Christianity Under Attack from the Neo-Pagan Religion of Secularism

Solzhenitsyn predicted it.  In his famous 1978 Commencement Address at Harvard, A World Split Apart, he chose not to pander but to tell the truth that a secularized, left-leaning intellectual elite did not wish to hear.  He assessed the spiritual and moral health of the West and found it wanting. 

He told us that, while the Western democracies opposed the political and economic systems of tyranny that held sway in the USSR, the conditions that undermined the moral foundations of the Communist world and made it possible for governments to enslave their populations were being recklessly replicated in the West: materialism, legalism, a false view of freedom as will-to-power, and, most important of all, atheism.  For Solzhenitsyn, the tragedy of Soviet totalitarianism is not caused by misguided men choosing to implement a flawed economic or political model, as if a few tweaks could rectify the situation.  No, the source of tyranny lies deeper and on this deeper level the West is sliding toward the materialistic humanism that always trends left. 

This analysis explains why the Christian Church in Europe and North America is under attack today.  The Church, along with the Family, are obstacles to the total rule of the "progressive state."  The Church impedes the full triumph of the neo-Pagan religion of Secularism and the enshrinement of the All-Powerful Leviathan as the source of law, value and power. 

In the United States, the Obama administration is trying to force Catholic (and Evangelical) colleges, hospitals and social service agencies to dispense contraceptives, including abortion poisons, to its employees.  Is the reason a desperate lack of access to contraception in the United States?  No, hardly, it is rather an attempt to break the will of the Church hierarchy and to send the message that Caesar decides doctrinal issues, not the Bishops.  No one should doubt that if they get away with it, sometime in the near future they will be forced to pay for abortions.  They may stop at forcing bishops into abortion clinics to personally assist in late-term abortions, but in principle there is no limit on their power to do so, from their point of view.   Forty-three Catholic organizations are suing the federal government and stand a good chance of winning. 


In Ontario, Catholic schools are being forced to allow student clubs celebrating the glories of sodomizing one another in plain contravention of Church teaching.  Why?  Because the forces of secularism wish to provoke the Catholic bishops to either capitulate to the principle that the State now decides what doctrine may be taught in what context or else provoke the Church to fight back, which will provide a pretext for defunding Catholic schools and bringing all education under Caesar's control.  It is thus a win-win for secularism.

In New Brunswick, Crandall University is under attack for holding to 3000 years of Judeo-Christian moral teaching on sexuality by making it a condition of employment that faculty not engage in adultery, fornication and, oh yes, homosexual acts.  As I predicted years ago, the attack is coming from the students, who, shaped by 12 years of pro-sexual revolution, secular humanist education, expect the university to conform slavishly to its secular environment because, well, dissenting from the majority is just so inconsistent with critical thinking . . . or something like that.

In Great Britain, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, is warning that Christians are being "vilified" and "driven underground" by secularist forces intent on removing the right of Christians to express their long-standing, orthodox beliefs in public.   A specific list of cases can be found here, which is far from exhaustive.  As one example, a counselor was fired from her job for failing to give two homosexuals "sex advice."  Who knew that homosexuals were actually dying for sex advice from up-tight, traditionalist Victorian prudes?  You don't suppose it might have been political, do you?

If Christianity is under assault all over the Anglosphere, you can be sure that is not because people want more religious freedom.  They want the same amount of religious freedom but with Christians on the receiving end of persecution, which is to say that they want the neo-Pagan religion of Secularism to be the State religion instead of Christianity.  The shift that occurred in the fourth century under Constantine and later Theodosius is being reversed.  The pagan morality of ancient Greco-Roman civilization is making a comeback as humane, just, merciful Christian laws are reversed one by one.  Christian Pregnancy Help Centers are the contemporary equivalent of first century Christians going out to the garbage dump of Rome to rescue unwanted infants abandoned to death by pagan parents.


This suggests that liberal toleration does not work when leftist, secular, materialistic, atheistic activists are concerned.  They don't want toleration; they want to stamp out Christianity.  But Solzhenitsyn told us this was the case.  To reject God is not the same as being neutral toward God; those who reject God crave social approval to replace the Divine approval they have forfeited.  They need their false god - the State - to smile on their lifestyle choices and the emphasis is on the word "need."   This makes secularism dangerously intolerant - like a number of other threats the free peoples of the world have had to face including Islam, Communism and Fascism. 

We managed to see off Fascism in 1945 and Communism in 1989, but Islam is a perpetual external threat as it has been for 1400 years.  It is not difficult, however, to see a spiritually healthy West continuing to stand up to Islamic terror.  But the internal threat from Secularism is more serious than all the other ones combined.  This is how vibrant civilizations die: by a thousand self-inflicted wounds from within, not by external conquest.  Solzhenitsyn was prophetic about our plight; our fate, however, is still undecided.  May God, if it be His will, grant a revival of Christian faith in the West that puts atheism and secularism in the shade.   If not, God will still be God regardless of what happens to the West.

Cross-posted at The Bayview Review

Solzhenitsyn on How the West has Forgotten God

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was right in his famous Harvard Commencement Address, "A World Split Apart." The West is in trouble because it has forgotten God. The speech notes a number of disturbing trends in the West that are all examples of the mis-use of the gift of freedom. Then he asks if socialism might be the answer. Unsurprisingly, the answer is no.

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the United States.

Then he asks if the West is an example to be imitated and he says no, sadly it is not.

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

Why is the West not an example? The hint is in the preceding quote: the problem is spiritual in nature. It is also a moral problem:

Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events.

Then Solzhenitsyn turns to diagnosis. What is the source of the West's moral and spiritual weakness?

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The West has lost its sense of man's responsibility to God.

Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.

Solzhenitsyn argues that humanism is incoherent and untrue and that the fundamental meaning of life is religious in nature.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.

Man has forgotten or rejected God. That is the root source of the materialism, humanism and naturalism that degrades and demeans mankind today. The West must turn back to God or decline, decay and eventually suffer conquest by some other civilization.