August 1, 2007

Dear Friend,

Hanging labels on people, ideas, or movements is so convenient. It can even be helpful, as a kind of shorthand to help us categorize ideas and people. I was labeled recently. A pastor was trying to figure out where to place me in terms of belief systems, churches, denominations, etc. After a brief exchange of emails, he decided I was a maverick.

I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but here in Texas, we know what a maverick is. It is an unbranded range animal. When applied to a human, it denotes an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party. So I figured it was a compliment after all. For I certainly don’t run with the herd. That said, I pointed out to the chap that labeling people can become a substitute for thinking, and that is not the best way to understand people or things.

Sometimes you have to look up the meaning of the label. A good example of this is the word secular, which is showing up more often these days: It means simply, not religious. When we go a step further and make it an "ism," we get secularism, which means indifference to, rejection of, or exclusion of, religion and religious considerations.

For a long time, talk show hosts were enjoying bashing liberals so much that those who previously defined themselves as liberal, were now calling themselves progressive. And really, after all, we all want progress, don’t we? In a few quarters, talking heads and pundits are starting to recognize a different "ism." The enemy is not merely liberalism or progressivism. It is the exclusion of religion and religious considerations from public life—in other words, secularism.

Secularism is not quite the same thing as atheism, although they tend to run in the same channels. There was a cover article not long ago in one of the major news magazines titled, "The New Atheism." There have been about five books published in recent months making the case for atheism. Michael Novak noticed something that could be easily overlooked in all the noise. He said that there’s an odd defensiveness about all these books—as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation. I hadn’t thought about that, but I know in principle that the collapse of an idea is downright scary to people who have lived so confidently in its shadow. I have seen the same thing in Christian circles when people come face to face with uncomfortable truths about their faith. The more argumentative a person is, the more insecure he is about his belief.

What I took away from Michael Novak’s article was that "inevitability" of secularism needs to be reexamined because it is, simply, failing. It is easy to overlook that fact in the steady drumbeat of news. But just as communism failed spectacularly in the Soviet Union, so secularism is failing in the West.

I want you to listen to my radio program on this theme titled, The Death of Secularism.  It won’t air for some weeks yet, but I am happy to offer it to you right now.  Just click here to listen.

Continuing to keep you informed, 

Ronald L. Dart

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