3 Threats to Secularism in the West

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[00:00:00] Collin: The church has become a victim of its own success when you already see these safe, clean streets and people obeying from within, and the government taking care of every problem. The natural question is, what’s the purpose of the church? Who needs a sermon to tell you what you already know, what to do to be a good citizen?

You’ll be sitting inside hearing a sermon on suffering from Romans eight. While outside, the crowds are thinking, Hey, good news is that anything goes wrong with me. The government’s going to take care of me. He just run into this basic problem of unreality. With Christianity in the secular West, that Christianity doesn’t feel necessary.

Last month, on my last day in Copenhagen, Denmark, I walked in the early morning through quiet streets, past closed shops. Uh, I [00:01:00] saw that the Danes do not get up very early. I was looking for the, the Church of our Lady. It’s a neoclassical cathedral of the Lutheran Church in Denmark. Now, unlike so many other European cathedrals you may have visited, you may have heard about, seen on tv.

This church radiates light. When you step in from the narrow darkened streets, you’re, you’re surrounded by statues of the apostles. And you stride down the center aisle toward Jesus behind the altar, with his arms stretched down in invitation, and the LAN turns beck into you post Tenus slx after darkness, the light of the word shown again, but the Protestant reformation now not long after opening.

Uh, I entered the cathedral with a second visitor, uh, toward the front. As this visitor and I walked forward, there was a third [00:02:00] visitor, and if you tour enough European churches, you, you come to expect a smattering of older women at prayer. But that was not the case this time. The two other visitors with me were young men.

They were native Danes and they were reading and praying. Uh, I visited the morning after the Charlie Kirk Memorial service back home in the United States, and all week leaders and guests at our TGC Norton Conference wanted to ask me all about Kirk. Everything was just fascinating to them. The stadium size worship service.

Complete with gospel preaching from a high ranking politician. All of this would be unthinkable in Scandinavia, one of the most secular regions of the world, but church leaders from Norway and Sweden and Denmark and Finland and the Pharaoh Islands. They told me that they’d been seeing a little of what I had seen [00:03:00] myself and the Church of our lady, which was increased receptiveness to the gospel from young men.

Now as I walked back to my hotel and prepared to catch my flight, I pondered what it means to live in our post Christendom world. That’s a topic we often explore here on gospel bound. It’s the subject of our new book, the Gospel After Christendom, from the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. And I thought in light of these questions, in light of what people are seeing, I thought, well, maybe we’re not as secular as I thought.

At least in the United States. Maybe the fusion of Christian witness and political power remains stronger as it was in Christendom. Then declining church attendance would suggest. Suggest, well, I was. Mulling these thoughts on an enjoyably. Cool morning, just out outside the cathedral, near the University of Copenhagen, and as I’m walking down this street, I notice a pride [00:04:00] flag and then I notice another and then another.

And I realized I’d stumbled into a gay bar district on my way back past the train station to my hotel, which shared a wall with a strip club. I. Yeah, I had begun to understand a little bit more of our predicament in the post Christendom West. You could have one group that shows encouraging interest in the gospel while another runs far away from God.

One country can experience revival while churches sit empty in another. Social media could show one group of martyr while another group sees nothing but red. Well, Charles Taylor famously began his definitive account of secularism by describing the loss of religious assumptions between the year 1500 and 2000 [00:05:00] back around 1500.

In Martin Luther’s day, you had to opt out of religion. In our day, the reverse is true. You must opt in. Faith is contested by the pluralism of our eyes. Everyone knows you don’t need to be a Christian, that Christians don’t hold a monopoly of power, and that is our post CNA world where belief sprouts on one street and decadence rules on another.

Now, earlier this year, a friend asked me. To explain the differences between United States and Europe, especially when it comes to religion and secularism. Well, I got to spend a number of jet lagged sleepless nights in my Copenhagen Hotel thinking about this question. Uh, the social scientist, Ryan Berge, he is very helpful with, with graphs that illustrate these very dynamics.

And one of his graphs [00:06:00] shows that the richer the country, the lower the religiosity. This is nothing more than the standard secularization thesis we’ve been hearing about, uh, for decades. You make money and you lose God. Now Norway is the richest nation in the world, at least according to GDP per capita.

