I. True Humanism

1. A HUMANIST MOVEMENT: only Christians can be truly humanists; humanism: quest for full realization of the possibilities of our humanity; secular humanists: turn their back on God -> forfeiting a dimension of human dignity -> settles for way of life fitting animals; origin of Christian humanism: 1) Puritan movement (17th century) 2) Methodist movement (18th century): neither were a protest movement, or a Pharisaic movement, or a kill-joy movement; evangelical Christan humanism: movement raised up by God for cleaning up moral messes in society; primary purpose: not just to get rid of things but to create space for the gospel;
2. VISION OF HUMANNESS: humanness: life-pattern of relationships in which God is adored and his image in us is fulfilled; God’s image: not just static (~tattoo) but also condition depending on how I use God-given capacities: rationality, creativity, dominion (mastery of environment), righteousness (God’s law ~ owner’s manual: don’t need to read it but expect trouble when divert from it), community
3. GODLINESS & HUMANNESS: “If you find yourself incredulous when I tell you that the life I have pictured is the good life for us all, and that God tells us so and Christian experience over and over again has proved it so, I can well understand it: your attitude reveals that sin has got at your mind, as part of its assault on your heart, and I can only implore you to fight sin in your mind, and think again, and challenge your own unbelief, and be skeptical about your skepticism.”; gospel: Jesus Christ (not just truth about him but his person);
4. DRIFTING INTO GODLESSNESS: secularism was inevitable (God has shrunk in the mind of thinkers); pendulum swang away from Christianity, need to act to reverse tend; drift to secularism is impoverishing (world of misunderstanding); lost touch with God -> lost secret to community & identity; contentment: unwillingness to exchange your lot because you know you have already found the best -> in this sense the Christian is content, beside Christ such contentment can never be known -> doomed to continue seeking something more restless
5. WASTELAND: after abandoning Christianity we are left with a world of mirages: utopianism (hope of achieving perfect society), aestheticism (enlarging individual experience, maximizing sensation -> “if it feels good, do it”), pessimism (no real hope for individual/society, we didn’t lose the key - there wasn’t any door, similar to Eastern religions), menace (direct rejection of Christian heritage); “We are no longer publicly pro-Christian, but we are not yet publicly anti-Christian either.”

6. COUNTERATTACK: Christians must 1) recover vision of true humanness under God, 2) restore concern and avoid the tolerance trap (don’t tolerate the intolerable), 3) renew evangelism, 4) rebuild community

