“Mere Christendom” by Douglas Wilson: A Book Analysis Series (Part 2: The Wickedness of Secularism)

In this first real post about Douglas Wilson’s book, Mere Christendom, I am going to take a quick look at Chapter 1 (“The Wickedness of Secularism”). How I will attempt to go about analyzing each chapter (as I will do throughout the book) is break my analysis into two parts. First, I will give a somewhat detailed summary of what Wilson says in the chapter. Then I will provide my reaction to what he argues in that given chapter. Let’s dive in…

Chapter 1: The Wickedness of Secularism
Wilson begins by giving his definition of “secularism.” After all, if you’re going to call something “wicked,” you’d better be clear what you’re referring to! Wilson defines secularism as follows: “The idea that it is possible for a society to function as a coherent unit without reference to God. It is the idea that a culture can operate on the basis of a metaphysical and religious agnosticism. It is the idea that we can understand what human rights are without knowing what a human being actually is” (3).

He then argues that in a secular society, there is no “theoretical ground” to value individual liberty. He goes so far to say that in order for genuine liberty to be extended to all, that non-Christians should not be the ones defining it. Why? Because they have no “theoretical ground” to value it in the first place. Furthermore, Wilson says, “the public square cannot be neutral. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar isn’t” (4). When “Caesar” (i.e. the secular state) is allowed to define liberty, it is inevitable that the secular state is going to end up claiming god-like status, engage in overreach and, in fact, impinge on the individual rights of people.

At this point, Wilson wrongly equates “secularism” with “Darwinian.” For him “secular society” and “Darwinian society” is the same thing. This is problematic because Darwinism, properly understood, is nothing more than a biological theory—it is not a metaphysical worldview, and certainly not a political philosophy.

In any case, Wilson argues that the core problem facing America today is not necessarily a political problem, as it is a spiritual problem. That is why it is important to acknowledge that our inalienable rights come from our Creator, and not the “kindness of the king.” When we come to think that our rights are given to us by the state, those rights, Wilson says, end up being dispensed by the “secular state” as if they were “privileges” or “party favors” that can be revoked if you don’t fall in line with what the state decrees. Wilson then alludes to G.K. Chesterton when he said that sexual license is the first and most obvious bribe to be offered to a slave. Simply put, the “rights” the secular states grants its citizens act as bread and circuses so they are more easily kept in line. Keep the peasants distracted, so the government can engineer its “Brave New World.”

That is why, Wilson says, that secular conservative and the secular libertarian are “both impotent against the collectivist idol of the state” (9). Both options, he says, amount to “a competition between a gentlemanly Epicurean and a rowdy one” (10). Clearly, Wilson finds the current incarnation of secular progressivism to be absolutely evil—for him, that is no option at all for Christians. But his point with all secular options is that they lack any appeal to an overarching moral standard that can keep government power in check. Basically, a secular government, even a “democratic” one, will ultimately transform into a tyrannical one, with the leaders acting like Caesar, making laws according to their own subjective standards and biases.

For that reason, Wilson says Jesus hates socialism, statism, and crony capitalism because none of them are “run on love.” They are all coercive. Any secular government committed to those things will inevitably become oppressive in one way or another. For Wilson (as he states in Chapter 2), such coercion is most easily seen in the high level of taxes combined with the national debt. He writes that if we actually had a government rooted in the confession that Jesus is Lord, “…does anybody seriously think that we will still be mailing half our income to that bloated monstrosity on the Potomac, so that ten million federal employees might have something to drink and pee away?” (12). Clearly, Wilson does not think much of the current federal government (for that matter, polls show that most Americans aren’t too happy with it either).

Wilson ends Chapter 1 with a full-throated condemnation of secularism: “If man is god, as he is in secularism, then the ethics of that society will reflect the nature of man. But man changes all the time. He is unstable, like water. Secular ethics is relativistic because man, the god of the system, is himself relative” (16). In a secular government, there is no appeal above what the government decrees, and if you resist what the government decrees, you are seen as a rebel and enemy. In a secular government, those in power can say the Constitution is a “living document” that they can reinterpret to justify their progressive goals, but they absolutely will no permit you to reinterpret what they say—their reinterpretations are the ultimate authority. In a secular government, that “god of the system” is “the fountainhead of morality,” that decrees there is no difference between what is legal and what is moral. Wilson says, though, that since Christians worship a God who is outside of all human systems, they can make a distinction between sins and crimes.

Joel’s Reaction
If I break it down, what I got from Chapter 1 was: (A) Wilson does not think the public square can ever be truly “neutral,” (B) he thinks secularism inevitably will lead to government tyranny, (C) he thinks that Christianity, because it worships a God who is outside and above all human systems, has the only real “higher court of appeals” by which one can hold government to account.

On one hand, I find myself agreeing with those three things…at least in the way I’m understanding them. The problem with Wilson’s analysis in Chapter 1 is that not only is it highly theoretical, it also paints a very simplistic, black/white picture of reality. So, let me try to tease out how I see those three main points Wilson makes.

The Public Square Cannot Be Neutral: Either Jesus or Caesar is Lord
First of all, what do we mean by the “public square”? Wilson ties it to whether Jesus or Caesar is Lord. That would seems to tie the concept of the “public square” to the government…what the government allows or doesn’t allow, what it promotes or discourages. And since he ties it to the concept of “lordship,” Wilson seems to be saying that in any society, there is inevitably going to be some kind of ultimate authority. You can’t get around it—as Bob Dylan once sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Ultimately, I think that’s true, both on the individual level and at the societal level. And, as Wilson argues throughout the book, at the founding of the United States, the Founding Fathers argued that human beings have certain inalienable rights that are given to us by our Creator. Therefore, the Constitution and the very way the US government was set up was based on the conviction that the government does not bestow human rights—God does. It is the government’s job to protect those rights and not to infringe on those rights. Therefore, if there isn’t that acknowledgment that our rights come from God (i.e. Jesus is Lord), Wilson argues that a “secular” society will ultimately look to the government as God. Not literally, of course—but for all practical purposes, the government will be viewed as the ultimate authority figure over its citizens. And in time, that government will end up abusing its power because there will not be any guard rails on its power.