And that’s just ahead of the United States. And less than 20% of Norwegians very low number say religion is very important. Believe it or not, though Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are even lower, but there’s always been one major problem with this secularization thesis. One big outlier. And that big outlier is the United States, where 52% of Americans say that religion is important.

Now, this is a really interesting chart and we’ll be sure to share it, uh, on our [00:07:00] website, uh, where you get the notes for this show. But this chart is, it’s not my favorite from Ryan Burge. The United States, of course, is, is very big. It’s very diverse. But what’s so interesting is, so is Europe. Some European countries actually look a lot more like the United States when it comes to religion, and there are some states that look a lot more like European countries.

So if we’re really going to get to the bottom of the differences between in religiosity and secularism, the United States and Europe, and really get to the bottom of, what do we do about this? We, we need to look a lot deeper. So let’s just. I spent a little bit more time here looking into the actual data.

There’s another chart from Burge shows weekly attendance in the United States and Europe, and it puts them all together. And overall, 25% of the US population attends a religious service weekly, now [00:08:00] much bigger than Europe. That number is only 14% in Europe. Now when you look at all the European countries and US states put together, again, you can see this graph on our site for gospel bound.

It’s no surprise to see that Mormon, Utah, and Lutheran, North Dakota are at the very top of the list. But number three in number five actually could come as a shock for a number of people. They are two post-communist Eastern Bloc states, Poland and Slovakia. European countries. Now, we’re gonna come back a little bit later to discuss the significance of these two countries, but after you get, um, you get Utah, you get North Dakota, you get Poland and Slovakia, you see a host of states that follow, including Alabama, South Dakota, until you once again get to a few European countries, notably Ireland, Ireland and Italy, and they’re around the national US average of 26% weekly [00:09:00] attendance.

Most of Europe, though it clusters around the bottom of the list from 13% weekly. Church attendance in Spain, 12% in the uk, all the way down to 3% in Iceland. You’ll see on this list that several US states are just as secular as many European countries. Only 14% in Massachusetts attend church weekly. It’s 12% in Maine, which is the most secular state.

Vermont is 18%. It’s the same as Connecticut. New Hampshire is 17%. It is not on the other hand that all of Europe is secular. I mentioned Poland and Slovakia. They’re really equivalent to the American Bible Belt, and it’s not that the United States is religious. New England belongs in Scandinavia in terms of these comparisons, and it’s no wonder then you can see why so many Americans from the South struggle in ministry when they [00:10:00] move to New England, they might as well be in Norway.

Uh, visiting Copenhagen for my third time, I got a, a much better feel, I think for the challenges of secularism because I got to talk to so many different pastors and missionaries, some of them native Nordics, others from the UK and many of them from the United States. And I tried to just listen, watch, observe, take notes, pray.

It was just a fascinating experience. The first night of TGC Norton I was teaching from the book of Jeremiah, but at the same time that I was preaching. FC Copenhagen was playing a Champions League match against Lever Kuen from Germany, and I could have walked to the stadium from the church in less than 40 minutes.

Copenhagen is a, is a wonderful city. It’s not particularly large, [00:11:00] needless to say, as I’m preaching from the book of Jeremiah against this champions league. My preaching was no match for the draw of football. Really, it’s no different from the United States where sport has increased as religion has decreased, as the object of devotion, time, attention, and money.

Uh, that was just one way though that I got a feel for the nature of, of secularism in these countries. On Saturday morning, I wandered the clean. Safe streets as crowds enjoyed coffee and pastries and unhurried. Sidewalk cafes, everything that Americans dream of when they watch Rick Steve’s shows about these cities.

You see laughing children dancing in the fountains of the town squares. And I arrived at church just in time to hear my friend Christian Roth, who’s planting in a church in Copenhagen and leading TGC Norton. He was [00:12:00] closing the conference by preaching an excellent message on suffering from Romans eight.

And as I walked in to hear him preach that the transition from the sunny streets to the stuffy church, it jarred me and I asked myself. Which one of us, inside or outside is out of touch with reality. Now, of course, as a Christian, I’m reminding myself it’s the crowds in the streets. They show far less concern for the inevitability of death than their existentialist ancestor.

So in Kiir guard, who’s actually buried not far away from the church where we met, uh, he certainly thought they should be concerned about, about death and, and, uh, its inevitability. Ask myself again, but who feels out of touch with reality? I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s us. It’s the Christians sitting inside a dark [00:13:00] church on a Saturday morning talking about suffering in the sovereignty of God.