   II. Secularism

7. SECULARIZATION: process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance; shift from interest in the next world to this world; happens everywhere and the world but takes different forms depending on the cultural background
8. BEFORE SECULARIZATION: 1) sense of national identity and destiny under God, 2) sense of unity between nation and church, 3) respect for individuals’ conscience and rights, 4) Christian basis of the state (magistrates held power directly from God -> government = stewardship), 5) care = universal duty (Poor Laws: forerunners of welfare state), 6) public decency = divine requirement
9. WHY SECULARIZATION?: attraction (appealing alternatives to Christianity), reaction (impact of church’s failures), distraction (impact of practical materialism); 16th century: Reformation: strong faith in God & Bible -> birth of experimental science as reverent study of God’s works; 17th-18th century: deism (adequacy of natural religion, God = absentee landlord) -> undermined belief in special providence & special revelation; 19th century: German idealism: restored God’s nearness but denied revelation (God = our thoughts/feelings about him, Bible = record of religion) -> out of the frying pan into the fire; after WWI: moving from atheistic optimism (evolutionary view: man getting better and better) to atheists pessimism (existentialism & Freud: man driven by irrational impulses, religion = neurosis, personified projection of tyrannical conscience (super-ego) which was itself neurotic product of repressed jealousy towards one’s father (Oedipus complex) -> prescription: let repressed desires come out); Church’s resistance to change (“medieval synthesis”: Christianity assumed to be final & permanent -> only temporal/transient phase; conservatism of Church undermined credibility of faith); distraction of materialism: not theoretical (is Christianity true?) but practical (does worship & spiritual life matter?), good life = endless enjoyment through technology, instead of taking time and trouble to know and serve God, atheism (denial of God’s existence) is minority but practical atheism (living as is atheism is true) is widespread; secularism: morality based on well-being of mankind, without reference to God; cause: 1) Church remote from real life, 2) never-ending clamor (media, automobile); “Materialism in Britain operates less as an argument than as an enchantment. It is not theoretical but pragmatic, calling for and capturing not so much men’s assent as their attention. Its motivating force is not hostility to the truth but rather love of the world, which drives out every other concern.”
10. SECULARIZATION IN PRACTICE: 1) drift from the churches, 2) drift from Christian knowledge, 3) shift from public Christian commitment; Christian Society (T. S. Eliot, 1939): committed churchmen penetrating society at every level <-> Secular Society (D. L. Munby, 1963): respect for the variety of individuals and tolerance for all views which are not in a direct way socially disruptive -> problem: no unifying goal, no agreed moral basis, nature abhors (ideological) vacuum; *“To settle for a society which has no standards save unlimited tolerance is not to love one’s neighbor, but to fail to love him. To secure his right to reject the Christian way if he feels he must is indeed a Christian duty (Munby is correct there), but to work for (rather than strive against) a state of affairs which will make that rejection easier, by taking from Christianity all its present backing in public opinion (which is what Munby’s preferred option really amounts to), would be a betrayal of both God and man.”; Britain: has not sank deep into post-Christian void yet; 4) detaching moral values from their anchorage in Christian faith: secularizing of ethics; humanists think Christian values (eg loving your neighbor) can last indefinitely on its own merit because it clearly makes for human happiness -> how long will a sense of human dignity survive after man’s creation in God’s image has been forgotten?
11. EVALUATING SECULARIZATION: 1) secularization of society was inevitable: Christendom (both before and after Reformation) was not prepared for rapid social change -> knowledge explosion & technological explosion: biggest cultural trauma in Western history so far, it made Christendom’s historic way of thinking about life under God seem increasingly remote; “I do not imply that the Christendom syn- thesis of knowledge and culture informed and interpreted by biblical faith cannot be successfully rethought and realized afresh in our time […] But it would have been unrealistic to expect that the West could work through this trauma of transition without great numbers of people throwing out the baby of Christian faith with the bathwater of Christendom’s prescientific outlook because they thought that the two were one.”; 2) secularizing of society has brought real spiritual loss: apostasy is death in every sense of the word (Heb 6:4-8, 10:26-31); loss of God leads to loss of good in human relations (Rom 1:20-32); 3) secularizing of society tends to disintegrate society; “The seeds of all kinds of sin lie in every human heart; restraints of law, custom, religion and public opinion may hold them in check; but the more these restraints are weakened, the more we may expect to see these seeds grow, and human relations in society being disrupted as a result.”; permissiveness has a culturally erosive effect -> weakening process expected to continue; in England Wesleyan revival put that process into reverse for one and a half century -> spiritual revival can save our society from further dehumanization & collapse; 4) secularizing of society is a summons to Christian action: disciples called to be salt and light -> antiseptic factor that keeps society from decay; if Christians don’t have the power to exert Christianizing influence, they should ask God how they might acquire it; if this is not possible, they should try to create alternative patterns of communal living (home, extended family, local church) ~ city set on a hill, demonstrating to the world the power of Christ in action; divine moral law: only ethical fuel on which human nature can run without burning itself up; Christians should try to understand secularization around them (what leads people to embrace secularization, why their way of seeking true community and individuality is counterproductive, what can an active Christian minority can do); Questions for Thought and Discussion: 1. What is good, and what is bad, about the current secularization of our society? 2. How far do the attitudes of the organized Church today contribute to its eclipse as an influence in society? 3. Is the ideal of a Christian society realistic today in any form? 4. Is it possible to justify the attempts of Christians to bring public life into line with God’s law when they themselves are a minority group?