New research shows that the percentage of Britons who say they have no religion now exceeds the number who say they are Christian. By any reckoning that is a watershed. It is one that many ‘progressives’ will welcome, but they should be careful what they wish for.
One reason ‘progressives’ will welcome it is because they will argue that the decline of Christianity will help advance the cause of human rights. They will correctly point out that Christians have sometimes stood in the way of genuine human rights advances. For example, there have been Christians who have defended slavery. Mind you, plenty of secular thinkers also defended slavery, and many Christians were to the forefront of the right against slavery.
However, an editorial [1] the other day in that leading platform for progressive causes, The Guardian, warned of the possibly dire consequences that could follow if Christianity in Britain and elsewhere in the West becomes nothing more than a folk memory.
Having delivered several cracks at Christians for some of the positions they have defended, in particular in the realm of sexuality, it then says:
“A post-Christian Europe will of course have a morality but it won’t be Christian morality. It will likely be less universalist. The idea that people have some rights just because they are human, and entirely irrespective of merit, certainly isn’t derived from observation of the world. It arose out of Christianity, no matter how much Christians have in practice resisted it. Although human rights have become embedded in our institutions at the same time as religious observance has been in decline, they could become vulnerable in an entirely post-Christian environment where the collective memory slips from the old moorings inherited from Christian ethics.”
What might be added to this is the indisputable fact that foundational human rights documents of the last century such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bear a very heavy Christian imprint and are all the better for that.
But the Guardian’s point is well made. The “idea that people have some rights just because they are human, and entirely irrespective of merit” is really a Christian dogma. It is not derived from observation of the world on its own.
Atheism itself, which is closely allied to philosophical materialism, is very susceptible to believing that we are mere ‘mere machines’ or ‘moist robots’ devoid of free will.
The Guardian adds: “Tennyson produced his famous line about “Nature red in tooth and claw” as a contrast not to human nature, but to human optimism, which “trusted God was love indeed and love Creation’s final law”. Some such trust in love and goodness underpins all belief in progress and all faith in the future. But, as Tennyson clearly also saw, Nature “shrieks against it”. This century will be one in which humanity faces gigantic challenges, brought about by our own success in colonising the planet. Global warming and the still present threat of nuclear destruction both need a sense of global solidarity to overcome, and a vision of humanity that transcends narrow self-interest. If Christianity no longer can supply that, what will?”
Indeed, what will?