← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · friedrich braun
Thread ID: 17840 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-04-18
2005-04-18 17:43 | User Profile
The Cube and the Cathedral
Europe, America and Politics Without God
By George Weigel
BASIC BOOKS; 202 Pages; $23
In his latest book, "The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God," Catholic theologian and social critic George Weigel examines the religious underpinnings of modern politics. Noting how deeply imbued secularism is in European and American politics, he worries about the future of Western democracies. Can they sustain themselves, he asks, "absent the transcendent moral reference points for ordering public life that Christianity offers?" This is a burning question. It is at the center of a rancorous debate across the democratic West. Islamic versions of the question are being asked in the emerging democracies of Afghanistan and Iraq. In all of these cases, the discussions are highly charged and increasingly polarized, and there is an urgent need for calm and sober reflection regarding religion's proper role in democratic life.
Sadly, Weigel is not up to this task. He has written a shrill sectarian polemic marked by a simplistic analysis. Throughout his book, Weigel, elevating assertion over argument, takes considerable and highly dubious liberties with the historical record and, in the end, exhibits no small amount of moral bad faith.
Weigel begins with a political diagnosis: Europe faces a crisis of "civilizational morale." The continent's citizens are cutting themselves off from the culture and traditions that have nurtured their democratic societies and capitalist economies. As a result, they are no longer up to the arduous task of maintaining their civilization.
Searching to explain this crisis, Weigel takes an eclectic (or, less generously, scattershot) approach to the evidence. He references everything from Spain's election of a socialist opposed to the Iraq War to Europe's seemingly blind faith in the United Nations to falling rates of economic productivity as clear indicators of Europeans' unwillingness to protect their unique political and cultural heritage.
But of the many factors he cites, Weigel concentrates on one he feels is most indicative of Europe's present and future troubles: the region's falling birthrates.
There are certainly many explanations for European demographic trends, as Weigel freely admits. But brushing this complexity aside, he concentrates on one factor, namely secularism. As more and more Europeans lose their faith, they lack the motivation provided by Christianity to start and maintain families. Hence, the decline in births.
As it turns out, what can be said about secularism and family life can be said about most everything else. In the course of his book, Weigel traces all of the continent's past and present ills: the Terror of the French Revolution, communism, fascism, the appeasement of radical Islam to secularism. By contrast, all that is good in Europe, human rights, representative democracy, respect for human dignity, the democratic revolutions of 1989, Weigel assigns to the ledger of Christianity, by which he often seems to mean Catholicism.
Secularism, it appears, has much to answer for.
But this is an old argument and a staple of conservative Christian critics of modernity. Take T.S. Eliot for example. Writing in 1939 shortly before World War II, when European democracy faced a much graver threat, Eliot famously argued in "The Idea of a Christian Society" that Great Britain would only survive if it rediscovered its Christian roots. Without this rediscovery, the country would lack the moral fortitude to withstand either Stalinism or Nazism. As he pointedly concluded, "If you will not have God ... you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin." Eliot was wrong, of course, in no small part because he did not understand that people valued and were willing to fight for the principles of democracy independently of their religious faith. A lack of piety does not imply a lack of patriotism.
Weigel makes a similar mistake. He overstates the Christian influence on modern democracy and refuses to acknowledge the way in which core democratic principles such as toleration and consent had to be articulated in opposition to Christian doctrine. As a result, he fails to recognize the independent moral content of democracy and secularism. Democrats and secularists support values such as state neutrality, toleration and the freedom to have or not have children not because they are unprincipled atheists but because they are convinced moralists who believe that such principles are proper and good.
European and American societies are indelibly marked by such a pluralism of values. If citizens nonetheless want to reach agreement about matters of common concern, they will have to deal with people with whom they fundamentally disagree. Under these conditions, politics is best thought of as a process of trying to convince people of a point of view on an issue, not a process of converting them to a comprehensive view of the world.
At times, Weigel seems to understand this. At the start, he writes approvingly of toleration and pluralism. Yet after pages and pages of strident denunciations of his philosophical opponents, one begins to doubt the author's initial generosity and to suspect bad faith. And indeed in the end, Weigel conflates Christianity and morality and argues that only the "reconversion" of Europe to Christianity will avert its demographic and moral crisis. Europe faces many political and social problems; they certainly will not be solved by a new crusade.
John Brady is a writer and scholar living in Santa Monica. He currently teaches political theory and the ethics of citizenship at Pomona College.
Page C - 2 URL: [url]http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/17/RVG7DC41EK1.DTL[/url]
2005-04-18 18:21 | User Profile
[COLOR=Sienna][B][I] - "Weigel makes a similar mistake. He overstates the Christian influence on modern democracy and refuses to acknowledge the way in which core democratic principles such as toleration and consent had to be articulated in opposition to Christian doctrine. As a result, he fails to recognize the independent moral content of democracy and secularism."[/I][/B] [/COLOR]
Whoa, this sounds like a great compliment to Christianity!
:tongue:
[B][SIZE=3]"Democracy - The God That Failed":[/SIZE][/B] by libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe (I soon intend to read this book)
[url]http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765800888/701-2689345-1333923[/url]
R.J. Rushdoony on democracy:
[COLOR=Blue]"[B]One faith, one law and one standard of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state . . . Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies[/B]." (p 100) [R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law][/COLOR]
[url]http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_RRushdoony.htm[/url]
Petr
2005-04-19 00:18 | User Profile
FWIW.
2005-04-19 00:22 | User Profile
Now that Europe is little more than the collectivized Soviet -- down to its security forces, even -- of Lenin's dreams, let the Russians "convert" the Euros.
They've done a bang-up job with the religion-thing .... I thought the canonization of the Romanov remains (which you can now view in their own alcove of crypts at Sts. Peter & Paul) was a stroke of genius on their part.
2005-04-19 01:07 | User Profile
I am a Christian, but I try very hard to be objective about how my culture and civilization intersect with my faith. I haven't read Weigel's book, but I am somewhat familiar with some of his journalism. I really don't think that Christianity had very much to do with the rise of "democracy" and republican institutions. The religious right types have a tendancy to overstate the influence of Christianity on the founding fathers. I think there was indeed some influence, but there were just as many freemasons and "free-thinkers" among them as there were devout Christians. I recall that old painting of George Washington himself in his jackass masonic apron dedicating some memorial. Of course, on the continent, there was almost no Christian influence on democracy, i.e. the French Revolution.
The prime religious influence in American life is Calvinistic, which explains a lot of the extreme philio-Semitism, the nonsense about drinking and cardplaying and the concept that if you are poor, then God dosen't like you. Of course, to be fair, much of Calvinistic thinking through the centuries would not have been recognized by the crafty old French lawyer from Geneva.
2005-04-19 09:10 | User Profile
I can answer that question in the thread title: it depends on a number of things, including especially what type of Christianity is being practiced. If it is the current, egalitarian type of Christianity that sees no Jews, Blacks or Mexicans wrecking Western culture, then Western culture will fade into history.
To be more clear, it is the current type of Christianity [i.e. egalitarian Judeo-Christianity] that is wrecking Western culture [among other factors].
[edited for clarity]
[note: this post was not meant to suggest that Judeo-Christianity is the only entity that is weakening Western culture. Obviously, there are many factors that are weakening Western culture].