The secular worldview asserts that religion is a wholly private matter that should not affect public life. This does not fit with the Christian worldview, and it’s important to see why sharing our faith in an age that discourages it can transform society for the better.
What Is Secularism?
Secularism can refer to several things.
The abstract for Andrew Copson’s book Secularism: A Very Short Introduction explains that nineteenth-century writer George Jacob Holyoake coined the phrase. However, the way people have defined secularism has developed since then:
“A modern definition, provided by scholar Jean Baubérot, sees secularism made up of three parts: separation of religious institutions from the institutions of the state and no domination of the political sphere by religious institutions; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion for all; and no state discrimination against anyone on grounds of their religion or non-religious worldview.”
Secularism seeks to remove religion from areas of public life. In the secular worldview, this promotes the freedom of all people to practice their religion but keep it private. Secular thinking attempts to make religion purely private, creating problems for those who want to share their faith.
Since secularism advocates for no one religion defining public life, it advocates for relativism: no religion is inherently true, so all religions should be accepted as privately helpful ideas for participants. The result is religious pluralism.
Mark Sayers argues in Reappearing Church that “The average Westerner processes religion through a crude, street-level model of secularism that is assumed but rarely analyzed…. This model presumes that with the right conditions and influences, humans are perfectible and that a kind of human utopia is possible.” This means that most people in the modern West believe religion is great in private but doesn’t go outside that.
What Do Philosophers Believe About Secularism?
In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor defines secularism thoroughly and clearly. He notes a key effect is “In a secular age, belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives, and this will also come up with ways of living in a world without God.”
Elsewhere Taylor says, “The idea of secularism is best understood not as the absence of religious belief and practice, but rather as a particular configuration of them.” In the secular worldview, religious matters become strictly personal matters. Secularism contributes to the idea that evangelism is offensive—if religion is purely private, sharing faith violates cultural boundaries.
What Are The Results of Secularism?
One interesting but clear result of secularism is birth rates. Religious communities tend to marry early and produce larger families. Louise Perry notes that secular countries emphasize education, which is a benefit, but comes at the cost of larger families. People in secular countries have fewer children because they marry later in life.
In places like Japan, China, the UK, and Sweden, where secularism has predominated for the past 40 years or so, birth rates have been decreasing. The effect is particularly clear in some of the most secular countries—in 1979, China declared that families could only have one child. A population imbalance followed when sons were favored over daughters. For example, in 2012, 2.7 million more boys were born. China now faces a birth crisis—the population is projected to shrink to 800 million by 2100.
Another key consequence is polarization. Human beings are meaning-makers. We always find a way to find meaning in things. In a secular society, we find meaning entirely within ourselves. This is known as expressive individualism—which Carl Trueman, author of Strange New World and The Rise And Triumph of the Modern Self, defined as “The notion that I am most truly myself when I am able to express outwardly what that voice of nature says to me inwardly. Doing that, to use modern parlance, is what makes me authentic.”
Rather than going to something outside ourselves, secular people look inwardly to find who they truly are. This results in increasing isolation and more echo chambers as people look to people with similar beliefs.
How Should Christians View Secularism?
Secularism makes faith a purely private matter, but in Christianity our faith is not simply private. According to Leslie Newbigin “The Gospel is not a private religious experience, but the public announcement of a universal truth that challenges all other claims to truth and authority.” (Foolishness to the Greeks). Rather than making our faith private we need to share it with others. This will make us appear countercultural, and may cause people to look down on us. In fact we were promised this by Jesus in John 15.
“The attempt to interpret human behavior in terms of models derived from the natural sciences eventually destroys personal responsibility.” (Foolishness to the Greeks)
Secularism seeks to remove all higher meanings from the world. For example, in secular developmental psychology, most of the negative behaviors we display are not a result of our sin inherited from Adam but due to broken family environments. In Christian psychology, we are called to take responsibility and ownership of our sins and turn our disordered affections to God, who gives us the power to change.
How Should Christians Respond to Secularism?
Trueman observes, “We do better to focus on making our protest against the wider secular culture in more positive ways. That’s where community comes in: churches need to build community around clear Christian teaching, serious Christian worship, and practical Christian love.”
Christians have an opportunity to create a sense that secular society cannot create. This opportunity to model a way of life countercultural to the world will give the secular person an idea of what is missing from their one-dimensional this-world-only lives. Because as Taylor said in A Secular Age, “In our secular age, a sense of fullness and satisfaction comes to be defined more and more exclusively in this-worldly terms.”
We should respond to Charles Taylor’s quote by being in this world, but not of it in the way we love people. We must remind people and invite them into the deeper community we can offer as believers. There is a high value in the secular culture on authenticity, which means being honest and open in our relationships with others.
Many modern people struggle to find belonging in this secular age. Barnabas Piper says, “Belonging is something so much deeper, a soul-level connection that speaks to our yearnings and needs and draws us in. Belonging is finding the kind of place, the kind of community God has designed us for.
“The problem is that we have cheapened the reality of fellowship in the church, and in the process, we have made it difficult for people to belong.”
The belonging people long to experience in life is most often found in small groups and in meeting people and creating deep relationships that are very different from those the world has. They are different because they are oriented in different directions. Secular friendships look inward first to find the truth within and find people who support and agree with them. Christian community comes from the Holy Spirit working within us. This gives us an environment full of diverse ideas and personalities rather than the echo chambers becoming more prevalent in our online age.
We also need to help the secular people around us recognize that they are also making truth claims about the world. According to Newbigin, Since total skepticism about ultimate beliefs is strictly impossible, in that no belief can be doubted except on the basis of some other belief, indifference is always in danger of giving place to some sort of fanaticism that can be as intolerant as any religion has ever been.
Today this fanaticism shows up in people like atheist Richard Dawkins. He views religion as a harm to society that takes us away from the advancement of science. This scientism presupposes that only the material world exists. These ideas show up in the modern world as Marxism and evolutionism.
One important idea that needs to be explained to the secular world is the idea of sin. However, every secular person can recognize that the world is broken. Gospel illustrations like the three circles diagram can be a helpful way to share the Gospel in a more secular age.
What Are Some Good Resources for Learning More About Secularism?
There are many ways to learn about secularism, ranging from simple overviews to complex analyses. Think of them on different levels. For an introduction, start at level one, with level 4 being a philosophical treatise.
Level 1: Trueman’s Strange New World explains the origins of our modern secular worldview.
Disruptive Witness by Alan Noble is a great resource on being in but not of the world.
Level 2: Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self gives a more in-depth exploration of secularism.
Level 3: Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks presents a helpful guide to reaching modern secular culture with the Gospel.
Level 4: For a more academic work on secularism, Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is unparalleled in its thorough definition of secular culture.
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Muhamad Chabib alwi
Ben Reichert works with college students in New Zealand. He graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and agronomy. He is passionate about church history, theology, and having people walk with Jesus. When not working or writing you can find him running or hiking in the beautiful New Zealand Bush.
