The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Jim Antle Reviews The End of Secularism

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Jim Antle Reviews The End of Secularism

By Hunter Baker on 10.14.09 @ 12:33PM

And he does it for the Washington Times. Thank you, Jim.

Money clip:

Early in "The End of Secularism," Hunter Baker of Houston Baptist University talks about his religious awakening. He came to believe that if the God of the Bible existed and was active in human affairs, that had implications for his life. It made no sense, Mr. Baker concluded, to have faith in God and Christianity in the abstract but to live as if there were no God in practice.

In this slim but compelling volume, Mr. Baker argues that this is precisely what secularism asks of us: to hold our abstract religious beliefs in private but live as if there is no God in our public lives together. Religion then becomes like sex in the Victorian era: something best done in private but seldom discussed, much less seen, in public lest someone scare the horses.

The argument for secularism is that it represents a kind of neutrality. Because none of us possesses absolute certainty in religious matters, a secular public culture restricts our political and moral debates to that which is universally accessible. The end result, according to this logic, is that no one's religion is privileged above anyone else's and every religion is treated fairly.

Mr. Baker counters that this argument is false - that secularism, in fact, privileges one very specific understanding of God and religion above everyone else's. It forces people who believe in an active God to pretend He does not exist when discussing matters of public import, and it rests on assumptions no more "neutral" or scientifically rigorous than most religious claims.

You can find the book here.

View all comments (3) | Leave a comment

S.L. Toddard| 10.14.09 @ 1:30PM

A typically great piece from Mr. Antle, and it reads as though the book is well worth the reading. As for this:

"If we are equal," Mr. Baker writes, "it is almost surely in the sense of being equal before God, because we are in fact equal in virtually no other way"

Mr. Baker neglects another way in which "we are equal": before the Law of the United States. He is correct, though, that people are in no other ways equal - that equality does not exist independent of these examples. The doctrine of egalitarianism is based on a falsehood; it is pure fantasy, and it is dangerous. To accept the nefarious, leveling principles of egalitarianism one must deny the vibrant variety of humanity, and attribute to Man a drab uniformity that does not in any way exist in the real world. If anything is true it is that men are inherently unequal, for each man is unique, and uniqueness precludes equality.