Now, I think those who claim that the United States was “originally a Christian nation” are naïve and simplistic in their understanding of history. We were never a “Christian nation.” That being said, the colonies were originally colonies of England, and England was a “Christian nation” (Anglicanism was the official religion), and that meant that the Founding Fathers were, whether they realized it or not, were working from a largely Christian worldview, with basic Christian assumptions about reality and the nature of man. When Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” the concept of “inalienable rights” was not “self-evident” throughout most of human history. The rights in ancient Rome, for example were bestowed by….Caesar.

Now, one might argue that the Founding Fathers were influenced by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, not Christianity. No—they were influenced by both, and the Enlightenment thinkers’ concept of Deism was largely a neutered version of the Christian concept of God that said the Creator God set up the natural world like a clock to run on “natural laws.” The “moral law” was also imprinted on human beings by that Creator God as an offshoot of that “natural law.” But the fact is there is nothing in the natural, biological world that makes it “self-evident” that human beings have an “inalienable right” to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That idea of the inherent worth and dignity of human beings comes from the Judeo-Christian worldview that says human beings are created in God’s image.

What all this means, as far as I can tell, is not that Wilson is arguing the United States government must enforce Christianity as the official religion of the United States. It seems he is arguing that, from the time of our Founding Fathers, the government was set up to be the protector of those “inalienable rights,” and therefore, in the “public square” there needs to be the acknowledgement that those rights come from God, not the government (Jesus is Lord, not Caesar).

This leads to another objection: Why Jesus? Why not Allah, or Krishna? Don’t we live in a pluralistic society with religious freedom for all? Yes, but we should all also acknowledge that at the founding of the United States, all the colonies were, at least nominally, Christian. The various communities and states had ties to various Christian denominations. There simply wasn’t any Hindu, Muslim, or Taoist colonies. The religious freedom the Founding Fathers called for really had its focus on the right for the colonists to practice their particular “brand” of Christianity. Yes, over time, as the United States became more ethnically and religiously diverse, the right to practice one’s religious faith extended to other actual religions (not just denominations)—but originally, let’s face it, we were talking about different Christian denominations.

Therefore, on this point, it seems Wilson is arguing for something that is quite “self-evident,” historically speaking: the freedoms and rights articulated in the Constitution and founding documents of the United States were seen as coming from God, understood to be the God of Christianity.

Secularism Leads to Tyranny
Again, if we work from Wilson’s definition of “secularism,” I think history shows this to be true. The most obvious examples are the Communist regimes of the 20^th century. Those governments explicitly denied the existence of God, and the result was those Communist governments, particularly Communist leaders like Stalin and Mao, ended up being revered as veritable gods, and they absolutely crushed the human rights of the citizens of those states. Why? Because there was no acknowledgement of a higher authority that those Communist governments.

Now, the question is, “Is that true for America?” Wilson obviously thinks so. He argues that the current federal government is not what the Founding Fathers intended. He argues that the current federal government is becoming increasingly authoritarian—obviously not at the levels of Stalinist Russia, but is ever impinging on individual freedoms and rights through an ever-expanding bureaucracy and increasing regulations that impinge on all walks of life. Wilson doesn’t put it this way, but I imagine his view is something like this: the Communist regimes of the 20^th century seized immediate power and immediately put a bullet in the head of any and all dissenters; the US government is more in the business of slowly choking dissenters out as it slowly creeps its way for more power.

That opens up an entire discussion about how one feels about the federal government today. I’ll leave that up to you to ponder. For my part, I’ll say this. I’ve always had a great deal of faith in the United States government. Most of my life, when I heard “liberals” warning about growing government power (i.e. the implications of the Patriot Act and the surveillance state, or the CIA’s involvement in foreign countries and wars) I largely scoffed. Sure, there is a certain amount of corruption—that’s inevitable. But by and large, the government is Constitutionally solid; there are enough checks and balances to prevent that kind of authoritarianism from taking hold. Over the past ten years, though, I’ve seen a bizarre shift in American society. The “liberals” who used to warn about government overreach and authoritarianism are now excusing and even championing what I feel have been disturbing steps to increasing government power. I see the government doing things, actively promoting things, and engaging in a certain amount of coercion that troubles me. But what troubles me more is how the group that traditionally warned against government overreach and coercion is now cheering it. The troubling things I’m seeing in our government do seem to coincide with the waning of Christian influence in society.

Christianity’s “Higher Court of Appeals”
In the past, I think the United States was, at the very least, nominally Christian, and that served as a check on any excessive government corruption. The slave trade in England was ended because of the work of William Wilberforce, and devout Evangelical Christian. The Civil Rights movement was led by Christian ministers like Martin Luther King Jr. There has always been a strong Christian influence—and that has been a good thing, for it appealed to a higher authority in its criticisms of governmental and societal evils. Remove that from the picture, and you do, in fact, get an unaccountable government that will step in that vacuum and end up acting like its own god.

And so, on that major third point in Chapter 1, I think Wilson is right.

All this is to say that I think Wilson’s critique and warning about a purely “secular government” and his depiction of the original concept of rights and the role of government here in the United States is valid. Now, he hasn’t gotten to any of his “solutions,” but his main points here in Chapter 1 are, in my view, largely correct.