Secularization and Political Polarization – Part 1

Tim Padgett, Resident Theologian at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, reviewed political polarization in contemporary society as an aspect of secularization at the annual conference of the L’Abri Fellowship in Rochester, Minnesota on February 14. Because of the many changes in society and unexpected turns of events (the collapse of communism, the destruction of the Twin Towers, and same-sex marriage would be examples) we now, like Alice in Wonderland “can think of several impossible things every day.” For some of these strange turns of events “if you tried to sell it as fiction even a generation ago, or even less, you’d be laughed out of the room.”

He said that in recent years, “people have adopted increasingly extreme socio-political positions … less than forty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and just shy of 80 years after the fall of Berlin, hammers and sickles and antisemitic tropes are all the rage, literally.” Symptomatic events included the toppling of historic statues. The extreme polarization of today is one of the strangest facts among these strange occurrences, because “materially speaking, we’ve got it good. By pretty much any metric, it’s better to be alive here and now than just about any other time or place.”

Spiritual Crisis

But it is the spiritual side of life which lacks public meaning and therefore generates conflict in the world today. The secular liberal promise was “a golden age of rationality and tolerance …. once we got rid of that pesky Christianity, the world would revert to factory setting. We were told that a new paradise would emerge where knowledge, industry, and mutual respect would rule the day.” We got instead, “a dystopian mix of a Brave New World and doom.” This realization has had “at least one positive result … Seeing the insanity of a world without God, prominent atheists have been rediscovering the beauty of the Bible.”

But many today continue the quest for meaning on a post-Christian and postmodern basis. Even after the horrors of Marxist revolutions and tyranny in the twentieth century, many still see a revolutionary, re-engineered world imminent which will “save us from the evils of – the most prosperous and free society” that the world has known. Similarly, decades after the greatest of all wars, World War II, destroyed Nazism and exposed its evils, we still “have people denying the Holocaust … easily one of the most well documented events in human history. All around the West, we’ve had censorship in the name of tolerance, and we’ve had destruction of public art in the name of humanity.”

Padget said the lack of a governing narrative in the West is a “result of the banishment of Christianity.” Both humanity in general and individuals are “grasping, desperately grasping for something to grant them meaning, even if that meaning is utterly meaningless.” For those familiar with the works of Francis Schaeffer, or are familiar with the Christian worldview movement, there is “nothing surprising” in this.

The lack of meaning has resulted in a “leap into irrationality,” or to use Schaeffer’s term, there has been an “escape from reason.” Padget examined the resulting irrationalities: the Marxist world, the resurrected fascist world, and its most irrational elements in Holocaust denial.

Marxism in the post-Soviet World

First, in the Marxist world, the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 did not end Marxism as a live option in the world, even though the record of communist tyranny is apparent. It is estimated that roughly 100 million people died as a result of communist domination. Perhaps the greatest loss of life was the Chinese famine of 1959-1962, involving the death of perhaps 40 million persons, resulting from the policies of the Great Leap Forward. The Holodomor or Ukrainian famine, in which Stalin starved the kulaks, or prosperous peasants, led to the death of perhaps five million persons in the 1930s. It is thought that at least a million persons died of famine in North Korea in the 1990s. Although famine is not direct killing, yet it resulted from collectivist policies, and particularly the Ukrainian famine appears to have been directed to cause death. There remain millions of people directly killed by Marxist regimes, Padget said. While Marxists often replaced “repugnant” regimes, Marxism always ended in dictatorship. But even then “the new masters always felt themselves working for the wellbeing of their victims.”

Although Marxists make revolutionary claims in the name of “the people … the people seem content with the pleasures” of the modern world. Communist countries induce many people to flee them. “It is hard to fathom how one could look at the history of the twentieth century and still see communism as the bright light of the future.” But many people do. They seek revolution from the supposed evils of capitalism and a tyranny to keep the revolution in place. The “fascination with Marx extends out beyond the quirky guy online.” Tee shirts of Che Guevara are widely sold. Elementary and high school teachers display posters of Mao Tse-tung on the walls of their classrooms. And just “five years ago, 30% of young people had a favorable view of Marxism.”

Critical Theory is an important reason that Marxism lives today. Classical Marxism was modernist and held that absolute truth was knowable. It was “philosophically materialist and fundamentally economic in orientation.” Adherents of Critical Theory on the other hand are postmodernists whose keynotes are “the rejection of absolute truth and morality.” They are philosophically idealist and have “a far broader orientation.” But they retain the call for revolutionary change. Critical Theory came “by fits and starts” to America. Today, “there are no death camps, but there are struggle sessions … There is a classification of good and bad people simply on account of their macro level identity.” The idea is to re-engineer society from the most basic level up (think of the attempt to make sex self-defined), “with self-appointed intellectuals taking the lead.” Violence to achieve this is condoned, or even excused, provided the “victims of violence were [classed as] oppressors.” He said that there is a striking similarity between the rhetoric of the “intelligentsia” of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia (which led to the Russian Revolution) and the contemporary rhetoric of critical theorists.

“How did we get here?” Padget asked. Despite the terror and mass death of the recent past, communism has “a soft spot in the hearts of so many people.” Part of the reason is amnesia about the recent past. The collapse Soviet empire and the Tiananmen massacre happened only a few decades ago, but many people have forgotten them, or do not think of them. This is in striking contrast to memories of the Civil War or World War II, which were seared into the minds of Americans and commonly talked about. But whatever the public mind about it, the end of communism in Europe and the Tienanmen massacre “were world altering events.” That they are not talked much about is, this writer believes, largely due to the fact that people in the culture forming institutions are leftists, who do not want to show communism in a bad light. But Padget also believes that the crushing defeat of the Nazis, fascists, and militarists at the end of World War II and the violent death of their leaders, confirmed fascism as wrong, while communist leaders merely lost power, and died in their beds. Basically the communists “got away with it.” Yet another reason communism is not stigmatized is that the ideal of communism – a perfect society for all – “sounds good.”

The return of openly neo-fascist groups, at least to public attention, will be reviewed in a subsequent article. 

It can be viewed here.