SECULARISM
The
absolutely worst way to respond to the challenge of secularism is to adapt to
secular standards in language, thought, and way of life. If members of a secularist society turn to
religion at all, they do so because they are looking for something other than
what the culture already provides. It is
counterproductive to offer them religion in a secular mode that is carefully
trimmed in order not to offend their secular sensibilities.
In distinct
contrast to the widespread conservative fallacy of the eighties, the sharpest
challenge of modernity is not secularism, but secularization. Secularism is a
philosophy; secularization is a process. Whereas the philosophy is obviously
hostile and touches only a few, the process is largely invisible and touches
many. Being openly hostile, secularism rarely deceives Christians. Being much
more subtle, secularization often deceives Christians before they are aware of
it, including those in the church-growth movement. How else can one explain the
comment of a Japanese businessman to a visiting Australian? “Whenever I meet a
Buddhist leader, I meet a holy man. Whenever I meet a Christian leader, I meet
a manager.”
Os Guinness
Dining with the Devil: The Megachurch
Movement Flirts with Modernity, Baker, 1993, p. 49.
Secularism
is the process whereby God and religion are pushed to the margins of life and
so make no significant contribution at all to the policies and values adopted
by society. By and large, politics and education carry on as if God were not
there.
Melvin Tinker
Wisdom to Live By, Christian Focus
Publications, 1998, p. 97. Used by Permission.
Secularism
has so permeated Christian thinking in our time that it has foreshortened the
gospel picture. Even many Christians are more absorbed in this world than the
other.
John Gerstner
Theology for Everyman, Moody, 1965, Chapter 8.