“The liberal thinkers and statesmen who were the makers of the nineteenth century civilization regarded religion and culture as entirely independent phenomena. Religion was entirely a matter for the individual conscience and it had nothing to do with social and economic life. But the resultant secularization of culture which took place throughout Western Europe in the nineteenth century brought its own nemesis. It led to the discredit of a religion that had no power over social life and of a culture that had no spiritual sanctions. It found at once its logical conclusion and its refutation in the yet more radical secularization of life characterized by the Marxian philosophy. While Liberalism had pushed religion on one side, Communism eliminated it altogether and thus prepared the way for the complete re-absorption of the individual in the social organism, while at the same time it transformed the social organism into an economic mechanism.
Christopher Dawson
Enquiries Into Religion & Culture — pg. xviii
1.) It is a myth to think that one can separate religion and culture. However, what the nineteenth century did was to insist that Christianity (this is the religion that Dawson is referring to) could be confined to the individual while culture could get along quite well uninformed by the Christian faith. What actually was happening, was not the secularization of culture, but rather what was happening was the incremental and subtle moving of culture to a different religious foundation besides Christianity. The liberal statesmen and thinkers of whom Dawson mentions — most of whom doubtless were not epistemologically self-conscious about what they were doing — could not have succeeded with their task of positing Western culture on a different faith/religious foundation if they had been explicit about their intentions. Consequently, the justification for the cordoning of Christianity off to a private individual realm that was compartmentalized from culture was advanced in the name of constructing a more equitable public square through the pursuit of secularizing it (i.e. — moving it off its Christian foundation) so that conflicts of faith would be kept out of the public square.
2.) Such an endeavor is ultimately futile. Just as Christian ethics can not be retained over the long haul when the attempt is made to peel those ethics away from the Christian Theology that supports and informs those ethics, so a Christian culture can not be retained over the long haul when the attempt is made to peel a culture away from the religion/theology that informs it. The attempt to both move culture off of its Christian base in the pursuit of “secularization” and to expect the retention of the stability that was characteristic of that culture when it was firmly pinioned on the Christian religion is akin to the attempt to move a water fountain off of a well that gives potable water in the pursuit of a alien polluted well while retaining the expectation that the polluted well will be fine since the water fountain has always previously issued potable water.
3.) When Dawson mentions a degraded culture that has “no spiritual sanctions” it reminds me that cultures are always covenantal. One of the characteristics of covenant is that there are always sanctions for violating the covenant. The culture that resulted from the shift to “secularization” is a culture where the spiritual sanctions have not so much that the spiritual sanctions no longer exist but rather the spiritual sanctions have changed so that the new covenant resulting from the putative secularization are sanctions that just the opposite of what they had previously been. Now, since the sanctions have drastically changed it may look like that the culture no longer has “spiritual sanctions” when looked at with the expectation of the sanctions of the previous culture but one can be sure that some sanctions still exist. As one obvious example of what I am getting at, two generations ago homosexuality in the culture of the West received the spiritual sanction of being ostracized. Two generations later if one expects those same spiritual covenantal sanctions to exist one might say that the culture no longer has spiritual sanctions. However, as I said, the spiritual sanctions haven’t gone away but rather now the spiritual sanctions fall on those who expect spiritual sanctions to fall on homosexuality. Culture is inevitably covenantal. It has spiritual sanctions. When you move the culture from one religion to another religion the covenant changes with that movement and the spiritual sanctions do likewise.
3.) Note that the point that Dawson is making is that nineteenth century liberal thinkers and statesmen were embraced a dualism that divorced religion from culture. It is interesting that the R2Kt proponents w/ their Escondido Hermeneutic contend for the very same dualism as the nineteenth century liberal thinkers and statesmen that Dawson refers to. Likewise both the Escondido Hermeneutic and the doctrine of the nineteenth century liberal thinkers and statesmen insist and insisted on a religion that is and was restricted to the individual conscience that has nothing to do with social and economic life.
4.) Don’t miss the powerful point that Dawson makes when he tells us that the result of creating a dualistic culture where Christianity is grossly privatized what arises is a new theology (Marxism) that will overcome the previous dualism in favor of a religion (some variant of socialism) that will provide a unify integration point that will provide cohesion for all of society and its culture. The danger here of course is that Marxism is a corporate humanism that provides not a unifying but rather a Humanistic Unitarian integration point that allows for no diversity as the Christian faith does. What this means is a savage Borg-like ugly sameness that is impressed upon all individuals in the societal hive. This is the guaranteed eventual result of the dualism that is offered by the Escondido Hermeneutic. If Christianity will not inform all of life then some other pagan belief system will provide the integration point that will inform the totality of a society and culture.
