The Secular Was a Strategy | Faith & Politics #7

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.

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Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 3: Hey, everyone.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr.

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Speaker 1: James Spencer. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Ashish Pharma, as well as our special guest today, Dr.

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Speaker 2: Michael McDuffie.

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Speaker 1: Michael was a professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute, now lives over in Germany. He's done multiple Reformation tours, some of which I've been on and quasi-helped with, and just an all-around good guy. And we're going to be talking today a little bit about political theology, the nature of politics. how this affects the church and Christendom and all those kind of ideas. And so, Mike, we're really happy you were able to come on the podcast. Appreciate you being here.

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Speaker 3: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you two guys.

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Speaker 4: Good to see you as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be a fun conversation. So you gave us some homework.

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Speaker 1: Read an essay by Habermas, which I did. I'm interested to get your take on it. I've read Habermas before, and I was a little concerned when you said, hey, get this book by Habermas, because I'm like, we've only got a week. I'm not sure I can get through a Habermas book in a week. But it was a nice short essay, so I appreciate you taking it easy on us.

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Speaker 2: So describe the essay. Let's just start there.

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Speaker 1: What was your context and purpose for us reading that, and what's your take on what he's talking about there?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's... He's important. I don't know so much in America, but here over in Europe, I mean, the European Union and Germany in particular, post-World War II, how do you set up a social order and a form of government that is just and humane and recognizes human rights, human worth, and human dignity? And Habermas was the voice coming out of Germany. We remember where Germany was after 1945. So his philosophy of communicative action in order to establish a sense of social order and public ethics is absolutely crucial. And of course, he was thinking as a child of the Enlightenment, but after 9-11, he was shaken and needed to reevaluate, well, can reason alone and can the autonomous subject be able to behave morally? And that question caused him to interact with religious figures, most especially Roman Catholics. But then the little thing that we read was an awareness of what is missing. And this is a major step because Habermas is seeing that can the weight that we put on the Enlightenment sense of reason, can it carry legitimacy in terms of law and social order? And thus, with the post-secular, he's recognizing the importance of religion, that by the secularization theory that was most especially supported in the 1960s with economic takeoff and the wonders of science after World War II, religion didn't go away. And so he interacted with that. Now, I'll just read a short paragraph to frame it a bit. As one of this generation's most respected philosophers in contemporary Europe, Jürgen Habermas makes clear that living in a secular society is no longer bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization can advance only at the cost of the public influence and personal relevance of religion. Describing modern societies in post-secular terms, Habermas refers to a change in consciousness that he traces back primarily to three phenomena. The first is the resurgence of politicized religion in global affairs. Perceiving global conflicts as precipitated by or somehow connected to religious values undermines the secularistic belief in the foreseeable disappearance of religion and robs the secular understanding of the world of triumphal zest, he wrote. Beyond this, religion is gaining influence not only worldwide, but also within national public spheres. The most, the post-secular person increasingly encounters on a regular basis people infused with religious consciousness. In addition to the social reality that naivete is unavailable for the believer or unbeliever alike, there is a growing awareness that living in a secular society is no longer bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization can advance only at the cost of the public influence and personal relevance of religion. What particularly impressed him is that churches and religious organizations are increasingly assuming the role of what he called communities of interpretation in the public arena of secular societies. Thirdly, he realized that the immigration of men, women, and families with traditional cultural backgrounds only contributed to accelerating this change of consciousness. So, that kind of lays the groundwork. That's what he was struck with, and... what he referred to as the awkwardness of a secular understanding of social order. And as I said earlier, it's like Miles Davis said, if you're not nervous, you're not paying attention. Habermas got nervous. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Do you see, and I just don't know this question, after the French Revolution, you have guys like Emile Durkheim who are trying to replace religion with sociology. And that was obviously a failed attempt, like that endurance of religion, even in a more arguably a more secularized, more hostile sort of country like France, religion continued. And so do you see any influences on Habermas from that sort of historical perspective?

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Speaker 3: Oh, definitely. I mean, the French Revolution to Europe is the equivalent of the American Revolution to America. And as a matter of fact, French scholars speak of laification, where religion is moving away from clergy. It's moving away from a hierarchical structure. And it's moving into sentiment. A key thinker for this was Rousseau. that this thinking of religion as a personal sense of sentiment, emotive feeling, and with the hierarchical order being swept away, then this sense of religious emotion could be absorbed into the political domain.

