that grants the rights.
Consequently, it is secularism that can also retract those rights, as we see
happening before us. There is nothing in a materialistic worldview that
requires that our rights be unalienable.
After all, everything is in flux, and so too should our rights be subject to
the whims of the State!
Even worse,
there is nothing in secular materialism that would argue in favor of equal
treatment. If some humans have a positive social value, in that they contribute
to the welfare of society, and some have a negative, there is no justification
for not treating the negatively-valued humans in a negative way. Consequently,
materialism cannot honestly value equality and unalienable human rights.
The same
argument can also be applied to the concept of “freedom.” Where there is no
material basis for equality, there is also no basis for equal freedom. (In
fact, many secularists deny the reality of freewill and therefore culpability!)
After all, some even vote “republican” and against gay marriage. Why should
their ideas be tolerated? Well, as secularism secures its grip, any ideas that
impede its agenda are no longer tolerated. The popular vote can be overturned
by a single judge. The charge of “unconstitutional” can be brought against any
objectionable idea or popular vote.
The
secularism of today has lost its taste for freedom as the quest for
self-fulfillment has proliferated. Tocqueville warned that democracy is
vulnerable in this regard:
- Men who are possessed by the passion of physical gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs their welfare before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote it.
What is not
honored – our freedoms and liberties – will eventually whither and disappear. Tocqueville
realized that the pursuit of “equality” could produce some bad fruit:
- But there exists in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.
The argument
in favor of “equality” can be applied in many
illegitimate ways. It can be used to produce “equality” between parents and
their children, depriving parents of their rightful authority in favor of the Secular State. It can be used as a bulldozer to
push aside any sexual distinctions. Consequently, it is argued that we should
be allowed to marry or to sex anyone and any number we please. It is only our
appetites that should set the limit. Meanwhile, there is no longer a
willingness to regard the many studies that have unequivocally demonstrated
that children (and society) do far better, in a myriad of ways, with their
biological parents.
Our personal
comforts and pleasures tend to reign over concerns about distant abstract
principles such as freedom and justice. Therefore, Tocqueville warned:
- A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Democracy is
a fragile flower, which requires regular cultivation. History is the test tube
for our ideas, and the future will cast its dispassionate verdict on them. It
will also give us what we deserve. Already, anti-Christian secularism is
bearing its fruit in terms of abortions, STDs, suicides, criminality, and
broken families throughout the Western world, starting with its radical
incarnation in the sixties.
We will reap
what we sow and sadly, we will probably find that Tocqueville’s words – “The safeguard of morality is religion, and
morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom” –
have proved prophetic.
Does this
analysis prove the truth of the Christian faith? We should ask:
·
How
is it possible that this ancient book – the Bible – has produced such good
fruit? Why have the “truths” of communism, National Socialism, and Islam
produced such devastation, while the teachings of the Bible have produced human
flourishing?
Sadly, most
will receive the final verdict only after it is too late.
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