This from,
The Decline of Christianity: How the Clergy Brought Down the Faith
Writing in the 19th century, Henry Buckle put together a three-volume History of Civilization in England (1869).
Buckle was no friend of Christianity, and was happy to witness its demise in his time. But his observation as to the cause of the decline of the influence of Christianity is rather revealing. Speaking of the decline of ecclesiastical power and the emergence of what he called “religious liberty”, he made these comments:
“Among the innumerable symptoms of this great movement, there were two of peculiar importance. These were the separation of theology, first form morals, and second from politics. The separation from morals was effected late in the seventeenth century; the separation from politics before the the middle of the eighteenth century. And it is a striking instance of the decline of the old ecclesiastical spirit, that both of these great changes were begun by the clergy themselves. . . . Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, was the first who laid down that the state must consider religion in reference, not to revelation, but to expediency; and that it should favour any particular creed, not in proportion to its truth, but solely with a view to its general utility. . . .
Thus it was that, in England, theology was finally severed from the two great departments of ethics and of government.”
Volume 1, pp.424-427
Dr. Hodge then goes on to say,
This is the legacy of the Enlightenment that is with us today. It’s religious manifestation was in Moravian pietism the faith system that influenced Wesley and the Great Awakening. Now if you want to understand why kids are turning up at college with the ideas of Nietzsche firmly planted in their psyche and in their lifestyle and departing the Christian faith in droves, you have to look backward to the 16th and 17th centuries to find not only the root ideas, but who introduced them.
And it was the Christians who effectively laid the foundations for their own demise over the next four centuries.
And now with the advent and growing popularity of R2K we are seeing the work of Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester flower here in the States in the Reformed community of all places. R2K does not believe that Christianity can create a distinct social order. There is no such thing as a Christian social order and so there can be no such thing as “Christendom.” As such, a social order vacuum is created for other false religions to fill. As Christianity can not form a social order or culture, therefore, Christ hating Judaism, Islam, Marxism, and other variant forms of religious humanism will form the social order and culture.
The last sentence from Buckle above must be corrected. Theology was never severed from England’s ethics and government. Certainly it was the case that Christian theology was severed from England’s ethics and government but some other theology then filled the vacuum to inform England’s ethics and government. No neutrality.