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Speaker 4: Hmm.

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Speaker 1: And when you talk about the post-secular, is that sort of the move that you're talking about? This idea that you have a shift toward a mentality for whatever brief period of time that would have said, we can do this without religion. So there was a lot of resonance in that passage you read. There's a realization that this can be done in ways that would not completely demolish or diminish religion. That sort of secular movement toward this idea that science and rationality are going to go on the ascendancy. And as they ascend, religion will ultimately descend. You know, religion will get smaller, but the scientific endeavor will get bigger.

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Speaker 3: Definitely the case. I mean, the Enlightenment project was to slay the beast. And that would be organized religion. Yeah. And what happens in Europe, is that a lot of religious sentiment is absorbed into socialist thought. And when we compare that to America, we see immediately, well, that's taboo. We ain't having none of that. And so this is beginning to shed light on the fact that the secularization thesis or theory that comes out of sociology, Durkheim being the beginner of that kind of thinking, sociological thought, is primarily a European idea. And what post-secular scholars are realizing, the presumption that Europe is normative, that as the world becomes increasingly more modern, it will decline in participating in any kind of religious type of ritual or have any kind of religious experience. Well, that view was actually the exception to what prevails in the world. But we only come to realize that after World War II, academically, I'm speaking. I mean, people are living their religious lives day in, day out. But academically, through decolonization, through globalization, through this being immersed in a wider pattern of exchanges, what scholars begin to realize is, holy cow, it's Europe that's the exception with the secularization theory. Actually, America is more in tune with where the world is, that religion can, hand in hand with technology and the process of modernization, continue, if not thrive. So One book was said, God is back. Another title is The Revenge of God. However we want to have the academic world come to a sense of connecting with reality, the fact is that post-secular studies recognize the continued vibrancy of religion, not only personally, but publicly, socially, and globally. And that puts us where we are today. I would say that, just to close, that post-secular thinking is more in tune with the social reality of the world than any idea of some process of secularization, however it's defined.

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Speaker 2: Can I ask one more question, Ashish, and then let you jump in?

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Speaker 3: Go for it.

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Speaker 2: All right.

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Speaker 1: So that narrative, right, I agree with the secularization thesis and the demise of it, that secularization is really just the process of diminishing religion within society. I think that was always sociologically wrong. You didn't see it in the people. But there's another sort of thesis that Manet puts forth in The Intellectual History of Liberalism, where he basically talks about in the French Revolution, there's a breaking of the church's political power. And the church, particularly the Catholic Church, is relegated to the arena of opinion. And you see this echoed in the work of like D.C. Schindler and some of these other folks, where the church has been folded back into society, but still folded back in under the general let's call it, um, philosophical authoritative view of liberalism in a lot of places.

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Speaker 2: Any thoughts on.

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Speaker 3: That, Mike?

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Speaker 1: Like, is there an accommodation post-secular accommodation to say religion can work, but it can never be Christendom again?

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Speaker 3: Well, um, I think, uh, what was his name? Uh, Ho Chi Minh, uh, said, uh, about the French revolution. Well, what, uh, What were the facts? And he said, well, we don't know yet. So I would not rule out, given where we are today, that there would be efforts at reasserting Christendom. And I would... And I would just leave it at that. I can't predict the future. But the idea that the world will be secular, I just don't see it. Now, you know, you talk about liberalism. I'm not really clear about what you're talking about there. We're talking about individualism, free markets. in representational government. Is this your notion?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's tough to pin down, right?

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Speaker 1: So political philosophy, that is, I guess what I mean by this political philosophy that emphasizes individual autonomy and the sovereign individual. And then I think some of these other things like market capitalism can be globbed onto it. But they're all sort of geared toward the preservation of individual rights and the normally associated with small government. But the reality is that it's the sovereign individual. And so what I would argue is just liberalism is that moment where we sit back and say, we are really in charge. And however, we might gesture toward God, that either needs to be privatized, pushed into the background of our own private lives and treated as not a claim about reality that we all sort of have to ascribe to, but a pocket of understanding that this particular group is.

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Speaker 2: Inclined to believe. Right.

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Speaker 1: And then, but also that the sovereign individual, because it's viewed that way, then there isn't really a claim that reality has on us. And so, That's saying a lot in a very little short time. But the idea of liberalism that I'm sort of when I say it, that's what I mean. Sort of that political philosophy where there's a lot of individual rights and the sovereign individual sort of reigns.

