God Created Humanism

The Christian basis of secular values

Theo Hobson

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780281077427
• eBook ISBN: 9780281077441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Humanism in Philosophy

In this compelling account of the origins and evolution of our secular worldview, Theo Hobson shows how Christian values continue to underpin our public morality, how faith remains indispensable to Western humanism, and how atheistic humanism represeents a dead end. At the same time, he offers a timely warning against the dangers of a religious-secular culture war, given the radically politicized and destructive forms of religion endemic in the world today.

Here is a fresh and provocative argument about religion and politics – but one that doesn't fit into the normal boxes. It suggests that although the public creed of the West is best described as 'secular humanism' we can only really understand and affirm secular humanism if we see how firmly it is based on Christian norms and values. If we don't, the West is divided: mired in a stagnant stand-off between fundamentalist atheism and an equally hard-line Christian theism.

This book offers a more nuanced and historically more persuasive way forward, showing just how much our secular morality owes to Christianity, and how it can only find coherence through a new and positive view of its origins.

Contents
Introduction
1 The ideology in the room
2 Sowing the seeds
3 Mutations of Protestantism
4 Struggling to be born
5 The secular century
6 In our time
7 So what? How is Christianity credible?

1

The ideology in the room

This creed that I say unites us – surely it is the prime subject of our discussions, surely it is endlessly admired and assessed, and weighed and measured, and prodded and patted? Surely secular humanism is as widely affirmed and as hotly debated as religion was until recent times?

But this is not the case. Though its truth is assumed, it is seldom the focus of our attention. It is taken for granted, including in the sense of ignored. We avidly discuss secondary aspects of it but seem to lack a vocabulary for the thing itself – it is not even quite clear what to call it. It is the elephant in the room.

Our secular humanism is so deeply ingrained that it feels natural, part of the air we breathe, the landscape we inhabit. This might seem a good thing – for it’s a good ideology. If this good ideology has become axiomatic, then isn’t that a sign of our collective moral health? Yes and no: there’s also a danger in seeing secular humanism as ‘just there’; it means we are forgetting to see it as a tradition that needs conscious nurturing, and as a – rather complex – story we must strive to understand.

It cannot be doubted that secular humanism is taken for granted in our culture. For example, newspaper columnists decry the violation of human rights in a distant land but are highly unlikely to pause and ask why we are supposed to care about these far-off folk; it is assumed that we just do, or rather that we should. It is not widely wondered what ‘human rights’ are – such inquiries are dry academic affairs. Another example: a television presenter is forced out of his job when it emerges he has used a term with racist associations. It seems that equality is so sacred to us that even the slightest questioning of its authority is illicit. But this sacred aura is more likely to be expressed negatively (‘You are not allowed to say x, y and z’) rather than positively (‘Here is what we think about equality, here is why we care’). To put it differently, the equal worth of all human beings is treated as a fact, denial of which puts one outside of civilized, sane society. This is presupposed in every news bulletin; indeed, ‘the news’, as well as informing us, upholds the unspoken creed we share: it assumes we care about these victims of child abuse, of police racism, and that we still care about the victims of a long-ago genocide. In other words, an assumption circulates like blood through our culture: we care about the good of all humanity and the principle of equality. This is our ‘sacred’ cause, our binding assumption – so why don’t we reflect on it more?

Some might say: ‘Secular humanism does not unite us in the way you suggest, for it is only the liberal left that really believes in this cause; the right, which hugely influences mainstream society, merely pays it some lip service.’ But in most of the West, the mainstream right is fully accepting of secular humanism: it justifies its policies in terms of creating wealth that will benefit all, and of course it seldom or never rejects the principle of secularism. The semi-exception is the USA, where the right has in recent decades been strongly influenced by a conservative religious lobby that uses both ‘secular humanism’ and ‘liberalism’ as boo-terms. Yet even at its height, this influence has been balanced by the US right’s acceptance of the political liberalism enshrined in the constitution; indeed, it has fetishized the liberal revolution that founded the nation. (In the UK there is a version of this: Tory thinkers tend to flinch at ‘secular humanism’ and ‘universal human rights’, as ideals that lead to the neglect of national traditions of well-being; but on close inspection their argument is with the application of these ideals, and there is seldom any substantial dissent from the principle of moral universalism.)

