After Pentecost

195:8.1But even af­ter ma­te­ri­al­ism and mech­a­nism have been more or less van­quished, the dev­as­tat­ing in­flu­ence of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury sec­u­lar­ism will still blight the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of mil­lions of un­sus­pect­ing souls.

195:8.2Mod­ern sec­u­lar­ism has been fos­tered by two world-wide in­flu­ences. The fa­ther of sec­u­lar­ism was the nar­row-minded and god­less at­ti­tude of nine­teenth- and twen­ti­eth-cen­tury so-called sci­ence—athe­is­tic sci­ence. The mother of mod­ern sec­u­lar­ism was the to­tal­i­tar­ian me­dieval Chris­tian church. Sec­u­lar­ism had its in­cep­tion as a ris­ing protest against the al­most com­plete dom­i­na­tion of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion by the in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian church.

195:8.3At the time of this rev­e­la­tion, the pre­vail­ing in­tel­lec­tual and phil­o­soph­i­cal cli­mate of both Eu­ro­pean and Amer­i­can life is de­cid­edly sec­u­lar—hu­man­is­tic. For three hun­dred years West­ern think­ing has been pro­gres­sively sec­u­lar­ized. Re­li­gion has be­come more and more a nom­i­nal in­flu­ence, largely a rit­u­al­is­tic ex­er­cise. The ma­jor­ity of pro­fessed Chris­tians of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion are un­wit­tingly ac­tual sec­u­lar­ists.

195:8.4It re­quired a great power, a mighty in­flu­ence, to free the think­ing and liv­ing of the West­ern peo­ples from the with­er­ing grasp of a to­tal­i­tar­ian ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal dom­i­na­tion. Sec­u­lar­ism did break the bonds of church con­trol, and now in turn it threat­ens to es­tab­lish a new and god­less type of mas­tery over the hearts and minds of mod­ern man. The tyran­ni­cal and dic­ta­to­rial po­lit­i­cal state is the di­rect off­spring of sci­en­tific ma­te­ri­al­ism and philo­sophic sec­u­lar­ism. Sec­u­lar­ism no sooner frees man from the dom­i­na­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church than it sells him into slav­ish bond­age to the to­tal­i­tar­ian state. Sec­u­lar­ism frees man from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal slav­ery only to be­tray him into the tyranny of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic slav­ery.

195:8.5Ma­te­ri­al­ism de­nies God, sec­u­lar­ism sim­ply ig­nores him; at least that was the ear­lier at­ti­tude. More re­cently, sec­u­lar­ism has as­sumed a more mil­i­tant at­ti­tude, as­sum­ing to take the place of the re­li­gion whose to­tal­i­tar­ian bond­age it one­time re­sisted. Twen­ti­eth-cen­tury sec­u­lar­ism tends to af­firm that man does not need God. But be­ware! this god­less phi­los­o­phy of hu­man so­ci­ety will lead only to un­rest, an­i­mos­ity, un­hap­pi­ness, war, and world-wide dis­as­ter.

195:8.6Sec­u­lar­ism can never bring peace to man­kind. Noth­ing can take the place of God in hu­man so­ci­ety. But mark you well! do not be quick to sur­ren­der the benef­i­cent gains of the sec­u­lar re­volt from ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion to­day en­joys many lib­er­ties and sat­is­fac­tions as a re­sult of the sec­u­lar re­volt. The great mis­take of sec­u­lar­ism was this: In re­volt­ing against the al­most to­tal con­trol of life by re­li­gious au­thor­ity, and af­ter at­tain­ing the lib­er­a­tion from such ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal tyranny, the sec­u­lar­ists went on to in­sti­tute a re­volt against God him­self, some­times tac­itly and some­times openly.

195:8.7To the sec­u­lar­is­tic re­volt you owe the amaz­ing cre­ativ­ity of Amer­i­can in­dus­tri­al­ism and the un­prece­dented ma­te­rial prog­ress of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. And be­cause the sec­u­lar­is­tic re­volt went too far and lost sight of God and true re­li­gion, there also fol­lowed the un­looked-for har­vest of world wars and in­ter­na­tional un­set­tled­ness.

195:8.8It is not nec­es­sary to sac­ri­fice faith in God in or­der to en­joy the bless­ings of the mod­ern sec­u­lar­is­tic re­volt: tol­er­ance, so­cial ser­vice, demo­cratic gov­ern­ment, and civil lib­er­ties. It was not nec­es­sary for the sec­u­lar­ists to an­tag­o­nize true re­li­gion in or­der to pro­mote sci­ence and to ad­vance ed­u­ca­tion.

195:8.9But sec­u­lar­ism is not the sole par­ent of all these re­cent gains in the en­large­ment of liv­ing. Be­hind the gains of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury are not only sci­ence and sec­u­lar­ism but also the un­rec­og­nized and un­ac­knowl­edged spir­i­tual work­ings of the life and teach­ing of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

195:8.10With­out God, with­out re­li­gion, sci­en­tific sec­u­lar­ism can never co-or­di­nate its forces, har­mo­nize its di­ver­gent and ri­val­rous in­ter­ests, races, and na­tion­alisms. This sec­u­lar­is­tic hu­man so­ci­ety, not­with­stand­ing its un­par­al­leled ma­te­ri­al­is­tic achieve­ment, is slowly dis­in­te­grat­ing. The chief co­he­sive force re­sist­ing this dis­in­te­gra­tion of an­tag­o­nism is na­tion­al­ism. And na­tion­al­ism is the chief bar­rier to world peace.

195:8.11The in­her­ent weak­ness of sec­u­lar­ism is that it dis­cards ethics and re­li­gion for pol­i­tics and power. You sim­ply can­not es­tab­lish the broth­er­hood of men while ig­nor­ing or deny­ing the fa­ther­hood of God.

195:8.12Sec­u­lar so­cial and po­lit­i­cal op­ti­mism is an il­lu­sion. With­out God, nei­ther free­dom and lib­erty, nor prop­erty and wealth will lead to peace.

195:8.13The com­plete sec­u­lar­iza­tion of sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, in­dus­try, and so­ci­ety can lead only to dis­as­ter. Dur­ing the first third of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury Uran­tians killed more hu­man be­ings than were killed dur­ing the whole of the Chris­tian dis­pen­sa­tion up to that time. And this is only the be­gin­ning of the dire har­vest of ma­te­ri­al­ism and sec­u­lar­ism; still more ter­ri­ble de­struc­tion is yet to come.