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Speaker 2: Consent of the government, those kind of things.

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Speaker 3: Exactly. I would just want to say that I'm much more comfortable with the term neoliberalism, which includes the global market. And the commodification, commodification of not just goods and services, but values, meaning and purpose. Good. Yeah. Multiple platforms of technology. But yeah.

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Speaker 2: I'd agree with that. Yeah, that's fair.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: Within that mix, there is and it's really hard to measure. We don't. OK, we concede we're in a post-secular moment. Secularization theory is incorrect. It's not valid. It just isn't, no matter what we measure. This gets into some really important stuff, because once we recognize that, and then these political theologies begin to come out that have been ignored, have been overlooked by the secular airbrush. For just one example, and then I'll set up, we talk about the Age of Discovery. And scholars like Willie James Jennings makes very clear that this idea that the other of color has the demonic presence, but the European white imperialists that come, they're demon free. See, that's a secular move. So that once we go post-secular, the doors open up. And I find that to be very exciting. I find that unheard voices are now coming into the arena. And where that's going to go, I don't know either. But yeah. Very good.

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Speaker 2: Thanks, Mike.

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Speaker 4: Ashish, I'm sure you're... Yeah, there's so many strands to pick up on. I think maybe the place that I want to start is going to sound merely definitional, but I think we can go somewhere from there. We're using the term post-secular. And I think it can be an easy move to equate it with something like post-game. Post-game is after the game. The game is over. We're analyzing the game. We're now preparing for the next game. We're thinking about recovery. Those sorts of things. Analyzing tape. Giving interviews. And one, I think, could easily say, well, there was this period that was secular, and now we've moved past it. But I don't think that's how we're using the term. Sounds to me like maybe a little bit, we see that there is this thing that is the secular. But to assume an ism out of it, a secularism, a general state of affairs where to use Charles Taylor's terms, there's a subtraction involved, right? There's the basic nature of reality, and you can subtract religion from it, whatever exactly religion is. And now you get this thing that's basic reality, is what post-secular is sort of saying false to. That whole construct is false. So that there never really was the secular, while at the same time we acknowledge there is a period in which ordering of the pieces on the board and maybe even the way the game is played or what the game is has changed, We have moved into a period in which the relationship of faith to public life is very different than in, say, Christendom for the Western world, but maybe sits uneasily with other parts of the world. The example that immediately comes to my mind is Mahendra Modi in India, where he's in some sense reacting to to an impulse that sees the formation of India as a secular regime. Someone who is historically a great hero in Mahatma Gandhi is now somewhat of a villain. The guy who facilitated the creation of an idea that was in its basic formation a Western idea. And I want to put Western in scare quotes in light of your invoking the name of Willie Jennings. I think that's a point that if we have time, I'd like to get back to. But with Modi, it's no, there is nothing. We can advance into the kind of global scene that seems to embody what the secular has produced without having to do so on the terms of some sort of division between who we are as people who belong to a place and who we are as people who belong to some sense of faith and who we are as global citizens of sorts. So there's a lot right there. I don't know exactly what the question precisely is, but maybe it's just simply in light of this very complicated reality. What is it that we're saying about post-secular as it interacts with all these moving parts?

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Speaker 3: Well, when I earlier spoke, I said the secular, and I tripped over my words because what came to mind was the secular thesis. And of course, I corrected myself and said, no, the secular theory, oh my word. But I would like to scratch both of them in terms of what you just said and suggest that what we're really looking at when we look at the secular is the secular strategy. It is a deliberate framing. Another example, J. Cameron Carter in Kant. All of us learned Kant, you know. Ideas that matter. We have to know these things. But it was only what I would argue in a post-secular shift, when the secular strategy has become vulnerable, that we learn about this essay that he wrote in 1777 in the lectures that he gave, The Differences of the Races. And out comes this whole discourse on Kant. I mean, I'm an educated man. University of New Hampshire, Brandeis University. I mean, I studied intellectual history. Never heard it. Never told it. But I did. And I would suggest the way that I'm understanding the post-secular is a recognition that the secular was a strategy. of defining others, categorizing people, categorizing ideas to maintain a Western hegemony. That naturally was true because the scientific discoveries and accomplishments and the technology that followed, that all came from the West. What I hear you speaking about is, again, another angle of approach to this notion of the secular as a strategy that has been weakened, has become vulnerable, and via alternative routes of research and perception. different facets of who we are and how we live in this world are being brought to light. Does that make sense?

