Secularization of the Western Civilization

When we're talking about the secularization of the West, we need to understand that it is not just a 20th century phenomenon. We think that America started walking away from God in the 60s, when the Bible was removed from public schools. No! This process began several centuries ago. It was not a single decision of the supreme court that changed everything. When we have a great deal of moral and social problems in America and Europe, problems with people quitting to believe in God, it did not all happen in the last 10 years. There were gradual changes in the thought process of the society. The way a society thinks could not be changed by the decisions of the supreme court, but through the ideas it buys into.

Let's transfer ourselves to 15th century Europe. Imagine. There was a time when entire nations used to be Christian. The world was divided into religious zones. There were Christian lands and there were Muslim lands. We won't be discussing whether that's good or bad in this article. But if you happened to be born in the West in those days, you either had to accept Christianity or you were, how shall we put it, not liked. Same attitude towards non-muslims in Muslim countries. All knowledge in the Christian nations was based on what was carried over from ancestors, from the Bible, and from the classical world (works of Greeks, Romans, philosphers like Aristotle). So how come the Muslim lands remained Muslim, and Christian lands became secular?

The beginning of the process can be found with the emergence of modern science. Nicholas Copernicus, was one of the most influential scientists in history. He hypothesized that the universe does not revolve around the Earth, but rather, around the Sun. His work "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies" was published only after his death, since the position of the church at the time was that the universe revolved around the Earth. At the time, to go against the position of the church was a death sentence. Not a pleasant fact, but it illustrates well how much influence the church had at the time. But this period gave rise to a movement of Hermeneutics, acceptance of science as a way of studying God's creation.

The church managed to handle this one discovery. Instead of completely rejecting science, they accepted science but only as long as it did not contradict with religion. But the age of Hermeneutics ended with the discovery of Isaac Newton. Prior to Isaac Newton, the church used to think that heaven and the Earth are two polar opposites, that's not what the Bible teaches, but part of the teaching of gnosticism. Well, now it turned out that all elements of Earth and the heavens were interconnected. Scientific method became the means of explaining the universe. People still believed the universe reflected God's design, but in a secondary place. Being able to see, experiment, measure, and logically conclude was increasingly more important. People began to rely more on science to explain how the universe works, rather than just saying that everything is the way it is, just because God made it that way.

Then came the age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. This movement was launched by a group of famous philosophers. The goal of the movement was basically to break free of the conventional way of thought. Philosophers of the Enlightenment thought scientific method could be applied to the behavior of people. It was an attempt to explain everything with human logic.

John Lock, one of the first philosophers of the Enlightenment, brought a lot of ideas into the minds of people of the last several centuries. His idea of a "blank slate" assumed that everything people become and everything they think depends solely on their experiences, and on what they were thought. If so, said Lock, all children should be educated in public schools, because only there they would be educated correctly. That's were the idea of public schools came from. When we hear debates on whether religion should be allowed in schools, or when parents who want to educate their kids at home in Europe face serious problems; that's not a problem of the 20th century, it all goes back to the 17th century. Before John Lock, people believed that all knowledge comes from revelation. But now people began to rely on their mind and logic more and more for discoveries. What used to be an absolute truth, was now met with skepticism.

Pierre Bayle, another thinker of the Enlightenment, declared, “Any particular dogma, whatever it may be, whether it is advanced on the authority of scriptures, or whatever else may be its origins, is to be regarded as false if it clashes with the clear and definite conclusions of the natural understanding.” See how much everything has changed? Human thinking used to be checked against the scriptures, now the scriptures were checked against human thought. What is happening here, is that the human mind is brought above God's mind. Another idea of Bayle was that morality can exist without religion. If you've seeing the movie "Timechanger", it examines that issue very well. It seems we all basically know what is good and what is bad. Couldn't people just be moral and not believe in God? Not really. When we face problems with legalization of same-sex marriages, polygamy, and so on; that's nothing new. Apparently some people consider that moral, and some don't. It all goes back to the idea of trying to build morals without God. Not very long ago, in one of the European countries, the parliament tried to legalize drugs, but the conservative party did not let the law pass. Then it went to the people for the vote, and the people said that legal drugs are ok. Those are just the consequences of trying to build morals on human logic.

Next philosopher, David Hume, took the idea even further. Once the human mind was raised to the highest level of authority, and obviously every human being has their own truth, David thought about this and though, what is truth? And he came to a conclusion that truth does not exist. "Reality consists only of human perceptions." "Nothing – not even the existence of God or our own existence – could be known for sure." But what I would like to point out here, is not what Hume was thinking, but what the church was doing when such drastic changes were happening inside of their society. Hume, in his journey to find truth, concluded that all existing religions are based on hope and fear. And then we're surprised, how come the majority of students lose their faith in God in college. They are constantly brainwashed with all these ideas of Enlightenment, they look at the church they grew up in, but the church could not give them anything except for fear of hell, and the hope that if they go to church every Sunday, they might not go to hell. Where's Christianity that is relevant for their life today?

By the end of the 18th century, the church from the absolute powerhouse of Europe, has completely lost its power. Once of the Six Reforms for democratization of France place the church below government. It used to be the opposite. In November 1790, all church property was confiscated by the government. In the early 1790s, church clergy was now selected and paid by the state. Prior to this, the government had no control over church. On the contrary, the church often times controlled the election of governmental officials and their decisions.

The moral of the story

I hope, now you see, that walking away from God of the Western civilization in not just a phenomenon of our last century. And you know what? The moral degradation will not stop by itself. If you think its bad in US, take a look at Europe. First comes the legalization of same-sex marriages, then polygamy, then marriages with animals, than legalization of prostitution and drugs. But should it all go that direction? We all talk about the advancement of darkness. But how could the darkness advance if the light is working? There were such drastic changes in the society in the 18th century, and the church completely missed it. We could just continue ignoring all the changes happening in the society, close up in our comfy little churches, and cry how badly we are in the end times, and watch the world roll down to hell. Or we could influence it. The world will not change for the better by itself. During the time of Jesus Christ, the world was even worse. People were completely soaked in paganism, and not much time was left until complete self-destruction. So what. Practically in three centuries, Christianity became the state religion over the entire Roman Empire, starting from zero. When the church is working, the world is changing.