We’re the ones who feel under secularism, like we’re living a self-inflicted nightmare. While the world enjoys the last weeks of sun before the long northern winter descends with its early nights and late mornings, as I met with and heard from and talked to these church planters and missionaries, I was reminded again, these are my heroes.

They are the pillars of reality, of truth. Amid the unreality of abundance that. Factually speaking, none of us will be able to take into eternity no matter how we feel about it in the moment. And these church planters, these pastors, these missionaries, they face apathy and sometimes outright opposition from people who are amusing themselves to death with alcohol and drugs.[00:14:00]

It. This is, I think, a feel for the challenge of Christianity in our secular age. It is not that we’re wrong changing cultures. Don’t change the fact that 2000 years ago, Jesus, the Son of God, rose from the dead is the only way any of us can escape the sentence of death and eternal judgment that we deserve.

The challenge, though, in many secular places, Jesus doesn’t feel needed. He doesn’t feel necessary even for doing good or living a good life. It’s the same story from Boston to Manchester, from Bergen to Malmo. Reality does not feel real. The reality of these theological truths that we know incontrovertibly as Christians does not feel real.

If we’re going to crack though the missional problem of secularism, we need to look closer at these differences between the United States and Europe. And that means we [00:15:00] also need to look closer at the differences between different countries in Europe and different states in the United States. So let’s keep digging.

See what we can find here at the bottom. Let’s look more closely at Europe first. Now, the first thing you see in this list, you’ve probably already picked up on it and what I’ve already said. It’s a clear Protestant Catholic divide, Poland, Slovakia, Ireland, and Italy. They’re all predominantly Catholic countries now.

Cyprus also sneaks in there in the middle as an Orthodox country, uh, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, they’re on the bottom. And their historically Protestant country since the Reformation, so. Already we have our first big clue about the nature and origins of secularism, that there is a something different, at least between Protestants and Catholics, on the question of weekly church attendance and saying that religion is very important.

So [00:16:00] we already see that divide in Europe. When you look at the United States though, the picture does not look quite so. Clear you. You have predominantly Protestant states in the deep South with high concentration concentrations of Baptist and Methodists. They rank the highest in religiosity and church attendance, and the mostly Catholic states of New England, they rank the lowest.

Does that mean then that there’s really nothing we can derive from looking at the differences in the West between Protestants and, and Catholics? Well, I still think we can derive some of these differences and let me, lemme tell you why. What do we see in common between the most religious European countries and the most religious American states?

If you peer into the history, what you’ll find is a high degree of tension [00:17:00] between the church and the culture. Or even more explicitly with political authorities. Let’s just consider the example of Poland, the Catholic church that gave us Pope John Paul II was the primary opponent of Soviet controlled communism in the 19 or into the early 1990s.

As a result of this history, the church plays a large role in national identity, especially since Poland faces an ongoing security threat from the nearby Russian Colossus. Now as Poland’s situation and their Catholic history, let’s turn back to the American South or even let’s toss in there rural North Dakota.

’cause you’ll actually find some similar dynamics there. A high degree of tension between the church and the culture. A. Or political authorities In rural American states like the Dakotas, they tend to define themselves against the interests of nearby larger cities, which are more [00:18:00] progressive and secular.

And in these places, the church defends the contrary values of tradition of family, of community, and of morality. That’s the tension you see there in these rural states. Now, the south has the highest concentration of African Americans in the United States, and the church has been a pillar and a unifying force in the black community, in the face of marginalization and often outright persecution.

Once again, significant level of tension between the church and its outside culture. Now, that’s not the whole community, but it’s look at, at white Christians in the south, they might be in the majority in many of their communities and, and certainly at the state level. But once again, that’s not how they see their identity.

They see it in contrast with northern progressives, especially those Yankees of New England. And in this. Brief commentary. I don’t need to [00:19:00] belabor the problems with this approach, which go all the way back to slavery and segregation. I’m simply trying to make this point that even today’s southern identity in the United States sees its values threatened, and the church is the primary citadel of its defense.

This. Tension that we see in all these different places, Catholic, Europe, Protestant, United States, it’s, it’s a necessary result of churches trying to be faithful to scripture. Not in every case. We’ve pointed out a couple bad examples, but it’s, if you’re going to be faithful, there’s going to be tension.