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Speaker 4: It does, yeah. And yet there is still something, right? The sort of movement that begins the secular strategy, let's call it, is something that we can describe and understand what we mean by saying Christendom, right?

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Speaker 3: There is this.

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Speaker 4: There's this deep interrelation between the so-called secular, as we come to understand it, and the sacred, such that you have the papal bull for the doctrine of discovery, as you mentioned, that not just justifies but mandates the state to undertake its works of discovery and colonization. There is theological rationale and grounding to what's at play. And yet the sort of reality that comes out of it, and correct me on this one, this is the area where I'm hazy as I try to understand how we move from an explicitly theological grounding for this secular strategy to a move that does seem to want to set aside any sort of overt theological grounding. But then there's a third move here that I think is really valuable from post-secularism, and that's to say, Perhaps the setting aside of an explicit theological grounding obscured the fact that there was actually still a theological grounding. We just had a shift in what we understand the divine to be. Do you think that accurately describes, in a nutshell, the sort of progression and the relationship to the secular strategy? Or am I missing something?

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Speaker 3: I can walk with you here when we think incrementally, yeah? Right. I mean, the notion of theology itself, if we read Franz Overbeck, the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, and really gave Nietzsche a lot of ideas. He says theology, the move of theology by the church was... a strategy by which the church would establish itself in this world. And establishing means that it would have some leverage to control the world. And in that context, being that comes out of Hellenist philosophy gets moved in the church and it gets redefined as God. We won't go through all that and all the gyrations that it went through, but that's basically what happened. Dear Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, he pretty much made Hellenized philosophy an extension of Revelation, saying that it has to be in this Greek framework of being that we do our theology.

00:27:17
Speaker 4: Well, arguably, Neo-Calvinism does the same sort of thing, just simply with far less sort of centralized authority.

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Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah, 100%. So you have that, and then in the 17th century, you move away from that. And the effort to move away from this controlling theology, grounded back in Hellenist thought, is to try and, can we get a common denominator of religion? Are there some basics that we can all agree to that won't trespass or or flares go up over confessional differences. And that's deism. That's the 18th century idea of deism. Can't we all agree there's one God? Can't we all agree he's the one that established the natural law that oversees the order of nature? And so that's a major step towards secularization, although... it's still the heavenly city. You know, God is still there, but now God is stripped of revelation and is now a philosophical construct. Eternal life, happiness, good life, et cetera, et cetera. 19th century, it shifts again. Being becomes becoming. So that we could say that in the 17th, 18th century, on the reliance of reason, Revelation was reduced in its importance, and a foundation was laid for a body of legitimate knowledge that is based upon this notion of natural law and the God of nature, as the Declaration of Independence puts it. So reason is the basis by which this movement occurs. As William Cavanaugh beautifully puts it in the title of one of his books, the migration of the holy. So it migrates, yeah, from Hellenized Greek being through theology and its dependence upon revelation. Now it's simply being in the natural sense. In the 19th century, theology now is subject and philosophy as well, to what? History. Everything now is historicized into being, into being, becoming. Becoming is more important. And so incrementally, yeah, we have these changes. But I would say, even through all these changes, I'm sorry in terms of the academy and in terms of who gets what when, in terms of who's in charge and who's on first base, and I don't care what else you say. It's still this hegemonic mindset. And the church acquiesces. Now, I'm just generalizing the heck out of this. I mean, there's a whole lot of things. I'll just close by saying this. that in the 20th century, this process of continuance of secularity and the parsing and the whittling down of the authority of God's word and the public witness of the church and the power of the Holy Spirit, what replaces history? I would say in the 19th century, ideologies. theology, insofar as it retains its membership card with the secular guild, is subject to ideology. And of course, there's a number of those, as James was talking about, liberalism, neoliberalism, that's a powerful ideology out there. Socialism is a communism is just in my word, the mayor of New York city. So, uh, what, I guess what I want to say is that what happens with the post-secular shift in the academy is that we're, we're given a chance to reread things. We're, we're given a chance to go, well, wait a minute now. Is this, am I, am I being held bound to something? Um, that I can now see in a more clear way and perhaps to develop some kind of sense of moving apart from or getting sufficient distance such that I can actually see what I'm part of and I can make a sound assessment based on good solid Christian teaching.

00:32:11
Speaker 2: So when you think about these moves.

