Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
First Throwing Out Religion, Then Throwing Out Western Civilization

First Throwing Out Religion, Then Throwing Out Western Civilization

Last updated on: February 7, 2020 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

First Throwing Out Religion, Then Throwing Out Western Civilization 2020-02-05T22:11:45-05:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

First academia threw out religion. But then religion was replaced with “Western Civilization” as the source of values, inspiration, and all that is good. Now academia has thrown out “Western Civilization” on the grounds that the great books and great ideas that had become the focus of the liberal arts curriculum are too male, too white, and too European.

That is the thesis, in a nutshell, of Stanley Kurtz in his National Review article Two Secularizations and the Fate of Conservatism.

It has recently been argued that the sharp decline in the popularity of the humanities on campus is the result of a “second secularization,” a collapse of our regard for high culture that parallels and reflects the broader decline of religious faith. . . .

The “ultimate things” in dispute in the second secularization are the goodness, continuity, and even the very reality of Western Civilization, and of America’s place within it. From the left side, the second secularization began with works like Stanley Fish’s 1980, Is There a Text in This Class? There Fish challenged our faith in the very existence of objectivity, reality, and truth. In the wake of declining belief in God, faith in almost any anchor outside ourselves had dimmed.

We can think of politics today as the effect of continuing conservative pushback against both the first and second secularizations. Just as it has taken more than three decades for campus humanities departments to commit enrollment suicide by destroying faith in Western Civilization, the Great Books, objectivity, and reality itself, so it has taken several decades for the specifically political consequences of the second secularization to emerge.

What began as a fascinating cultural sideshow has become our politics. The dispute between campus multiculturalism and traditional American conceptions of citizenship launched at Stanford in 1987 is now the everyday stuff of our debates. Controversies over race, gender, and ethnicity are ubiquitous. The ideal of global citizenship contends with faith in America and the West. Even the core Western commitment to freedom of speech is challenged now by intersectional orthodoxy. All of this was in play at Stanford in the late 1980s. It has taken three decades, but today who we vote for has everything to do with how we see these disputes.

As someone who lived through a lot of this, both as a student and then as a professor, I found myself agreeing with Kurtz, while also noting some issues that he raises but does not fully treat.

I was struck first of all by the thought–which Kurtz doesn’t emphasize too much–that the rise of “Western Civilization” courses and the ideology that came with them in the middle of the last century were attempts to fill the void left by the banishment of religious faith from academia. Notice the terminology: Scholars would speak of the “canon” of Great Books, a term borrowed from consideration of the books of the Bible. We were always being “inspired” by what we were reading. Literature and the arts were giving us “transcendent” experiences. Interpreting literature (my field) involved “hermeneutics.” We spoke of works that were”iconic,” texts that were “sacramental,” plots that contained “epiphanies.” All of these theological terms were applied to secular literature, philosophy, and art. To speak of the repudiation of Western Civilization as another “secularization” is to admit that it had been turned into a religion.

Western civilization has generated lots of books and ideas, of course, and any attempt to sort through them to form a “canon” will require a principle for selection. Generally, the “canon” consisted of Greco-Roman classicism, especially Plato and Aristotle, with some Christian writers–Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Pascal, Milton–as well as Christian-influenced authors who have stood the test of time, such as Shakespeare and Cervantes. Then the list settled down to give us the heritage of modern liberal democracy (Locke, the Federalist Papers, Adam Smith), modern science (Bacon, Newton, Darwin) and contemporary thought (Freud, Marx, Nietzsche). (See this account and list of the Great Books of the Western World, as compiled by Mortimer Adler and published by the Encyclopedia Brittanica.)

To read and study all of this can result in a splendid education, far, far superior to the “critical theory” and relativism that has replaced it. But the religious content that was conveyed in the humanities curriculum in its heyday was humanism. Back then we heard a lot about humanism or “secular humanism,” both among its advocates and its critics. There was much talk even in college classrooms about things like “the triumph of the human spirit,” “human values,” “universal humanity,” “human greatness” and even how religious concerns of the past now have their fulfillment in a new “humanism.” Notice that we don’t hear much about humanism today, though we might hear on college campuses about “post-humanism” or “trans-humanism.” Even humanism is too transcendent, too religious for today’s secularists.

I myself am a big advocate of classical education, classical liberal arts curricula (not in the sense of the “humanities” but in the older, more comprehensive view of the education needed to shape the free citizen), and Great Books programs. But what I advocate is “classical Christian education.” It is possible and valuable to study even the secular canon of the Great Books from a Christian rather than a humanist perspective. But Western Civilization, the liberal arts, and the Great Books are not enough to equip human beings to live a meaningful life. Though some, then and now, believe that they are.

Properly, Christianity and Western Civilization can complement each other. Christianity, which has always existed in multiple cultures, was never just a matter of “Western Civilization,” though European culture was profoundly shaped by the Christian faith. European culture has much that is worth studying, preserving, and passing down, including what is not explicitly religious. The classical liberal arts (the mastery of language, in the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the mastery of mathematics, in the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) are not particularly culture-bound at all. Indeed, some practitioners of the Western Civilization curriculum were either Christians or, as in the case of Mortimer Adler, converted to Christianity.

The Reformers, who did so much to revive both classical education and theological education, show how it is possible to study both the secular and the sacred realms, without confusing the two, as each has its distinct place in God’s temporal and His eternal kingdoms.

But Kurtz is certainly correct that both faith and “civilization” as cornerstones of education have the same enemies and have been torn down for the same reason. He discusses William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale (1951), in which the recent graduate who would become one of the most important conservative figures of his day criticizes the anti-religion bias of Yale and higher education in general. Kurtz says that this book proved to be the catalyst for the modern conservative movement. He then quotes “the most controversial passage” in the book:

I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

Buckley was thinking about Communism, which is militantly atheistic and which also opposes liberal democracy, including its values of individualism, freedom, inalienable rights, etc.

Not just Marxists but the post-Marxists of our own day also oppose those values, as well as the civilization that gave rise to them and that has been built upon them. And they are the ones who have overthrown “Western civilization” courses on college campuses.

We could call that a “second secularization,” as Kurtz does. Or we could see this new emphasis on sex, gender, race, and privilege as a third religion, replacing humanism on college campuses, just as humanism replaced Christianity. Kurtz himself uses a whimsical version of yet another religious term to describe the phenomenon: “the Great Awokening.”

Illustration: A meme opposing a Western Civilization requirement at Stanford, incorporating the Agassiz statue, Stanford University, California. April 1906. San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Credit: ID. MENDENHALL, 715. By http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/show_picture.cgi, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1710377, via Wikimedia Commons. The meme is by JASMIN KAMRUDDIN at The Tab.

Education

Religions

classical Christian education

Western Civilization programs

Previous Post

February 6, 2020

Re-Electing Trump

Next Post

February 10, 2020 The Political Effects of the Coronavirus

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Yes, I think you've nailed the reasons for adults, too. I'm glad to hear there ..."

1another

The Inversion of Our Holidays

"Upvote or New Year's, but here is another.I recently complained to a librarian about a ..."

kerner

The Inversion of Our Holidays

"I've got to say you have nailed the appeal of Halloween for children. Frankly, I ..."

kerner

The Inversion of Our Holidays

"I know people that really love Halloween, none of whom are religious. But they just ..."

DakotaLutheran

The Inversion of Our Holidays

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the name "Samuel" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God is King Chosen One Gift from God Heard by God

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »