In his pretentious new book The Secular Conscience, Austin Dacey wants belief brought back into the public square (as if it ever left) so secularists and materialists and all other self designated "advocates of reason" can expose the dangerous ideas underlying religious belief by showing that the secular conscience stands on superior moral ground. Thankfully, Dacey agrees secularism is anything but amoral. There is no need to convince him that the current debate concerning the role of faith in culture is a conflict of opposing moral visions. What Dacey does need is a refresher course on the history of Western ideas, specifically its debt to Christianity. Current secular morality is a prodigal morality, rebelling against its Christian upbringing. Who better than Oxford’s Dan Robinson, an oceanic resource on the history of Western ideas, to help us connect the dots on this fascinating lineage?

Austin Dacey seems to be pleading for a state of affairs more or less firmly established in the United States for at least the past century and arguably the past 250 years (slavery excluded).  Without a trace of irony, he declares himself fortunate to live in such an open society, as if hypnotically acknowledging its transparent debts to the Christian conception of human nature, while developing an argument that pits secular conscience against those adhering to this very conception!  

The irony does not stop here.  No, for although there are real threats to such a society emanating from Christianity, no less a work than the Koran shows how secular conscience can be accommodated within an essentially religious perspective.  To believe this is to believe rubbish.  It is to render an author unserious in the minds of serious persons.  We can be thankful that some contemporary interpreters are doing all they can to contextualize certain of the Suras so that they might seem nearly palatable.  In saying this, I do not invite myself into a dispute.  The Koran is available in very nearly every language and readers can come to their own conclusions.  Trust me, it won't take long.

But a far more important point is made obscure if we confine ourselves to only the ironies in The Secular Conscience.  What is projected from very nearly every page of this work is the taunting, When will you stop beating your wife? question aimed it would seem primarily at the Christian community.  Dacey rehearses the well-known wall of separation rhetoric advanced by Jefferson and ardently defended by Madison.  He seems less inclined to acknowledge that this was not a battle that needed to be won,  but one of the central causes for which the Revolutionary War itself was waged.  We were not to have a national religion, and we didn't!  And we don't!  And we won't, Koran or no Koran!

The subtitle of Dacey's book is Why belief belongs in public life.  He refers here to the beliefs widely and wisely embraced by any thoughtful community, surely including a community that would constitute itself in secular fashion.  He quite correctly laments the strong tendency on the part of secular liberals to abandon any number of core moral precepts, lest their allegiance to them suggest sympathy with the oppressive or bigoted aspects arising from unblinking religious conviction.  He knows that a rich and robust civic life depends upon the testing and sifting of all sorts of ideas and possibilities.  He knows, too, that the leaders of traditional liberalism – notably John Locke and John Stuart Mill – never assumed that persons freed from coercive control would routinely choose pointless and degrading forms of life for themselves.  (I resist the temptation to ask if, in light of contemporary culture, they might rethink their optimistic anticipations).

Between Locke and Mill, at least in the order of time, was the Enlightenment itself.  The French version, impelled by a hatred of tradition, religion, rank, and breeding, proved to be the nurturing medium for the Terror – Robespierre's (secular) "Republic of Virtue".  In the colonies, Enlightenment took quite a different turn.  With roots in Deism (poorly understood by Dacey) and a reformed Calvinism, the late colonial expression of Enlightenment was in the form of a critical rationality shaped by a respect for the past and a keen awareness of how the field of history came to be littered with failed republics.  Accordingly, all of the colonial charters were predicated expressly on core Christian values, the dignity and the authority of individual conscience being central.  Clear to all who gave thought to the matter was the recognition that tyranny arises whenever one body serves as judge and legislator.  The founders did not reject the concept of sovereignty.  Instead, as Justice James Wilson made clear in Chisholm vs Georgia, it resides in the individual person.  For Wilson, the authoritative teaching in such matters is Christianity itself.

Note, then, that it isn't at all clear how Dacey forms his enemies list or, more worrisome, how he thinks his adversaries form theirs.  He finds himself defending a group rather imprecisely referred to as empiricists – oddly thinking that this is somehow synonymous with scientists.  This is not the place to make clear the extent to which the greatest of scientific achievements can be claimed by those who sought divine guidance, or carried on their work under the patronage of the Church, or within institutions made possible by the Church – Galileo included!  We might remind ourselves that, to the extent we can date the modern launching of experimental science, we must turn to Oxford in the 13th century and the Franciscan school that hosted Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh. (Must we say all this again?  Is there something the Daceys of the world find inaccessible in this part of the historical record?)  Well, speaking for the empiricists of the world (after all, I actually have published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America and in Science), may I reassure Mr. Dacey that Church teaching never really discouraged me in my choice of low-noise amplifiers?

Yes, public life is public and is by definition not a restricted enclave.  One is not deported from the public square for failing to adhere to the protected "truths" of this or that dominant faction – except, of course, in Islamic states.  But one is responsible, as Dacey insists repeatedly, for justifying recommended courses of action in terms of there being good reasons for them.  As reasons go, acting in such a manner as to honor the memory and the teaching of Jesus Christ would seem to qualify as a good one, but the same actions and intentions are available to persons of other or of no religious conviction whatever.  Kant's moral philosophy (which with incalculable hubris and questionable comprehension Dacey judges to be a failure; p. 154) is but the most influential of those developed independently of the strictures of religious belief. 