You see this from the prophets to the apostles, and of course with Jesus himself. Now that’s just biblically normative. But in terms of the situ historical situation, you can also see how it’s necessary when we study Christian movements that have endured [00:20:00] and spread through history. Larry Hertado is a late scholar of second century Christianity.

He offered a sociology of a historical sociology of religion in his great book, highly recommended Destroyer of the Gods. Here’s a quote from Professor Hertado. A successful religious movement must retain a certain level of continuity with its cultural setting, and yet it must also maintain a medium level of tension with that setting as well.

That is a movement must avoid being seen as completely alien. Or incomprehensible. But on the other hand, it must also have, what I mean by distinctives distinguishing features that set it apart in its cultural setting, including the behavioral demands made upon its converts. There has to be a clear difference between being an insider to the group and an outsider.

That’s Larry Hurtado, [00:21:00] destroyer of the Gods. The way I like to describe it is that these churches that have grown and grown and spread, they are accessible and they’re also odd. They are not cults. They’re, they’re not completely set against the outside culture and closed off, but they’re not assimilated either.

They’re not just there. There is a significant degree of tension and difference from the culture. So that tension that we’ve already observed in the American states that are more religious and the European, uh, countries that are more religious brings us then to our second major point, 0.1. You see that tension in both places.

Now 0.2, I, I visited an often done ministry in Geneva, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Boston, Edinburgh, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, uh, really a short list of the most secular cities in the world. [00:22:00] And at one point, they have all been among the most important Protestant cities in the world too. They have been or even remain today, the capitals of established or official government Protestantism.

And I don’t think that detail is incidental to our investigation. I think it’s another big clue now. I don’t just say this as a free church Baptist, I’m trying to work inductively backward from the evidence. What you see with an established church is that the church cannot tolerate that tension with the state or culture that hertado identifies with successful and enduring religious movements.

The job of a, of an established church is to facilitate social cohesion, to serve a political vision. [00:23:00] And depending on the country and the time period, it’s very true. Some established church leaders, they can speak out against the government, they can oppose a war, they can even condemn an immoral leader.

Uh, do you see this today with. Established churches in various places around the world. You can see that commonly when it comes to economics or environmentalism. Um, church leaders are often very happy to speak out against the government. There’s no Anglican Bishop quaking in his boots before he denounce the Denounces, the economic plan of a UK Prime Minister.

But when he does this, he’s still doing so by going with and not against. The grain of the broader culture. What you find is far more rare is the bishop who speaks against assisted suicide or abortion or homosexuality. Now, it may [00:24:00] take a while for the views of the church and the establishment to converge, but eventually.

The established church, not always, but in many cases catches up with where the culture and the politicians have already led. Because a tension between the an established church and the state must be relieved because society must be stabilized and unified with the church’s help. That’s the role that the church plays.

Now let’s try to consider some more objections to this thesis. I can already hear you say, what about Italy? What about Ireland? What could be more established than the Catholic church in those countries? Well, I think there are some mitigating circumstances here. Ireland, I think can at least be explained by the opposition to England, and then of course, Northern Ireland, Italy, we know it’s the home of the [00:25:00] Vatican, but.

I still think there’s something valid here. There’s something valid that we’ve got to be able to dig even deeper now to be able to explore. So let’s keep going. Let’s go back to the Protestant element of this equation. We’ve looked at the establishment component, we’ve looked at the tension, but let’s look now at the Protestant dimension specifically now.

The vision of the reformers is one that I wholeheartedly support. And what the reformers did that I think was so deeply and compellingly biblical is they combined and authentic inner spirituality with an applied public theology. I’ll say that again. They combined an authentic inner spirituality with an applied public theology that included everyone.

In society and the leading reformers, Calvin and [00:26:00] Luther, among them, they worked in establishment contexts. They wanted to see spiritual revival through an authentic unmediated encounter with God’s word. Supported clearly by the church’s teaching through history, but primarily through a direct personal encounter with the word.

They wanted to see that word then from the individual, and the church then applied in how society was ordered in concert with the government. Well, so far so good. And when I was walking around to Copenhagen, just marveling at this. Amazing city. I was really reminded of how successful those reforms had been.

I just kept looking around thinking this is the world. Protestantism created a world that through this desire for everybody to know, the scriptures produced universal literacy, [00:27:00] widespread prosperity, an unmatched reputation for human rights advocacy. No matter where around the world when you visit one of these cities and walk the safe, clean streets, it’s not just some kind of top down government program.

