There is plenty of hand wringing over rapidly increasing religious disaffiliation, particularly among the emerging Generation Z. Within this demographic there are now just as many who claim no religious affiliation as there are Protestants and Roman Catholics. Hesitant to embrace the atheist or agnostic label, these so-called ‘nones’ simply identify as “nothing in particular.” There are numerous theories about why this is happening. Most of the discussions tend to focus on changing demographics and the effect this has on voting blocks and church attendance. But almost all the commentary I’ve read tacitly accepts the underlying premise that one can somehow remain neutral on religious questions. This is incredibly naïve.
To pretend that one stands over and above religion is as misguided as thinking one could stand over and above science. I can be disinterested in science, but that doesn’t free me from its pull. Likewise, one might be disinterested in religious questions. But that reveals more about the person than it does the religion. Only a tragically inert mind dismisses questions of existence and discernment of the good. Religious fundamentalists eschewing science are an embarrassment. And so are these nones who fail to recognize the metaphysical framework in which they reside.
No sentient human exists outside of a metaphysical framework. If man is not created and sustained by a holy and just God who declares on matters of right and wrong, then by default man becomes the “autonomous ruler of himself, able to define right and wrong and frame statutes according to whatever he defines as just.”1Herbert Schlossberg, ‘Idols for Destruction’ Both are religious precepts. Nones are not the heady pragmatists they see themselves as. They are practitioners of a new faith.
John Stonestreet understands this metaphysical necessity. He writes, “The question isn’t whether we have a worldview. The question is which worldview has us… fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality — whether the world is an accident of nature or a creation of God, whether right and wrong are absolute or relative, whether there is or isn’t an afterlife, whether humans are animals with a conscience or higher-order beings with some sort of privileged place in the universe.”2John Stonestreet, A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World
It is a mistake to think of secularism as the “absence of religion.” Alexander Schmemann recognized that religious belief underlies secularism. He wrote, “[Secularism] is, in fact, itself a religion, and as such, an explanation of death and a reconciliation with it. It is the religion of those who are tired of having the world explained in terms of an ‘other world’ of which no one knows anything, and life explained in terms of a ‘survival’ about which no one has the slightest idea; tired of having, in other words, life given ‘value’ in terms of death. Secularism is an ‘explanation’ of death in terms of life. The only world we know is this world, the only life given to us is this life — so thinks a secularist — and it is up to us men to make it as meaningful, as rich, as happy as possible. Life ends with death.”3Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World
Secularism is not nearly as benign towards other religions as we are led to believe. Paul Tyson discusses its totalizing aspect, “Liberal secularism is itself a violent regulator of ‘private’ belief. You can believe whatever you like, provided you do not believe that your personal beliefs are actually objectively true, or matter in any public way. You can have whatever personal loyalties you like, provided you give uncompromising public loyalty to the state in which you are born, to the liberal and secular laws it mandates, and (in the age of heightened security, increasingly unconditionally) accept its total power over coercive violence.”4Paul Tyson, De-Fragmenting Modernity: Reintegrating Knowledge with Wisdom, Belief with Truth, and Reality with Being
Post-enlightenment thinking assures us that the God functionally symbolized in the pre-modern mythologies is dead. And yet this hasn’t freed us from religion. People continue to hold on to sacrosanct ideas closely associated with religious belief. These ideas cannot be questioned or challenged.5Although communism at its core was atheist, it had strong religious undertones, albeit without the underlying moral restraints normally associated with god-centered religions. Marxism had its own version of the priesthood in the Communist Party and a type of dogma that if questioned could lead to excommunication in the gulag. The greed of the kulaks was an analog to original sin. These various ideologies may not fit the strict definition of religion. However they are so religion-like in essence that any distinction is of almost no practical importance. We find this on both the ideological left and right. Secular zealots are everywhere. Climate change has it’s prophets. Dogmatic social justice warriors are every bit as judgmental and intolerant as the religious fundamentalists they abhor.6James A. Lindsay and Mike Nayna detail how social justice parallels a religious movement with its mythological core and its scriptural canon rooted in ‘grievance studies’, and its adherents who dogmatically subscribe to a form of ritual introspection.:
“Social justice has arranged things such that it can treat its beliefs as knowledge… disguising the fact that they forward opinion and prejudice as though they are knowledge. The effort to create and manipulate vulnerability in potential converts to Social Justice is plain in the constant prioritization of feelings — as ways to knowledge, as guides to right and wrong, and in terms of close-reading every possible social interaction for real and imagined slights and offenses against the marginalized…
They focus on moral purity, they focus on the in-group, they demonize the out-group, and they demonize and excommunicate blasphemers… In religion, blasphemy is the act of speaking against doctrine, and apostates must be shunned or excommunicated. The Social Justice analogue to this is political correctness, which serves precisely the same function… Non-atoners are shunted to the outgroup and attacked.
