Editorial -- Barry MacDonald

America's Secular Challenge, The Rise of a New National Religion, by Herbert London. Brief Encounters, New York, London, 2008, ISBN 1-59403-227-0, pp. 105, $18 cloth.

Herbert London has written a wonderful book that is full of learning and wit. His quarry in this book is difficult, because it is abstract. We may loathe the direction Barack Obama wants to take the country, but Herbert London wants to make clear the blob of ideas that animates him and his fellow Leftists. It is the culmination of Rousseau, Thomas Paine, the French Revolution, Darwin, Nietzche, Marx, etc., etc. One doesn't have to become a member of a party to become a believer. A much more subtle process is involved. Our prosperity and the ease of our daily lives, unprecedented in history yet little noted, speeds the progress of the movement. A cresting of ideas and values is absorbed by ordinary and unwitting Americans, and the propagators of the new thinking are themselves often unaware of their complicity. The new thinking is on display on magazine covers in supermarkets, on "Oprah," and the "Tonight Show."

"Radical secularism" is eating away at much that is good in our culture. You can see the difficulty in the awkward words: "secularist," "secularism." The eyes could glaze over at their mention. The opponent is not Stalin or Hitler. Secularism is an intellectual fad that has taken root and run amok.

Herbert London formulates what he believes to be the new faith, a faith without God, in a secularist catechism:

Truth is subjective, relative, or contextual. That there may exist objective spiritual truths is rejected as the product of naive or inflexible minds.

Rationality can solve moral and ontological questions about man's nature. The Thomistic faith that inspires wisdom is rejected as a mere fairy tale. Only science can reveal knowledge.

A rational government is freed from the limits traditionally imposed on its purview through the attainment of technical knowledge. Man's eternal problems, including the plight of the poor, can be solved through a welfare state based on the redistribution of wealth.

Since we are all children of the globe, subject to the same rationality, national loyalty and patriotism are dangerous anachronisms. . . .

The most important goal one can seek is self-transformation, what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called "self-actualization.". . .

Discrimination is the great bugbear of social intercourse. The mandate "judge not, lest ye be judged," stripped of its original meaning as a plea for compassion, is now a justification for closing one's eyes to the difference between right and wrong.

God has been replaced by the modern liberal agenda. Two thousand years of Judeo-Christian philosophy consisting of a humane sense of right and wrong have been discarded. Because there is no measurable proof of God, there can be no God. Because God does not exist He is replaced by scientists and legislators imbued with new and expanded power. The justification is provided to reorder society according to the latest innovations. Global warming is a crisis -- a cap and trade policy is created to limit CO2 emissions. Though the science is unproven, and the solution will likely do more harm than good, there is no time to waste.

If natural law is discarded, each person is guided by his own internal moral compass, each compass as valid as any other, and beyond restraint. Secularism is seductive because it urges us to be guided by reason, but more often than not it opens the door to the indulgence of selfish passions, passions free from moral check. Vows taken in marriage no longer carry the religious sanction they once did, and disintegrating families, overburdened mothers, and fatherless children have been the result.

The door has been opened to a self-loathing of traditional America that our grandfathers find impossible to comprehend. We are told that we have no right to criticize the Islamic practice of clitoridectomy, or honor killings, because we ourselves have oppressed women by making them mothers and homemakers. It is perfectly proper to banish Christian symbols from the public square because we haven't the right to impose our beliefs on people who disagree. In fact it is good that our comedians and artists lavish ridicule on religious faith because that is the exercise of free expression.

But at the same time we must listen to the complaints of rioters who pillage and murder because a Dutch newspaper published cartoons critical of the prophet Mohammad. We have insulted their religion, you see. The truth is that Western intellectuals are afraid of Islamic extremists, and it is easier to keep quiet. It seems that the new thinking hasn't figured out how to cultivate courage. Courage comes from having strong values, knowing what one believes, and the willingness to defend it.