They’re the product of a bottom up behavior of people who have internalized the biblical commands over generations. In generations. These streets are the, the product of a dynamic, an innovative culture formed by Protestant learning that was aimed to be applied to the common good. I just marveled at this miracle, these Danes have turned.

You don’t know what I’m talking about. I think about these weight loss drugs. These danes have turned lizard spit into a shot that solves obesity. Which has [00:28:00] been largely created by cheap, abundant food as we sit behind our screens instead of laboring in the field for our daily bread. I mean, this is a, a miracle of human ingenuity, of solving problems in some ways of our own making, solving problems of our own decadence, my great grandparents who fled poverty and hunger.

And these Scandinavian countries could never have imagined this leap forward in the last century. It’s truly remarkable. Now, Protestantism in creating these innovative, safe, prosperous societies. It it normalized and universalized the interiority. The the inward accountability that comes from Christianity.

Think about this as we see so clearly in the puritans of New England, [00:29:00] Protestants expected everyone to experience an encounter with God, ultimately to obey God and to love one another out of an inward desire, not merely from some kind of outward conformity. And then the expectation was these Protestants would, would see their communities become cities on a hill beacons of righteousness when that faith was applied to all of life.

And I just don’t think there’s any reason to be surprised that the Protestant countries of Northern Europe have become famous for their generous social welfare programs. It’s their faith applied to society when you’re prosperous enough to afford it. All right, so that’s the, that’s the world that Protestantism created.

So what’s the problem? How does that then give way toward the decline of the church in secularism? I, I think in some ways it’s. [00:30:00] A fairly simple answer. The church has become a victim of its own success when you already see these safe, clean streets and people obeying from within, and the government taking care of every problem.

The natural question is, what’s the purpose of the church? Who needs a sermon to tell you what you already know, what to do to be a good citizen? You’ll be sitting inside, hearing a sermon on suffering from Romans eight while outside the crowds are thinking, Hey. Good news is that anything goes wrong with me.

The government’s going to take care of me. He’s run into this basic problem of unreality with Christianity in the secular West, that Christianity doesn’t feel necessary, which is again, the feedback that I heard from so many church leaders across the Nordics. So you see the church then become a victim of his own success, where people have internalized religion.

And they’ve externalized their care for others [00:31:00] such that, again, what, what’s the, what’s the purpose of a church when we’re already doing what we were supposed to be doing to be good Protestants? Now, there’s another problem that leads to secularism and it does stand out among Protestants. Uh, Charles Taylor going back once again to his, his work a secular age, along with a few others.

He faults the reformers goes back to the reformation. Uh, he’s Catholic and he says that. The reformers expected too much from individuals and they expected also too much of society. He said it’s way easier to maintain a religion that’s made up of rituals and of public, uh, performance. You can go to mass and because you just need to receive the host there, you don’t really expect everyone to act like saints.

That’s why we venerate the few instead of overburdening the many with these expectations. [00:32:00] And Taylor as a Catholic looks back with criticism and calls this problem capital R reform and the E observes this essential tension. And Protestantism the individual is justified by faith alone. That’s the objective work.

It’s the apostle Paul. Then it comes back and says, but wait, your, your proof of your faith is found in your works. That’s subjective. That’s the book of James. So Taylor then poses a question to us as Protestants, how do you know you’re justified? How do you know if you justified, if your works are not supposed to contribute to that salvation?

I think this relies on a fundamental misunderstanding and only the scriptures. But also of the, of the Protestant view, but that’s the basic critique that he offers. And he says that Protestantism ultimately folds under the weight of its own heavy expectations. I’m not persuaded by this argument, but I can definitely recognize the force of [00:33:00] it.

Protestantism creates high expectations for individuals. Which indeed they need to work out and to prove, give demonstration of in their actions. And inevitably, in this fallen world, our actions are going to fall short. The society is, is never fully reformed. It never fully changes the way we want it to.

Sin is not completely eradicated, and it does make us wonder whether we’re actually saved or whether Christianity actually works. That’s what Taylor says, makes Protestantism again begin to collapse and lead directly to secularism too high of expectations. This public and private tension. Now, this public and private dynamic, it plays out in confusing ways, I have to admit, among Europeans ways that I’ve struggled to understand in conversation with many church leaders [00:34:00] because in.

