Post-Christian Nation

Christianity and its rich theology and philosophy is considered, like all other religious beliefs, to be unworthy of academic discussion for the simple reason that they are religious beliefs. This explains why such a dramatic number of students enter college as Christians and leave as Nones.

It is no wonder that millions of Americans—including millions of Christians—are struggling with their faith in God. They have not been told that God does not exist, but they have been indoctrinated with views that make belief in God intellectually impossible.

The acceptance of a secular worldview—combined with a bombardment of scorn, derision, and mockery for those who dare question it—has left millions of Christians feeling alienated and confused, like strangers in their own land. Christianity—as an influence on the public life of the nation—is being systematically removed from our culture at large and limited to the confines of our churches and homes. The mere mention of Christianity is considered boorish in social settings, a distraction in the business world, inappropriate in policy discussions, and outright illegal in the classroom. It is as if an agreement has been struck where belief in God is tolerated so long as this belief plays no significant role in our lives. We have, it seems, acquiesced to a radical separation of faith from everything else, such that the space left for Christianity is so minor that even most atheists would be comfortable with it. God has been given one hour of worship on Sunday morning, but He is strictly forbidden from showing up anywhere in our culture outside of the walls of the church. The tacit agreement is: sing praises to your God all you like on Sunday, but leave Him at the church when you return to the real world on Monday.

Deep in our inner being we know that something has gone horribly awry. We feel a sense of profound loss—a loss of vitality, of vibrancy, of significance. Like a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s, we know Christianity has lost something, but we don’t quite know what.

Tragically, the secularization of America has been so successful that we are only vaguely aware of what we have lost. There was never a moment when Christians went to battle with secularists for the life of our culture. Rather, Christians embraced Secular Materialism because we believed the lie that our faith life is separate from our intellectual life. We succumbed to the indoctrination we received in our secular schools that faith has its place, but that place is confined to the personal and the private. We bought the myth that this separation of faith from almost every aspect of our live is appropriate because faith is neither rational nor scientific and therefore should play no role in government or academics. But most importantly, we have been taught a set of beliefs that make Christianity intellectually impossible.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another path. This alternate resolution is to concede that our Christian beliefs and Secular Materialism are in conflict, but to conclude that it is Secular Materialism that is unreasonable, not our Christian beliefs. This is a difficult path. Not because the case for Christianity and against Secular Materialism is so difficult, but because even to consider that our secular beliefs may be misplaced requires that we question what we think we know. This takes a good deal of thought that is at once contemplative, critical, and creative. In other words, it requires that we engage in the rarest kind of thinking: that we question what we have been taught.

Because our culture has become so secularized, we mistakenly feel that our Christian faith is inconsistent with science and logic. The truth is one can believe in God and not give up an ounce of reason or logic. Secular Materialism is radical and new. It was not the view held by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Newton, Beethoven, Hegel, Kant, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, or Kierkegaard—to name only a few! After all, most of the world’s greatest philosophers, artists, writers, and scientists were Christians—not secularists. Their genius and their Christianity were not at odds with each other. The only reason we feel the tension between our knowledge and our Christianity today is because we have been taught a view of the world that is opposed to Christianity.

The great irony of our blind allegiance to Secular Materialism is that it fails to stand under close scrutiny. While it parades itself as the rational choice and sets itself up as the irrefutable champion in the battle between reason and Christianity, the fact is that much of Secular Materialism is intellectually bankrupt. The secular emperor has no clothes but no one dares question his intellectual nakedness.