Of course, there are different interpretations of what secular humanism entails. Most obviously, left and right differ over how far government should promote economic equality. But there is surely no denying that this is our common creed. The neatest proof is that no British public figure can dissent from it without facing a media witch-hunt.

Then why does it receive so little attention? ‘Because it is too obvious and too vague’, many will say. Yes, we theoretically affirm universal human flourishing, but so what? It’s a rather airy ideal that gets elbowed aside by murky pragmatism in a hundred ways – so isn’t there something pretentious and falsely pious about taking it too seriously? Isn’t it hypocritical to profess belief in equality but to accept a system that thrives on inequality? Also, isn’t it arrogant to think that we in the West have a monopoly on such idealism? Doesn’t it just come naturally to human beings to care about the well-being of other human beings, just as it comes naturally to us to need to eat when hungry or sleep when tired? Let us beware of claiming to be the morally superior civilization! Now more than ever we are aware of the crimes committed in the name of Western universalism. In the heyday of empire one could turn a blind eye – nowadays the descendants of the victims are eloquently among us, forbidding such evasions. Do such past abuses discredit Western universalism? No. It is in the language of Western universalism that they are condemned. But they do advise against a confident tone.

So there are strong reasons to downplay our secular humanist idealism. Above all, there is an embarrassing gap between our theoretical concern for every soul on the planet, and our self-interest, both corporate and personal. And it also looks likely that compassion for all humanity is a universal impulse that we in the West should not claim to own.

And yet these responses are evasive. There is something special about the core ideology of the West. This humanist vision is uniquely robust. Even if it is true that all humans have benign impulses and that many other cultures promote such good will, the vision of the West still stands out. It is a tradition that has promoted humanist principles through its political structures.

‘But surely all cultures are evolving in this direction,’ some might say, ‘for at root all humans desire universal human flourishing. Once people can think clearly (which might mean attaining a certain level of material security), then surely their natural capacity for altruism will blossom.’ But this is not the case. Humans do not naturally desire universal human flourishing, rather the strength of their own tribe. Yes, some civilizations have developed versions of moral universalism, but these ideals have been frail and limited. Only in the West did the humanist ideal find real political expression, and only there did it become authentically universalist.

In other traditions the desire for universal human flourishing is secondary to the will to promote a particular cultural order. This cultural order is deemed to have intrinsic authority: the right to think differently is severely curtailed. Islam, for example, espouses a universal moral vision in which compassion and justice are central, but this must be realized within a political order in which individual liberty is seen as a threat to social cohesion. And in ancient Chinese culture, compassion for all humanity was seen as a sacred duty, but had to be expressed through traditional rules that contributed to social order. A theoretical universalism was massively subordinated to political reality. (This model has basically remained the Chinese reality, but with more emphasis on the nation state: communism was a temporary mask for it.)

Only in the West did the humanist vision develop a robust concern for individual liberty – including the liberty to dissent from the dominant cultural creed. From this emerged the principle of secularism. This development – let us speak straight – makes the humanism of the West superior. Because of this, its desire for universal human flourishing is detached from the triumph of any particular cultural tradition. ‘But surely the West wants everyone to be secular humanists, just as Islam wants everyone to be Muslims’, you might say. The two desires are not comparable: the former entails the promotion of liberty; the latter does not.

It is secular humanism that is strange and different. Our creed certainly does not come naturally. Therefore, surely, it is something to be nurtured, kept in shape, celebrated. But we hardly know how to name this public creed, let alone celebrate it.

Am I suggesting that we should daily pat ourselves on the back for being so moral and civilized? Well done us for caring about the good of all humanity! In a sense, yes. I am indeed suggesting that there ought to be more reflection on the benign ideology that unites us, or at least provides our common denominator. As well as clashing over controversial policy details, we should affirm the basic principles that unite us. Look – we all affirm a vision of human flourishing; we want to see the rights of all people respected. Let’s be proud of this public creed!

How naive this doubtless sounds. But maybe it is necessary to play the boy who comments on the emperor’s clothes; only in this case, it is necessary to point out that the emperor is not naked. We have a public ideology, worthy of pride, but are too busy bickering over secondary aspects of it to see this.