In secular, especially Northern Europe, you see a peculiar linkage between a high degree of individual autonomy and a high degree of social conformity. A lot of ways what you’d expect from Protestantism, there’s a, there’s a strong inward impulse, but also a strong collective action. But the way I kind of describe it is that everyone together does their own thing.

And church leaders have reported back to me this difficulty of discipleship among people who can’t imagine being members of a local church. Uh uh, just really recoil at the idea of submitting to their leaders in a biblical manner. But at the same time, they willingly gladly pay high taxes so that everyone will be roughly on the same economic level with access to education and healthcare.

They have a lot of trust there and and really see themselves as needing to pitch in, but not in the same way when it comes to [00:35:00] discipleship and membership in the church. And I think this is another enigma of secularism, Protestantism, and its emphasis on individual Bible reading. Contributed to this rise of individualism in the West.

No doubt Taylor and other Catholic critics would point out the same individualism that now bucks against church teaching on, for example, sexuality. And at the same time, Protestantism created this moral society that expects everyone to contribute toward the common good according to strongly held values.

In many ways, this is exactly a good thing that we would expect, but once again, has Protestantism become a victim of its own success. So what happened? How did established Protestantism go to seed in the church? Nearly disappear in the 20th and 21st centuries. [00:36:00] Probably familiar with a number of the different arguments that people have used.

They’re all true at some level. Nietzsche’s philosophy, Darwin’s natural selection, Freud’s psychoanalysis, they all played a major role. But I think to fill out the picture, we need to add another ingredient here to this strange stew. Of secularism, that ingredient is the crisis of the second World War, ultimately the destruction of that city on a hill.

And I thought about this in relation to Germany. Uh, Germany looks historic and venerable, but of course it’s been rebuilt on a new foundation after American and British bombs leveled most cities. Historically speaking at least much of Germany as a facade. [00:37:00] Well, the historian Tom Holland in his landmark book, dominion, has shown how Christianity created much of what we know and value in western civilization, including Europe.

And the historian Alec Ry in his new book The Age of Hitler explains how Western leaders disguised that Christian influence in order to create. A post-war consensus of peace. Now, RI Reid is not faulting Christians for, for starting the Second World War. Um, he certainly faults them and especially established church leaders.

Remember that lack of tension, uh, for endorsing the first World War to their enduring shame. Uh, Riri is merely observing that Christian churches could not prevent or stop the second World War. And in the wake of two catastrophic wars in the matter of mere decades, western [00:38:00] leaders excluded Christianity from the post-war consensus for peace.

An example that many people point to is the United Nations producing a universal declaration of human rights without any reference to God and Rory. In this book, the Age of Hitler, he criticizes CS Lewis. In his wartime World War II, wartime lecture, the abolition of man and Riri argues that in the age after Hitler, the world we still inhabit today, it’s humanity that has become our shared faith.

In short, the way Ry expresses this is that we do need to be good, not like Hitler, and we don’t need God to do it. As Tom Holland said to me five years ago on this very podcast, you can [00:39:00] export and impose universal human rights on a war torn world, but you can’t do the same thing politically with Christianity, which as Rory would argue, had been widely discredited, even discarded by the war.

And so in order to keep this piece to be able to impose it on all of the world, even the parts that are not Christian, we now then have imposed and share a secular faith in ourselves.

Well, I spent a memorable Friday afternoon with some dear friends touring the National Gallery of Denmark. It’s not far from the King’s Garden in Central Copenhagen, and the guide excitedly told us about a new exhibit on surrealism, which she said has become popular again. And I thought, no wonder [00:40:00] surrealism emerged in Europe as a response to the First World War.

And so you can see why it’s popular again as the post-war consensus of the Second World War has finally crumbled with Russia’s invasion and ongoing war with Ukraine. You didn’t come to gospel bound because you thought that I was an expert in surrealism, but I did read the curator’s explanations of Andre Bertol and his second surrealist manifesto from 1929 fateful year in Western history.

The stock market crash. Now, here is one of those summaries. This is the the Danish National Museum Summary of Surrealism, and you can see then why it’s so significant for today. Here’s the summary, inspired by Freud’s psychoanalysis. The surrealists see drives as a fundamental energy that moves human beings.

