Bishop Hilarion, the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative to “the European Institutions” (a paraphrasical way to refer to a European Union of which the Russian Church is not a huge admirer), has written a new essay on “Traditional and Liberal Values in the Debate Between Christianity and Secularism”, in which he attempts to identify the nub of the conflict between religious and secular world views. His analysis has much in it that is worthwhile. Unfortunately, with all due respect to His Grace, it goes seriously astray, because its image of secularism is drawn almost wholly from the Enlightenment. To the bishop, “secular liberalism” is still the philosophy of John Locke, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. That kind of liberalism still exists, in a semi-pure “libertarian” form, in elements of modern, dirigiste liberalism and in present day conservatism, but the most powerful and conspicuous form of contemporary secular liberalism is proudly post-Enlightenment. It does not worship Robespierre’s goddess of Reason or deduce the right form of polity from the “state of nature”. Reason has been dethroned along with the other archaic deities, while reasoning is scorned as a tool of patriarchy and oppression. Today’s secular liberals lack even the old bigotry against the numinous. “New age” mysticism tempts them, and exotic religions without the taint of Western tradition (Buddhism, for example) or with the virtue of intense anti-Western animus (such as Wahhabi Islam) are deemed worthy of a condescending tolerance. To place these secularists in the same camp as the Enlightenment is an error that can breed only confusion, as Bishop Hilarion demonstrates.
His crucial mistake is to see secular liberalism as the driving force behind “globalization” and traditional religion as the heart of resistance to it.
Today only religion is systematically resisting the desperate attack of globalization, entering into an unequal battle for the defence of those values which it considers fundamental and which are being challenged by globalization. Only religion is able to counter the ideology of globalization with its own system of spiritual and moral orientation based on the centuries-long experience of generations acquired during the pre-globalization age.
In the modern battle for values people find themselves more often than not on opposite sides of the barricades, with those inspired by religious ideals on the one side and those whose world-view is formed by secular humanism on the other. At the core of the modern globalization ideology is the humanistic idea of the absolute dignity of man and of the existence of universal, “common human” values, which should serve as the foundation of a single world civilization. By “common human” values, however, are understood not only those spiritual and moral tenets which are common to all religions or which are equally obligatory for both religious and non-religious people (“thou shall not kill”, “thou shall not steal”, “thou shall not bear false witness” etc.), but also many ideas that are questionable from the religious point of view and which are rooted in liberal-humanistic morality.
That account is almost diametrically opposed to the true state of affairs. How does it square with the fierce anti-globalization rhetoric of the secular Left or with the leading role of the United States, the world’s most pious major nation, in promoting closer economic relations among the various regions of the world? A more accurate description of the forces on “opposite sides of the barricades” would be conservatives and libertarians facing post-Enlightenment secularists and modernist Christians. The inspiration for globalization is not zeal for “a single world civilization” but ordinary economic self-interest. Nor is there much in the resistance that can reasonably be characterized as a “spiritual and moral orientation based on the centuries-long experience of generations acquired during the pre-globalization age”. The most active anti-globalists hold traditional values in contempt. Their multiculturalism stems from its usefulness as a weapon against the hated West, not from genuine respect for ancestral mores.
From faulty premises, the essay reaches the seriously faulty conclusion that Islamic extremism is a religious reaction, deplorable to be sure, to the likewise deplorable phenomenon of globalization:
There exist several variations of the religious answer to the challenge of totalitarian liberalism and militant secularism. The most radical answer is given by Islamic extremists, who have declared jihad against the “post-Christian” Western civilization with all its so-called common human values. The phenomenon of Islamic terrorism cannot be understood without comprehending the reaction brought forth in the contemporary Islamic world by the attempts of the West to impose its world-view and behavioural standards on it. We are used to hearing statements on how terrorism has neither nationality nor denomination, and nobody doubts that unsolved problems of an ethnic or political nature are the main causes of terrorist acts. But it is impossible to deny the fact that the most aggressive perpetrators of modern Islamic terrorism are inspired by a religious paradigm, viewing their acts as an answer to the total hegemony of Western secular thinking. And as long as the West continues to lay claim to a world-wide monopoly on world-views, propagating its standards as being without alternative and obligatory for all nations, the sword of Damocles of terrorism will continue to hang above the entire Western civilization.
But the “religious paradigm” of Islamofascism, the Wahhabi sect, originated in opposition to traditional Islam. Mohammed ibn ‛Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), who spent his entire life in Arabia, Iraq and Iran, probably never heard a whisper about “Western secular thinking”. According to their own propaganda, Wahhabi-influenced terrorists still see non-Wahhabi Moslems as enemies, along with the “crusaders” from the West. While it may be obvious to an Orthodox bishop that terrorism directed toward the modern Western world must be conceived as “an answer to the total hegemony of Western secular thinking”, the terrorists themselves believe that they are attacking Christianity. Among Western secularists, they find many who join with them in decrying American policies (as when Osama bin-Laden quoted Michael Moore). Meanwhile, as we have seen in Iraq, the one element of America’s behavior and world view that we have any interest in “imposing” on anyone, namely, democratic and constitutional government, appears to be quite popular with ordinary Moslems.
If Christians are to address secularism intelligently and effectively, we must avoid seeing it only as it was a century ago. There exists an Enlightenment secularism, with which we can discuss issues of common interest, because we have reason in common with it, though not revelation. There is also a post-Enlightenment secularism that denies the authority of reason. It “argues” by expressing feelings and is outraged when those feelings don’t move others to act as it wants them to.
Bishop Hilarion closes with hopes that the Church will be able to “to enter into a peaceful, non-aggressive, though obviously unequal, dialogue with [secularism], with the aim of achieving a balance between the liberal-democratic model of Western societal structure and the religious way of life”. With the old kind of secularism, that was a possibility. With the new, the dialogue will be extremely “unequal”. Its own presuppositions prevent it from engaging in rational dialogue. Since its advocates remain in possession of their reasoning faculties, little though they may wish to exercise them, Christians can try to reason with them. In return, however, we can anticipate nothing but a succession of whines and tantrums. It will be an unsatisfying exercise, and I find it difficult to share His Grace’s optimism about the prospects for any degree of success.
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