00:32:15
Speaker 1: And it is a generalization. So even the question is going to overgeneralize. I think we just need to admit that it's only an hour long podcast, so we can't get into all these details. But if and I like the way you frame secularism as a strategy, it seems to me that elements of that strategy carry into post-secular. And you have pockets of post-secular thought that are still really trying to advance a secularization thesis, but talking about, let's say, the utilitarianism or the utility of religion. These things endure because they have some social good. And you get the sense from some theorists that religion may still be walked out of this. We've just got to figure out how to cultivate human meaning without it. And maybe that'll just take more time. There's aspects of post-secular theory that I think still are holding on to that secularized strategy.

00:33:15
Speaker 2: But the part.

00:33:16
Speaker 1: That they're stepping back from is that wholesale, hey, this is going to be gone in the blink of an eye. There's an endurance and a recognition that meaning has to mean something. It feels like they're having the realization that Habermas had. right, where he's seeing the holes in a secular strategy and going, yeah, but we still need this, this, this, and this. So there's an acquiescence to that sort of the holes in the strategy, but there's still a push toward something different. And I think if you agree with that, I'd be interested to see if you agree with that. But then number two, I'm interested in sort of moving into how you think about America as more of a religion than as a political system. and how that would play into a post-secular thesis? Because it seems to me that it does, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it.

00:34:09
Speaker 3: Yeah. In terms of post-secular sense, because look, this is a term that's in flux. If you look at the literature, it's all over the map. It's something. You know, it's like, no, I won't say that. But when you say that they want to hold on to some parts of the secular strategy, I think that we're talking about adjectives here. We've got to make sure we understand we're talking about the modern world. Is the secular world modern or is the secular world postmodern?

00:35:01
Speaker 2: Postmodern.

00:35:02
Speaker 3: And Habermas, what he helps us realize, and as Ashish mentioned earlier, Charles Taylor does this as well, is that, hey, the world that we're living in is a new relationship between those that have faith and those that rely upon reason. We're living in a new social relationship. where we have to learn how to have these exchanges with one another without imposing judgment on the other as being illegitimate, and at the same time preserve a sense of, let's call it decorum, where the ground rules for our exchange are consistently applied. So when we think in that way, the post-secondary and the secular both are trying to gain the benefits of modernization, and neither one of them wants to undo modernization. Everybody wants a dentist with Novocaine. They don't want to go back to flyers and, you know, no. And I think that Habermas has done us a great service because what he was nervous about was scientism. on one hand, uh, where this would be this, um, you know, this would be the, uh, um, the idea of, uh, the enlightenment, uh, having this, uh, uh, totalitarian, uh, impulse that, uh, who was it? It was, uh, Adorno. Um, this, the dark, the dialectic of the enlightenment where there was this dark part of it, you know, we got to, you know, we have to think of Auschwitz for, for example. Um, and so, You cannot let scientific thinking and method and technology run the show, which, you know, that's more to the Enlightenment side. And also, he was concerned about, golly, postmodernism. An old friend of ours that used to be a great Frankenstein monster for evangelicalism, raised a lot of money, but it's not worth much anymore. Forget that. But he was right in making that monster something that he was concerned about because relativism is equally dangerous to modern society. And I think as evangelical Christians, thinking Christians, we should tip our hat to him. for that. So I hope that... It does.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful.

00:37:54
Speaker 3: In that direction. Yeah.

00:37:59
Speaker 4: So the comparison of post-secular to post-modern I think is a valuable one insofar as whether rightly or wrongly, many who want to hold on to the temptations and the instant gratification that belonged to the modern idea of uniformity, universalism, will gladly point to postmodernism and its failure to provide a unified way forward. Which I think is ironic, because postmodernism is precisely trying to say this quest for a unified way forward is itself an idol. So I don't know that it's a true critique as far as postmoderns see it. But as a parallel, post-secularism or post-secular thought, however you want to put it, in some ways seems to be doing a similar thing to secularity. To say, secularity is something of an idol. The way forward is not to deny the deep and at times unentanglable ramifications of the theological, faith, religion, whatever form we want to put it in, with the lives that we live, while recognizing things have changed. But it raises, I think, a second question that I think is one that postmoderns deal with in their own way. Speaking from the angle of post-secularity, the answer is most certainly not, let's recreate Christendom.

00:39:44
Speaker 1: Right?

00:39:45
Speaker 4: And I think it's a self-conscious... thing that they don't want to do it from where i sit you know i i most certainly don't want to recreate christendom christendom has i think its own both historical and theological baggage that are pretty damning that in some ways helps us understand why secularity was such an enticing impulse even if a false one right but what is the next step is it just merely we dialogue Because the way that Habermas puts it is the role of the government then is to protect the reality of a neutral sort of discourse that all can enter into, a sort of translation idea. But I have in the back of my mind, just to put my cards on the table, again, you mentioned Jennings, so let's pull that bookmark out and deal with it. One of Jennings' critiques, as I understand it, of the idea of translation is not that he doesn't want to see translation happen, but he wants to help us understand that translation... in and of itself, has a loss to it. There's a loss in the discourse, and that loss is then a conformity to another discourse. And if that translation happens under power dynamics, which it always does, then that translation is itself not just the loss of something, but it is the subservience of what is being translated to what it's translated into, if that makes sense.

00:41:17
Speaker 1: If I can just piggyback on that, I'll just say, I think that as we look at the move from secular to post-secular, however we want to construe that, which again is a little complicated, but I would just say what's endured from the secular to the post-secular is some form of humanitarianism. That we are the center of the universe and that God is, and God in the form of religion is, needs to enter back into our world, not because he is real, not because he has a claim on us, but because he serves us. And I think in that there's a commonality across the secular and the post-secular. That is, in essence, like when you're saying the power dynamic and the way that translation loses something within Willie James Jennings, reading that from the Christian perspective, reading that from the religious perspective in general, What we see is that as religion is translated into a post-secular discourse, we are losing something.

00:42:23
Speaker 2: So I'll just leave it there.

00:42:25
Speaker 3: Let me just say three quick things. Number one about post-modernity. Post-modernity gave censored voices the chops. This is what post-modernity did. It unlocked the door. A lot of things came out. Okay. And good, bad, and ugly.

00:42:46
Speaker 4: Arguably for better and for worse, right?

00:42:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. But it was the solvency. It was the solvency that broke the control that secular had. And make no mistake about it. When we speak about the secular, we're speaking about whiteness. And when we speak about whiteness, we're speaking about control of scarce resources, which includes categorizing reality which includes labeling human beings. That's what secularity did. All you got to do is go read, just do a dissertation on all the encyclopedias since the 18th century. And you will see the march. And then you'll see the, oh, we better drop that one. Well, no, yeah, we'll sing this one now. Oh boy, that was bad too. This is unbelievable. This is what power does. It's going to hold on to power. It's going to give up a little something in military terms. It says you, you give up territory for time. You, you, you gain, you gain time by giving up territory. The secular has no secular strategy has no, I know no interest in, um, giving up power. Uh, Secondly, as regards to post-secular vis-a-vis post-modernity, what I would say is that whereas post-modernity gave the voices the chops, post-secular is now giving the subsidy, the institutional subsidy for these voices to be articulated. So many more women scholars, Judith Butler and on down the line, And again, you could do a Google thing and get one of those hockey sticks, and you would see how now the voices are being subsidized. Where it goes, I don't know, but that's what's happened. I can say that with confidence. Thirdly, in terms of the loss, which is very true, but there's a beauty to it. There's a beauty to this loss because the loss is universal. Everybody limps on the way home. The issue is not a power dynamic. The issue is a compassion dynamic in trying to live out that life of Christ. I would say that the patron saint of the 21st century is Francis of Assisi, not because of this gibberish, preach the gospel when you must use words, which he never said, and it's what's radishes and ridiculous. But what he did do, is he would walk around in these rags and he would sing the songs of the French court because he was an educated man, because he was wealthy and because he wanted to be a knight and because he wanted to be a crusader. So he knew the noble virtues. He knew the mannerisms of the court. And he would walk, he'd walk dressed the way he was singing these highfalutin songs. And when someone would stop him and ask him, well, who are you? He would say, I am the herald of the great king. You see, this notion of finding that voice for today is something that I find very exciting. And that will come as the Holy Spirit gives. America anticipated the post-secular term because America has never had a decline in religion. America is a religious, as G.K. Chesterton said, America is a nation with the soul of a church. And that is what America is. I do, you know, it's rough. the term American exceptionalism, which we throw around, throw around, but how many of these dear people, they use this term with great American red, white, and blue pride that it originally was coined by American Marxists. I mean, it was this, this came from communist street literature, you know, as a, well, most places, uh, Of course, the revolution will come through violence. But there is this American exceptionalism because in America, they smudge the classes. And how can you have a revolution based on class conflict when there's cheating going about on the classes? That's a paraphrase. But there is this notion of America as the almost chosen people, American exceptionalism, the city on the hill. Uh, this stuff goes on and on the declaration of independence, the natural, the nature's laws and the gods of nature, the God of nature. Um, um, he favors, you look at a dollar bill and it says he, he favors our endeavor. Uh, he's not identified. Who is he? Uh, and, um, I could go on, but America is unique, uh, in, uh, the, um, the understanding that we're in a post-secular age. If we are in a post-secular age, well, America has already been in it. America was born in it. America is a religious nation. It remains religious. I could care less about the Pew results. Oh, look, they're up 13.2 in the seats. Who measures the Internet? Who measures what's out there? And I'll just close on one last point on this. It's America is no longer viewed as the exception. It's Europe that's viewed as the exception, as secular. And let me tell you, it is secular over here. If you don't live in Europe, you don't realize how religious America is. And this gets into America, the monomyth, in terms of popular culture. This gets into fantasy land, as another scholar describes it. I would love to read to you Bratila. Bratila, how do you pronounce that? Bratila? Bratila? Bratila. Yeah.