Not only towards life and creation, but also towards dissolution [00:41:00] and chaos. This is evident in their depictions of war disintegrating bodies and challenges to authority figures. These artists allow themselves to be guided by their drives, which can lead to both the construction of new visions and the dismantling of existing norms.

Now you can see and even feel in the surrealists. In their, in their work, in their paintings, the destruction that was suffered by a generation whose world was destroyed by war. You can also see like those German cities that are facades that they, they didn’t intend to put the world back together. The same way that they inherited it.

They couldn’t, it was broken. There was no going back to July, 1914, and so guided by Freud, they would be driven to reconstruct life however [00:42:00] they please. Yes, you can definitely see why surrealism is popular Again, we’re not going back to the world before the COVID Global Pandemic. Or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the terrorist attacks on Israel by Gaza or out of Gaza or Germany before the bombs.

Uh, RRY says we can’t go back to Christianity either. It’s not an option, so we’ll have to make a new world again. However we feel we’ll be lucky. If this is true, we’re gonna be lucky if it lasts as long as the post-war consensus did. No one knows we’re navigating the future without a compass, only our drives.

That’s what the surrealists are telling us. This is modern Western secularism. We’ve internalized Christianity, but we won’t acknowledge it. We’ve left the church, we’ve publicized Christianity, [00:43:00] but we won’t credit it. We’ve abandoned Christianity. But we don’t know how to replace it. Let’s say that again.

The essential nature of modern Western secularism is that we’ve internalized good Protestants, Christianity, but won’t, won’t acknowledge where it came from. We’ve publicized Christianity, we’ve applied it to all of life, but we won’t credit it. We need to be able to export it as a universal good, even to non-Christians.

And now then in full flowered secularism with the decline of the church. We’ve abandoned Christianity, but we don’t have anything but our drives to know what’s supposed to replace it. And when you consider this history, you see is, is neither a cyclical, nor is it linear. We don’t know where we’re going and we’re not just [00:44:00] repeating the past.

One thing we know as Christians reading our scriptures, God often surprises us the post-war consensus of secular universals. Even just a few years ago, well, let’s start further back at one point, that kind of secular universal piece that seemed impossible, never nothing like that ever happened in world history.

Then for decades and decades, it seemed impregnable. And now you’re seeing with the revival of the surrealists, it’s unlivable. Fascinating. One. At one point it seemed impossible, then it was impregnable. Now it’s unlivable. This is what I heard again and again from church leaders in this context. It’s not unlivable.

Modern secularism is not unlivable. Because Copenhagen is a miserable place to visit or to live. No thanks to Christianity [00:45:00] and Protestantism. It is a marvelous place. It, it is a remarkable achievement. What makes it unlivable is that in the end, reality always wins. Once you’ve drunk your coffee, you’ve eaten your pastry.

You gotta walk home and you gotta do the laundry. The so social welfare system is great, and in the end it’s always gonna fail you because it can’t stop death. Romans eight is true. Whether or not it ever feels that way on a sunny September morning today. Secularism is running into reality and despite these appearances, it’s losing reality remains inconvenient to those who deny God.[00:46:00]

It’s inconvenient to run into the reality that two genders are different. It’s inconvenient to run into the reality that not every metaphysic produces the same desired results. It’s inconvenient to run into the reality that neighbors often desire to defeat or conquer their other neighbors is it’s inconvenience run into the reality that we need some basis to tolerate differences while also maintaining social cohesion.

It’s inconvenient to run into the reality that we need a shared basis for justice, while also preserving freedoms of conscience of speech and assembly. It’s inconvenient to run into the reality that we need help restraining the drives that destroy ourselves and others. There has to be a [00:47:00] purpose for progress beyond the cycles of fashion.

Of art that comes in and out of popularity and merely our feelings of superiority over the supposedly unenlightened past. Now, I do see a, a future for the church in the most secular cities of the West. I heard about it from the leaders of of TGC Norton. But I pray for them and I would ask you to pray for them as well.

They’re often, their work often feels like pushing a boulder uphill while they’re slipping in mud. They are trying to prove the need for the solution that they’re offering in the gospel. When most people are simply content to gaze into the blue skies with their coffee and their pastries, they’re not wanting to think about death.

They’re not wanting to gaze into their souls. They’re not wanting to [00:48:00] question whether the numbing effects of their drives will ever get old or stale, and thank God ourselves, humanity, who’s supposed to thank here for the welfare state. Something does seem to be changing, however, and I want to share three perspectives on what these leaders think will happen.