What’s going on? Is secular humanism, like the sun, too bright to look at directly? Is there something about this public ideology that makes it so resistant to affirmation? Something that makes one feel a soppy mug for wanting to cheer it? I have no simple explanation for this deep-seated evasion, only a complicated one. We have to look in detail at the whole story of our public ideology, its development over centuries, in order to understand what’s going on here.

But a possible place to start, I think, is by probing the idea that secular humanism is the natural creed of civilized human beings, for this idea is central to our reluctance to reflect on our creed. Why is this idea so pervasive, despite being so easy to disprove? The merest acquaintance with history and current affairs tells us that most cultures do not subscribe to secular humanism in a serious way (though perhaps most do now pay it lip service to placate the West). So why do we persist in supposing it to be somehow normal?

Perhaps it is because secular humanism overlaps with something that is universal, or close to universal: natural humanity, compassion, benevolence. To feel compassion for one’s fellow humans does seem to be a more or less universal impulse. We in the West should not claim to be especially compassionate or humane, we feel. We are right to feel this; we are right to see that we have no monopoly on morality. We need only peer into our own hearts to see that desire for the general good of humanity is a weaker force than selfishness. Alternatively we can look at the negative effects of certain Western policies in the world. Given these things, how dare we claim that the West has the moral high ground?

So we need to separate secular humanism from compassion, benevolence. This exists almost universally but is frail and fallible everywhere. Secular humanism is a crucially different thing. It is a tradition that structures benevolence. It says: ‘Let us seek us the good of humanity in this organized, theoretical way – let us apply this rigorous principle.’ It perceives that natural benevolence is too patchy and limited: we are apt to care far more for our own sort than for those who are distant and different. So it asserts a rule that all human lives are equally valuable and that people should be allowed to think and behave differently – even if this seems to threaten traditional social cohesion. This rule is somewhat against nature: we must force ourselves to learn, and keep learning, that all lives matter equally, that our habitual suspicion of otherness is deficient. Because it enshrines this principle, our tradition is special; it is a more authentic universalism. Other cultures simply lack this robust moral universalism that respects the rights of all, irrespective of race and religion.

But – again – we are hesitant about this. We fear that it is arrogant to claim moral superiority to non-Western people, unschooled in secular humanism. There is an element of admirable humility here, but also of evasion and conceptual muddle. We should dare to say that our creed is superior, although we ourselves are not – we are its fallible foot soldiers. It’s a tricky balancing act, a slight paradox – our creed is morally superior, even though we individual people are as morally shaky and fallible as any in the world. (This surely echoes the logic of revealed religion: we serve a unique moral vision, but are sinners.)

Some might say: ‘The West supposing itself superior is the root of so much global evil. Look at Iraq in 2003: the USA and others assumed the right to stride in and liberate a people from dictatorship, but only made things worse.’ But there’s another way of looking at this. The error that the invaders made was assuming that liberal democracy would naturally bubble up when Iraqis were freed from dictatorship. In reality, liberal democracy needs a particular ideological tradition in place. In this case, the West, or some of it, overlooked the uniqueness of secular humanism. A more ‘arrogant’ approach – which holds that liberal democracy is unlikely to flourish in a state without a tradition of secular humanism – might have resulted in more caution. In other words, there is also a sort of arrogance in denying that our tradition is unique – it leads to an assumption that our values are natural. This is incoherent, for it is evidently not natural for people to espouse human rights.

So there is a huge impulse to see secular humanism as just another manifestation of natural human benevolence, which comes naturally. And there is massive resistance to the alternative viewpoint, that it is a special tradition.

Why is it so unpalatable to us to admit that our public ideology is a tradition? I see two interconnected reasons. We remain, to a large extent, the children of the rational Enlightenment, who want to think we have risen free of anything so murky and suspect as a tradition. Traditions are particular, limiting – the autonomy of the rational individual is denied, for we are all dependent...

Table of contents

• CoverImage
• About
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The ideology in the room
• 2. Sowing the seeds
• 3. Mutations of Protestantism
• 4. Struggling to be born
• 5. The secular century
• 6. In our time
• Preliminary conclusion
• 7. So what? How is Christianity credible?
• Notes
• Further reading
• Search terms
• Tyler’s Story