Religion and Secular Culture

I cannot help but wonder who we have become as a people in the span of a generation and what it means for our country.

KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - I buried my mother in December and my sister, the youngest of seven, in January. I had a surprising experience at their prayer services. Being the eldest, I led the Rosary at both services. Both were filled to capacity, standing room only at my sister's. Many people recited the Rosary with me at my mother's service. Our voices filled the room. At my sister's service, only a faint, lone voice joined my wife and I.

The only noticeable difference between the two crowds was the average age. Although closer in age to my sister's friends, I found many of them alien and difficult to relate to, as though they were from a different culture. As a result of this experience, I cannot help but wonder who we have become as a people in the span of a generation and what it means for our country.

I believe George Weigel gives us a clue in his book, The Cube and the Cathedral. In this book, George Weigle contrasts the culture that built the famous Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris with the culture that built La Grande Arche in 1990. Weigel depicts the French arch as a massive cube. Its plain geometry reminds me of something cold and barren--a world without God. It is meant to be secular humanism's monument to human rights and fraternity, ideals reminiscent of the French Revolution in 1789 (although we best not forget the Reign of Terror which erupted four years later).

The Cathedral of Notre Dame stands in direct contrast to the Cube. The geometry of Notre Dame is complex and passionate yet ordered and beautiful. It raises our minds toward heaven and orients our relationship to God and each other. Although Weigel's contrasts give us a clue to who we have become as a people, I believe certain similarities between the Cube and an architectural movement called "Bauhaus" give us another important clue.

I see strong similarities between the architecture of the Cube and the box-like features of Bauhaus architecture. In addition, some ideas within the Bauhaus movement and secular humanism also seem similar. For instance, I find that Bauhaus architecture emphasizes industrial mechanization while the Cube emphasizes bureaucratic mechanization. Thus, it seems that Bauhaus and secular humanism are primarily concerned with systems and control, utility and expedience.

Such ideas can become easily perverted when applied to human persons. And that is what history indicates. The Bauhaus movement took hold in Germany and Russia during the early Twentieth century, and I believe its ideas contributed to the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps and Stalin's purges. Consequently, I believe that these similarities should be a warning to us about the potential dangers of secular humanism, which produced the Cube.

Although I do not know if we have become like the kind of people who lived in and produced states like Nazi Germany or Communist Russia, I do know that our ideas and beliefs influence the kind of people we become and the kind of culture and state that we produce. This means that we cannot divorce our religious ideas and beliefs from society and politics as secular humanists desire. George Weigel says ". . . great social and political questions are, more often than not, ultimately theological in nature" (Cube 142).

The theologian David Hart writes, "A culture--a civilization--is only as great as the religious ideas that animate it" (qtd. in Cube 166). The philosopher JĂĽrgen Habermas is even more specific. He writes, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy" (qtd. in First Things 28). When I reflect on the experience that I had at my mother and sister's prayer services and the connection between secular humanism and brutal, totalitarian states from the past, I feel an urgent need to pray that history does not repeat itself in our country.

References:
1. Neuhaus, Richard "Secularizations," First Things, Feb. 2009
2. Weigel, George The Cube and the Cathedral, Basic Books, 2005
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Michael Terheyden is a Catholic because he believes that truth is real, that it is beautiful and good, and that the fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church. He is greatly blessed to share his Catholic faith with his beautiful wife, Dorothy. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.

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