I, I mean, I think we see three options. Any one of them. Could emerge as a tension point. Remember what Hurtado said about growing and successful religious movements. Any one of these three options could emerge as a tension point that would demand a widespread unified social action. And when that happens, it’s not surrealism, it’s going to provide the answers The west is going to need Christianity.

Again, remember, religions [00:49:00] thrive under at least moderate threats. They create that need that’s always there, but they make that need known and widespread. Three options that I see and I’ve heard of from leaders in these secular countries, the first threat to secularism and an opportunity then for Christianity.

Is the rise of Islam, and that is, especially through immigration since 2015. 2015, is certainly that that date where a lot of these concerns had had peaked. Islam and secular humanism make strange bedfellows. Despite their shared opposition to Christendom, even Sweden today is not happy after its failure to integrate large numbers of Muslim immigrants.

One of the major problems with the post-war consensus and the way that Christianity was [00:50:00] translated into this universal respect for human dignity is that when you forget where these ideas came from. You forget what makes your society different. And much of Europe is finding out that many Muslims don’t share their drives, don’t share their vision for the public good.

And so the rise of Islam could make the secular West go looking for support and turn back to Christianity for survival. Hopefully, again, not merely as some sort of political tool, but as the source of genuine spiritual awakening, the second threat. To secularism and opportunity for Christianity is related.

The secular West is not the only place that is currently suffering a collapse in fertility, but the awareness of that collapse started in the Nordics in [00:51:00] these countries. It’s not just a problem that the social welfare system depends on younger workers and younger taxpayers. It’s that a society that won’t get married.

And have children is a society that has lost a sense of purpose, of sacrifice, and even of hope, and given the higher fertility rates. Right now in many Islamic countries, Europe may face a simple math problem within one or two generations. Question is, could Christianity restore hope? Could Christianity offer a vision for giving life to a new generation that would steward the culture and values of these beautiful countries?

That’s the second, uh, threat to secularism and opportunity perhaps for Christianity. The third threat. The secularism opportunity for Christianity is even more [00:52:00] pressing, and it can change in an instant. There were not many out there who thought Sweden and Finland would join NATO until all of a sudden they moved quickly to adjoin nato after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The end of this post-war consensus has created and centered, ultimately concerns about basic security and survival once again. As was the case for so many years in these countries, in fact, drones had swarmed and shut down the Copenhagen Airport just hours. As I left an authoritarian axis between Russia, China, and North Korea could put much of the Democratic secular West in imminent danger.

In light of that threat. Could Christianity remind these countries why it’s worth defending themselves and their weaker [00:53:00] brothers? Could their historic faith bring unity to resolve and to meet this challenge, whatever the cost, whatever the burden they need to bear. So I think about these three threats to secularism and opportunities for Christianity, especially focused on secular Europe.

I think once again about basic reality. Christianity is the way and the truth and the life. It is the ultimate reality whether or not anyone acknowledges the Lordship of Christ. But in the secular West, our biggest hindrance is. It’s the lack of a perceived or felt need by our neighbors, the lack of an imminent threat that wakes them up from a secular slumber.

It’s the experience of preaching. Romans eight and everyone else is out there enjoying a football match. [00:54:00] Secular secularism in Europe, it’s like an animal in a habitat with no known predators. That Protestantism has given them these peaceful and prosperous cities. There’s no sense of what’s lost if the churches are empty, because after all, the buses still run on time.

The food still shows up on the table. The welfare state still provides, but that need could become more widely felt under any or all of these three. Threats, and if so, how will we respond? As Christians as proud Protestants, I hope will respond by believing that the gospel brings transformation to individuals and societies.

It’s done it before. We believe that it can do it. It can do it again. Like [00:55:00] the reformers, were not going to be content to settle for outward conformity. And I hope we will also respond by not trying to resolve that tension between the church and culture and political authorities Do not fall for the establishment shortcut.

It’s another dead end. Jesus told us to expect tribulation and he promised to carry us through any trials. He will not fail us in the secular west either.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Gospel Bound for more interviews and to sign up for my newsletter. Head over to tgc.org/gospel bound rate and review gospel bound on your favorite podcast platform so [00:56:00] others can join the conversation. Until next time, remember, when we’re bound to the gospel, we abound in hope.