I am both cursed and blessed by my training as an historian. At the University of Guelph in Ontario Canada when studying for my doctorate, not to forget my years at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and one year at the University of Windsor in Ontario, I learned the unfortunate habit of doubt. While I am at it, I should also mention my history teachers in High School, back in the distant epoch of History-as-a-required-course in school.
I am cursed because I can never happily be an ideologue despite this being the standard of thought here in the 21st century. I am blessed because I can see humanity in the full context of emotion, reason, culture, society, technology …..well, in a full context in short.
The whisper in the title to this thought piece is a result of the current anti-religion, or should I say, anti-Christian spirit that dominates the western world now. I feel I must carefully whisper the word to avoid attacks by the unwashed. Yet, behind the entire thrust of this blog (which might one day become a book), is a question: do functioning civilizations function best when embedded in a nest of religion? It is a difficult question because only two civilizations have lasted any length of time without religion: the Soviet Union for about 70 years and China, still functioning after roughly 70 years. Then, my training kicks in and I start thinking about definitions of ‘religion’. Is Chinese Marxism a religion in functional terms? Was Soviet Marxism also a religion in functional terms? Which leads to the western world and our reliance on capitalist democracy and whether that is a religion too…. you see the curse.
If religion is defined more traditionally as a theology embedded in an institution such as Christian churches, or Islam or Hinduism, etc etc., then all the human societies we can reasonably capture in our intellects, but for the Soviet Union and China, have lived and breathed within religion.
This complication removed from immediate consideration brings me to this vague and debated term, secularization . The western world seems at this date, 2022 March 27, to have abandoned the religion that nurtured social forms, individual relationships, cultural norms and so on since the emperor Constantine legalized its practice back in 313 AD (CE?…. there I go again….). No matter the social and cultural forms, Christianity swirled through and around the world we label ‘western’. But, is it still there, swirling, mostly invisible now, breathed in and out by the many aspects of western society?
I ask this, because the norm now is, especially among the young, that Christianity is a positive evil (a negative good?). That all the errors, omissions, sins, crimes, foibles, flaws of our civilization can be laid at the door of Christianity and missionaries who convinced (forced?) others to join us in this evil enterprise. I am not here debating whether the Christian missionary facet nor the presence of Christianity is either evil or foolish, but whether its decline equals a concomitant decline in our civilization. Are we now ripe for the secular religion of Marxism? Or the secular religion of hedonism linked to an ever expanding definition of ‘human rights’? Or to Islam rushing in to fill the void left by the abandonment and denial of Christianity?
‘Hmmmm’ is all I can say at the moment – but this is the main question I am asking myself.
An epilogue to this post, on a grey Saturday afternoon April 9, 2022 seems in order. As nearly as I can tell, we worship today a spiritual attitude that can simply be called ‘self hatred’. Anything we can find that proves how dreadful we have been and continue to be is our new religion. Attached awkwardly to that self loathing is the religion of imminent climate disaster. Note, I do not mean the climate isn’t changing. Cleary the climate has been warming since the end of the last ice age and quite likely our use of fossil fuels and our rapidly expanding world population has speeded up that process. I mean that we are hectored by the IPCC into believing that we must do something in the next 5-10 years or …. or what? That is never made quite clear. And we in the West must do it. We must dismantle our way of life based on oil, natural gas, and petroleum products. China and India and the coal plants distributed through China’s belt and road policy are exempt. So are the rare earths mined by companies controlled by China which are essential for EV batteries (which cannot be recycled). We, the evil colonialists must do obeisance. This is where the two meet.
The western world is moving in this direction, while China, India and their fiefs are not. This may well be their more rapid downfall from power than ours as we may well find ways to continue civilization long before our opponents do. Maybe. Depends whether our political class is driven by the ideology of self loathing or will look to advance civilization. What began as an epilogue of despair offers a glimmer of hope for the ideal of democracy and of honest, context based thought in opposition to the ruling ideology of self loathing.
This brings me back to the issue of religion. Even should we somehow find the new technology that makes oil and its many products redundant, will western civilization continue without the religion where it nested for roughly two thousand years? Will there be another religion? I find it unlikely but I’m not in the business of seeing the future. I can only suggest my observation that long standing civilizations lived within a religion and a religion lived within those same civilizations.
An Historian looks at the West 