00:49:32
Speaker 4: Are you talking about the simulation and simulacra guy?

00:49:34
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, Bratila. He describes America. I'll read his book, America. This should be read late at night on some talk show. America is utopia fulfilled. But what happens when it's fulfilled? It's madness. And I mean, I read this thing and I go, wow, this is powerful stuff. All of this to say that America is a religious nation. But more than that, because it came out of Christendom's collapse via England, that's very important. Because England, going back to the mid-17th century, was the first global imperialist power. And the Bible was embedded right in this imperial expansion. Uh, the Navigation Acts of Cromwell, uh, 1657, uh, England, um, Constantine's, uh, what was it? His mother, uh, was, um, uh, was it his, I forget, but a British, uh, no, it was his father, I guess, a British King. The idea that, um, England is the chosen nation, uh, is, was injected into America, uh, And the notion that the Protestant Reformation was fulfilled in England because it was the most powerful Protestant nation was injected into America. It's only when we begin to step back and begin to look at America in these terms, we see the church has a special responsibility to address idolatry. to address blasphemy, to address addiction to ideology, be it nationalism, socialism, whatever, in America. I would say that we are called to that responsibility. And what we see today, and I don't mean just on the 1776 pro-Trump Christian nationalism. I mean on the 1619. Because what we've talked about, when you look at 1619, And it's truthful exposure of slavery as being an alternative understanding of the founding of America. It's true enough. But on the 1619 side, just like on the 1776 side, it's moving in a trajectory to something that is contrary to the scriptures. And it has to be contrary to the scriptures to be consistent. Because if you're going to condemn those things, You're going to have to pursue equality and equity to the maximum, which is going to put you right back in the Habermas mess. So how do we do this in terms of transgenderism, in terms of transhumanism, in terms of euthanasia? It's all well and good to speak of justice. I approve of it 100 percent. But nobody can say what that trajectory trajectory trajectory goes. So that the notion of liberty on one side and the notion of individual pursuit of happiness on the other, justice and liberty, these two are being accelerated by technology. And it's absolutely scary what's happening in Silicon Valley. We have never seen such a merger of the executive branch, including the Department of War, with the likes of Palantir and others. This is very sobering. And so if you can see that as the three primal points of America, then the last one is 1630, city on a hill. There is eschatological energy that is driving through the veins of of what I call a meritendum, that which replaced Christendom in its final phase of the Reformation, which was England. And that this notion of bringing the millennium on earth, this runs through America's veins. And we need to be more aware of it in order to understand, and I'll close with this, that persecuted. Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and speak all manner of evil against you for my name. Rejoice for your reward in heaven is great for so they did to the prophets before you. You are the light of the world. Let your lights, your good works shine in what? In such a way that they may see them and glorify your Father in heaven. The wisdom in such a way and to live a suffering life of a prophet in both 1619 and 1776 crews being pushed at an ever increasing speed through technology with this eschatological propulsion underneath it. is the place where in this 250th anniversary of the Republic, this is the political responsibility to be more aware of this. That's my judgment. Yeah.

00:55:46
Speaker 4: Can I jump in real quick?

00:55:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, go for it.