The Social Justice analogue to [original sin] is privilege. In religion, we have “born again,” which is an indication that atonement for original sin has been made before peers, and an individual has been officially moved from the outgroup to the ingroup by accepting the indoctrinations. The Social Justice analog to this is “woke.”
There are only two effective paths toward redemption in the Social Justice soteriology: one, a commitment to an impossibly complicated set of behaviors that fall under the overlapping but distinct rubrics of allyship and solidarity, and, two, identifying, adopting, and attempting to legitimize one’s own status among intersectionally “oppressed” identities. To the degree that we can accept that Social Justice is a faith-based program based upon a kind of locally legitimized special revelation, we should have serious concerns and discomfort about institutionalizing its beliefs in any space that isn’t wholly devoted to them.”
-James A. Lindsay and Mike Nayna, Postmodern Religion and the Faith of Social Justice, Aero Magazine Transgender ideology closely resembles a type of neo-Gnostism. On the right there are those who subscribe to a uniquely American civic religion,7Robert N. Bellah, “Religion in America,” Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 1-2 not to mention cultish devotees of QAnon.8This far-right conspiracy theory alleges many Hollywood actors, politicians, and high-ranking government officials are part of a child sex-trafficking cabal. One thing about these wild conspiracy theories is that they often touch on some metaphorical truth. It’s hard to imagine QAnon without Jeffrey Epstein, the well-heeled socialite and convicted sex-offender said to have “belonged to intelligence.” Materialists put their faith in an uncaused contingent universe. They tend to revere and even worship science. Clearly a person doesn’t have to participate in organized religion to be religious. I can only wonder how many of these so-called nones identify as wokesters who view religion as pure bigotry without noticing any irony.
As I’ve said before, we’re in the midst of a revolution. But don’t be fooled. It’s not about religion versus non-religion. Instead, it’s theism versus egotheism. The theistic cosmology is dissipating. Five hundred years ago it was practically impossible to not believe in God. But now belief is no longer self-evident. It’s not only now possible to imagine not believing in God, but this is actually the default position for many people. Belief remains a possibility only as a conscious choice, personally enriching for some, but private and apart from any real deep conviction. We tend to view nature as an entirely self-standing reality. We see ourself as a radically autonomous Self. Society is merely a collection of individuals. Meaning, significance, and fullness are sought within a completely enclosed, self-standing, naturalistic universe without reference to transcendence. God becomes superfluous. And so the supernatural is discarded altogether.
We should not be shocked that people increasingly identify as nones. This is a natural outgrowth from the new cosmology. The implications are far more bleak, though, than just declining church enrollment. This is nothing short of a revolution. To the radically autonomous self, freedom from constraint becomes the highest virtue. That means we are free only to the extent that we are free from limits. This total autonomy wars against all limits. Inevitably, it all comes down to power. Our capacity to act or speak is limited only by the degree to which we have power. Other people, as well as nature and society, represent limits. So we must demonstrate that we own our bodies, not God or nature or other people, and certainly not tradition. Protest is found everywhere from tattoos and piercings to the sexual revolution, gender fluidity, and the ‘right’ to an abortion or euthanasia. We get a perpetual revolution against every given limit as a permanent principle. But it’s a revolution that inevitably overtakes the revolutionaries. It won’t be controlled by the scientist or the state. We inevitably end up living under technological absolutism and economic totalitarianism.
This post was originally published on August 21, 2021.
Photo Credit: “Bikini Girl And Nun” by Joe Shlabotnik is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0