The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 58): Introduction to the 20th Century

In his book, How Should We Then Live?, Francis Schaeffer said there is a “flow” to history and culture. What he meant, of course, is that what transpires in one era of any given society often is the fall-out of what had happened in the previous era. One of the fundamental things I hope that come through in this Ways of the Worldviews series is how no era in Western culture over the past 2,500 years happened in a vacuum. When analyzing each era, we can see how one is a response to, a rebellion against, and a consequence of the previous one. And thus, we now reach the 20^th century in this series, we need to realize that in order to understand the challenges that face us today, we need to understand how our current society is a response to, a rebellion against, and a consequence of the previous era of primarily the 19^th century.

By the end of the 19^th century, things had drastically changed in many facets of life: the Industrial Revolution, the beginnings of Marxism, the rise of liberal theology, the emergence of Darwinism—the list can go on. One particular strand of Christian thought also influenced the landscape at the beginning of the 20^th century: post-millennialism.

This was a highly optimistic view that caught on in the 19^th century that believed the second coming of Christ and the Kingdom of God would come at the end of a 1,000 years of blessedness and progress. Or more simply, that human culture would gradually get better and better, and would slowly be able to address all the world’s problems, and things would sort of progress into the Kingdom of God. It was kind of inevitable.

The Explosion of Reality and the New Battle-lines
Well, the events of the 20^th century pretty much blew the notion of post-millennialism to bits. With WWI, and later WWII, the 19^th century’s optimistic faith in human progress was shattered. The tottering, empty empires of “old Europe” finally gave way to the rise of nation-states, far from progressing into a more peaceful world, the world was embroiled in the most destructive wars of human history. The crushing weight of modernism led to not only the fragmentation the old empires, but also of knowledge and reality itself. Modernism still weaved its story of “science, reason and progress,” but it flew in the face of society’s destruction. The result was that numerous, fossilized fundamentalisms, staking to their own ideological claims: communism, fascism, Christian fundamentalism, etc.—all attempting to rebuild their particular fiefdoms in the modern/postmodern wasteland.

• Politically, the 20^th century saw the rise of the nation-state and political globalization. The fall of the British Empire opened the door to the rise of the United States as the competing super-power with the USSR.
• Philosophically, the 20^th century witnessed the growing influence of the existentialism of Sartre, the psychology and religious musings of Freud, as well as philosophical materialism.
• Religiously, Europe became increasingly secular, and the United States became largely fundamentalist and simplistic. In America, to be “Christian” meant to be a Protestant/Evangelical American.

With the 19^th century illusionary “battle-lines” drawn between science/reason on one side and faith/religion on the other (thanks to Draper and White), the 20^th century witnessed the emergence of rigid fundamentalism on all fronts, both religious and secular. Religious fundamentalism took root in America as a reaction against the liberal theology of the 19^th century. And, especially after the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, religious fundamentalists withdrew from the greater society as a whole, establishing their own schools and Bible colleges, with the expressed aim to shield themselves from “the world.” Ironically, as we will see, even though they often railed against “the secular world,” religious fundamentalists unthinkingly accepted the ground rules of modernism, and thus tried to argue for the faith from their inherited modern/Enlightenment base. The result? They tried to present and “prove” Christianity using the very presuppositions and worldview they claimed to be fighting. Much in modern Evangelicalism is still feeling the effects of that fool’s errand.

Meanwhile, what I call “secular fundamentalists” continued to take their cues from the same Enlightenment presuppositions and attack religion and faith as unenlightened elements of a bygone era that needed to be thrown own in order to bring about an enlightened utopia. Ironically, with further advances in technology and warfare, the secular fundamentalist ideologies brought about the worst and most inhumane carnage in history.

The result of all this was that the 20^th century witnessed various entrenched ideologies continually waging war with other ideologies, all the while never realizing that they were simply preaching to the choir within their respective fundamentalist/ideological bubbles. This thus prevented them from seeing all of reality—and this left all of them intellectually, culturally, and spiritually stunted. All foundations were brittle, precisely because they were rooted in a flawed modern/Enlightenment worldview that fragmented reality according to each one’s autonomous human reason.

Looking Ahead
Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to be looking at some of the most influential people and movements of the past 100 years, in order to present what I feel are the shaping ideologies of our time. Hopefully, if I do it well, I will then be able to offer an assessment of many of the issues and challenges that face us today in 21^st century America, and then be able to offer some tentative answers to Francis Schaeffer’s question, “How should we then live?”

In my next post, after Easter, I will discuss what is, in my opinion, the most single horrific and destructive ideology in human history: the rise of Communism.