VerbalSmaeel
29-11-08, 03:20
Deel 1:
Europe's first revolution
Tom Holland
http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2008/10/europe-christian-essay-less
Deel 2:
Uncomfortable origins
Tom Holland
Published 20 November 2008
http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2008/11/essay-christian-secularism
(...)
Monk and humanist alike are convinced that their respective belief systems embody the only sane way of interpreting the universe; both feel that it is a moral imperative to encourage everyone else to agree with them; both lay claim to a universalism that is in fact culturally highly specific. No less than the medieval Christian Church, Europe's post-Christian elite operates secure in the conviction that it has attained an enviably superior state of enlightenment, one that aspires to enfold within its embrace all other possible ways of seeing the world, and to neutralise all rival claims. Seeing secularism in that light, the tolerance that it extends to Islam is merely the mirror image of the Cluniacs' militant disdain: an expression of the complacency to which all powerful civilisations are, by their nature, prone.
To argue this is not, as a second correspondent complained, to slap atheist faces with a wet fish just for the sake of it. Rather, it is to make the point - permissible in a historian of the ancient and medieval worlds, surely? - that the origins of much that seems most modern to us can in fact be traced back to the distant past. Neutrality between different religions, as it is practised in Europe today, can never itself be culturally neutral, for the simple reason that it depends on a philosophy that is ultimately Christian in character. That the world can be divided into church and state, and that these twin realms should exist distinct from each other: here are presumptions with which many Muslims, for instance, would disagree profoundly. Certainly, there is nothing in the Quran equivalent to the New Testament injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Muhammad, unlike Jesus, had neither the slightest hesitation in formulating a fiscal policy nor in laying claim to political authority. For those who imagine that the western model of the multicultural state can emasculate Islam as readily as it has de-fanged Christianity, this should be a detail of more than merely theological or antiquarian interest.
Yet many secularists are still determined to regard all religions as being essentially the same and to deny the glaring fact of their own descent from a specific religious tradition. Hence their scrabbling around for Greek, Roman, even Indian and Chinese progenitors - any heritage, it would seem, just so long as it is not Christian. They protest too much. To recognise the Christian roots of modern-day secularism is no more to accept the doctrinal truth or otherwise of Christianity than an acknowledgement of our cultural debt to ancient Greece is an obligation to set about worshipping Zeus. So much seems to me self-evident - and leads me to wonder whether there might not be, in the reluctance of so many secularists to trace their ethical and sociological presumptions back to Christian origins, something of Bishop Wilberforce's horror at the notion that he might be descended from an ape.
(...)
Europe's first revolution
Tom Holland
http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2008/10/europe-christian-essay-less
Deel 2:
Uncomfortable origins
Tom Holland
Published 20 November 2008
http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2008/11/essay-christian-secularism
(...)
Monk and humanist alike are convinced that their respective belief systems embody the only sane way of interpreting the universe; both feel that it is a moral imperative to encourage everyone else to agree with them; both lay claim to a universalism that is in fact culturally highly specific. No less than the medieval Christian Church, Europe's post-Christian elite operates secure in the conviction that it has attained an enviably superior state of enlightenment, one that aspires to enfold within its embrace all other possible ways of seeing the world, and to neutralise all rival claims. Seeing secularism in that light, the tolerance that it extends to Islam is merely the mirror image of the Cluniacs' militant disdain: an expression of the complacency to which all powerful civilisations are, by their nature, prone.
To argue this is not, as a second correspondent complained, to slap atheist faces with a wet fish just for the sake of it. Rather, it is to make the point - permissible in a historian of the ancient and medieval worlds, surely? - that the origins of much that seems most modern to us can in fact be traced back to the distant past. Neutrality between different religions, as it is practised in Europe today, can never itself be culturally neutral, for the simple reason that it depends on a philosophy that is ultimately Christian in character. That the world can be divided into church and state, and that these twin realms should exist distinct from each other: here are presumptions with which many Muslims, for instance, would disagree profoundly. Certainly, there is nothing in the Quran equivalent to the New Testament injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Muhammad, unlike Jesus, had neither the slightest hesitation in formulating a fiscal policy nor in laying claim to political authority. For those who imagine that the western model of the multicultural state can emasculate Islam as readily as it has de-fanged Christianity, this should be a detail of more than merely theological or antiquarian interest.
Yet many secularists are still determined to regard all religions as being essentially the same and to deny the glaring fact of their own descent from a specific religious tradition. Hence their scrabbling around for Greek, Roman, even Indian and Chinese progenitors - any heritage, it would seem, just so long as it is not Christian. They protest too much. To recognise the Christian roots of modern-day secularism is no more to accept the doctrinal truth or otherwise of Christianity than an acknowledgement of our cultural debt to ancient Greece is an obligation to set about worshipping Zeus. So much seems to me self-evident - and leads me to wonder whether there might not be, in the reluctance of so many secularists to trace their ethical and sociological presumptions back to Christian origins, something of Bishop Wilberforce's horror at the notion that he might be descended from an ape.
(...)