The lack of courage and self-confidence has dangerous consequences. Terrorism is effective. The people who make videos of a beheading in the name of their God would have no compunction in using nuclear weapons on our cities if they had the means. But the Left, the secularists, will not see it; instead they say we have been imperialist, and have "tortured" the terrorists we have managed to capture. The more brutally the terrorists behave the more the Left criticizes the Bush administration for defending America.

Herbert London is not Christian. He is a Jew who "appreciates the role that Christianity plays in buttressing Western democracies." He quotes President Eisenhower: "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on deeply religious faith and I don't care what it is." Herbert London quotes Pope Benedict XVI:

The great challenge of our time is secularism. . . . Society creates the illusion that God does not exist, or that God can be restricted to the realm of purely private affairs. Christians cannot accept that attitude. This is the first necessity: that God becomes newly present in our lives.

This journal has always believed in the importance of Judeo-Christian traditions to the foundations of the nation. Protestants and Catholics are not the only faiths under attack, so are all religions (though the militant Islamists stand to gain quite a lot from the emergence of secularism).

As we lose our faith, pride emerges as a force to be reckoned with. Pride has become an American characteristic. We celebrate power, money, self-aggrandizement, fame (earned sometimes without accomplishment). Entertainers, sports figures, and politicians are role models but more often than not they are not moral role models. Herbert London writes that we have "lurched into the 'age of me.'" One has only to turn on the television to see the truth.

Humility is a virtue that religious faith imparts; it steels the soul to endure suffering, hardship, and injustice; and it provides hope and solace to those seeking justice. What does secularism offer in place of humility? Nothing. From whom will we find ultimate justice? Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama? The ancient Greeks have an idea that we Americans, in the midst of our ease and prosperity, should beware of: hubris.

What we are losing with the advent of secularism is a devotion to the welfare of America. Herbert London writes of "civitas," a Roman word referring to the civic consciousness of a citizen:

. . . [that] spontaneous willingness to obey the law, to respect the rights of others, to forgo enrichment at the expense of the public weal. . . . Civitas, by another name, is patriotism: a selfless devotion to one's society and the citizens who constitute it. This respect for law and community had its roots in religion. . . . Today, nearly two centuries on, it is no coincidence that the most generous donors to charities are religious Americans, particularly those who identify themselves as doctrinally conservative, like evangelical Protestants.

Those of us who believe in free market capitalism should also take note that without an under girding of religious faith what is there to prevent the selling of sex and crudeness? Because unfortunately crudeness and sex does sell very well. What is there in secularism to uphold good manners and morals?

Herbert London was in New York City on the morning of 9/11. It was his neighborhood that was attacked, and he dealt with the aftermath, along with so many other fellow New Yorkers. It is astounding to him that seven years later so little impression was made on the direction of our culture by the attacks. We've just had the Democratic National Convention and nary a mention was made of 9/11. The destruction and brutality directed at innocent Americans, and our enemy's glee in our suffering seem overlooked by large numbers of Americans; some believe we deserved the attacks.

It takes knowledge of American history to understand how much we have changed in a few decades. Begun with high ideals and galvanized through hardships we are an exceptional nation, a nation that each of us should be proud of. That we are not proud enough of our country is a shame. Americans should have a passionate attachment to our history, and take pride in the many difficulties we have overcome to be the benevolent and innovative people that we are.

Herbert London is on to something when he warns us about secularism. Secularism is a hydra, animating every liberal position one cares to note. It is all about a weakening sense of the divine. From where do the promptings of conscience come if not from God? A materialist would say that the promptings of conscience are a chemical reaction, and a sense of the divine is an illusion. But he is advancing a theory that he cannot prove despite his bluster.

We must find a way to transmit our most precious American values to the next generation. We must see to it that our children have a conscience. And we must continue to seek guidance from God. *

"It is equally dangerous giving a madman a knife and a villain power" --Socrates

Some of the quotes following each article have been gathered by The Federalist Patriot at: http://FederalistPatriot.US/services.asp.