00:55:50
Speaker 4: So I think to put a little bit of a bow on it, because there's so much context to what you're saying that I think is important. There's probably not enough time to delve into all of it, but, An alternative that you're suggesting, I think, if I'm hearing you correctly, is that if you have the 1776 and you have the 1619, that both are starting from a basis that misses that there are deep theological roots to the sort of program or strategy or project of secularity to America, to the ideas that they embody. That maybe more appropriately, the starting, if we want to put a date on it, and I'm going to expose my poorness with dates, the 14-something, right? Whatever the doctrine of discovery is, right? That the issue at play here is that both ways of reckoning for whatever they see right also have a major blind spot in that they don't reckon that the very idea of the doctrine of discovery as a theological rationale for the entire project is itself what produces the impulse to say, I will covet my neighbor, which gives you the 1619 reality, right?

00:57:12
Speaker 3: Slavery.

00:57:13
Speaker 4: It gives you the more other side of the coin, perhaps 1776 reality of the positive move that brings about ultimately the technological development. But what both do insofar as you're seeing them as both embodying a technological thrust forward is that that shows actually the theological problems at play in the 14 whatever, the doctrine of discovery reality, right? That there is something missing in removing us theologically anthropology from reality as creation, right? To quote Norman Wiersbeck. To just speak of nature is to miss that we are part of and surrounded by an entity that is creation, beholden to creator. And embedded within that, just to put a nice little bow on that, is to go back to Francis of Assisi, that the other major element that I really appreciate about him is, as much as he might be made fun of in modern circles, he felt the need to preach to creation. He saw himself as their co-laborer, and he would preach to the sun and preach to the birds. He had his great canticle that did just as much. But it's a beginning to reimagine the world from the standpoint of a theology gone wrong that creates these other sort of distorted realities, rather than beginning with the distorted realities, which only can lead you to other distorted realities. Is that fair to say?

00:58:51
Speaker 3: A hundred percent. And I think to get calibrated to it, we need to think in terms of the least sin committed by the church aggrieves the Holy Spirit more than the worst sin that the world can commit. Because the sins of the church violate. both the love and fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And we just refuse to calibrate ourselves to this. I forget the fellow that wrote it, or maybe it's anonymous, but back in the ancient churches, there was that the church is the soul of the world. I don't know if Chesterton ripped off of that or not, but for us to see ourselves that way and to see one another that way and to see myself before God, understanding that's the way he sees me. This whole idea of, if we look at the 10 sayings, The last one is thou shalt not covet. It is through coveting that we suppress the first, which I would say, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and out of the house of slavery. This to me is a beautiful phrase of the gospel that this is what Jesus does. He brings us out of the house of slavery. And to see each other and to see creation, to get calibrated to that. May the Lord give us, by his grace, the wisdom and the love of God is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. How do we live it? It's a good question in a political moment.

01:00:56
Speaker 1: We're almost out of time, but I just want to comment on that Ten Commandments piece because I think it's such a beautiful inclusio that's so often missed in the Ten Commandments where you begin with this sort of call of, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, brought you out of slavery, then do not covet. And when we move into the New Testament, what do we see? We see that greed is idolatry. Coveting is idolatry. And so you have this sort of notion that you're pointing out in the Ten Commandments that's often missed that is made clear in the New Testament, that Paul has this interesting reading of it, that he's understanding that as we desire what God has not given, as we desire to reorder the world by saying, he's given you something that should have belonged to me, and we're moving in those directions, that we're actually committing idolatry because now we are saying the creator God who brought us out of slavery and rearranged us into a redeemed state didn't actually know what he was doing. And so we recenter ourselves as the ordering principle. And I think that has real implications for political theology more generally.

01:02:13
Speaker 3: Definitely does. And along with A subcategory of coveting Paul explores with the troubled church of Corinth, and that is grumbling. Grumbling, too, results in idolatry. Grumbling and coveting, they're like that diabolical dialectic of depravity right there.

01:02:34
Speaker 2: That's right.

01:02:36
Speaker 1: Well, Mike, this has been awesome. We're out of time, but really appreciate you being on. And we'd love to do this again with you at some point if you're open to it. But this has been a fantastic conversation. There's so much more to explore. So, yeah, I just really appreciate you being here, brother.

01:02:50
Speaker 3: Well, you guys are great. Thanks for having me. And blessings upon you both. And may the Lord bless your endeavors.

01:02:59
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir. Thanks, Ashish, again for being here.

01:03:01
Speaker 1: And we'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.