That much granted – and who except those hopelessly in the thrall of some lunatic Imam would deny it – the public square is occupied by those who will then weigh the recommended courses of action and the reasons offered in their defense.  There is now much on offer: Prostitution, the on-demand aborting of fetuses, pedophilia, incest, various debilitating addictions, studying the thought of Christopher Hitchens – there's virtually no limit to the penchants favored by some and urged upon others.  As Dacey is properly admiring of Jefferson, Madison and the other creators of our commendably free and open society, perhaps he would reserve an especially sunny spot for them in his public square where the recommendations of the Founders might receive a respectful hearing.  Let's begin with what they put in place in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted on May 15, 1776, less than two months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  We find in Section 1,

"That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights...",

with this proviso offered in Section 15:

"That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles"

(Hmm…One wonders how this might play in, say, San Francisco, circa 2008).

Similarly, the Massachusetts Bill of Rights of 1780 affirms the natural equality of all, each possessing "certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights", quickly going on to observe that,

"...the happiness of the people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend on piety, religion and morality..."

The Massachusetts Bill goes even further, insisting that,

"...these cannot be generally diffused through a community but by the institution of public worship of God and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality"

All such recipes for a decent form of life are surely available to reasonable persons, whether devoted to Artemis and Zeus or to John Locke and John Rawls.  There is no reason why the secular community should (or, alas, even could) exempt itself from that long debate on just what sort of life is right for creatures of a certain kind.  As long as the founding principles of the United States are understood – for they will not be defended except by those who do understand them – Austin Dacey and all others with something to say can expect to be heard, not shouted down, and even followed by those who might find their arguments compelling.  But I would urge Mr Dacey to test out his ideas within those Western democracies forged in the kilns of Christian teaching.  It is a teaching that did stumble and more than once overstep the bounds of its own doctrines.  But in the ripeness of time it created the possibility of a secular state, respectful of the dignity of the person and the preciousness of every life, no matter how misguided – or young or old or otherwise unwanted.

Meditations on Easter

Pope Benedict XVI Holds Audience During Holy Week in the Paul VI Hall during which the Pontiff called for dialogue on Tibet and expressed his sadness for the suffering of the people.

He asked the thousands of pilgrims present to use this holy period to let their lives be guided by God and to "renew our 'yes' to the divine will just as Jesus did with his sacrifice on the cross."

The moving ceremonies celebrated during Holy Week and Easter "offer us an opportunity to deepen the meaning and value of our Christian vocation," said the pope.

The liturgies are not simply a remembrance of the past, he said; they also entail a deeper reflection of and greater commitment to "today's history."

Therefore, he said, let everyone also dedicate prayers to the dramatic events and situations "that afflict many of our brothers and sisters in every part of the world."

"We know that hatred, division, violence never have the last word in history's events," he said, adding that Easter was a time to revive the great Christian hope that the "crucified Christ is risen and conquered the world."

"Love is stronger than hatred" and won the battle against death and evil; "we have to align ourselves with this triumph of love," said the pope.

People must start with Christ and work together with him in order to build a world "based on peace, justice and love," he said.

Catholic News Service

Those first-century Jews who expected the Resurrection saw it as a single event, the raising to new bodily life of all at the very end. But it is central to Paul and, after him, to all other early Christian writers that the Resurrection is now a two-stage event—or better, a single event taking place in two moments, as Paul puts it: Christ the first fruits, and then at his coming, those who belong to him.

N. T. Wright
The Resurrection of Jesus

Following Jesus doesn't get us where we want to go. It gets us to where Jesus goes, where we meet him in Resurrection surprise: "My Lord and my God!"

Eugene H. Peterson
The Jesus Way

The unusually early date of Easter this year won’t reoccur until the year 2160.

More Evangelicals Value Lent Disciplines

As thousands of Catholics line up to receive the sign of the cross in ashes on Wednesday to mark the start of Lent, more Protestants are joining the tradition to observe Easter more meaningfully.

The 40-day season of Lent – a period of fasting and prayer that precedes Easter – is largely observed by Roman Catholics. Although some mainline Protestant denominations, including Anglicans and Episcopalians, continue to devoutly follow the tradition, Lent is not typically observed in evangelical churches.

"Easter is huge in evangelical churches," but they do not observe "Lent as Lent," noted the Rev. Sam Shaw of Hope Church in Tupelo, Mo., according to the Daily Journal.

Still, "Easter must have preparation," Shaw said. And some non-liturgical churches are embracing Lenten disciplines.

"There is a trend ... toward more sacramental forms and it is not surprising to see the recovery of imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday," said the Rev. Daniel K. Dunlap, vice president of Houston Graduate School of Theology and a liturgy expert, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Christian Post

A thought experiment on Dacey's The Secular Conscience

I can imagine a political philosopher coming across this book, but having no way of knowing anything about the author or the political climate in which the work was composed. For this thought experiment to work, the identity of Dacey's preferred sources would have to be concealed. Thus, we could include all of the passages taken from John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and other architects of political liberalism. We would also have to rework the quoted material, for some of it is so very well-known that any competent scholar would be able to identify the authors immediately. We certainly could preserve John Stuart Mill's defense of liberty even as we altered the prose so that an informed reader might think it was taken from Milton, or from those who protested the Stamp Act of George III, or from Lord Erskine's defense of Tom Paine, etc. The passages defending freedom of conscience – Dacey here attacking long superceded doctrines of Roman Catholicism – needn't be traced to Luther, for they were already put in place by St. Augustine, and quite fully developed by the Salamanca School. Indeed, Luther's defense of liberty of conscience was scarcely a consistent feature of his social and political thought! In any case, a more philosophically tutored argument had already been advanced by Francisco deVitoria.

Dan Robinson

Secularists Discord on Moral Sources

Fellow secularist Jurgen Habermas disagrees with Austin Dacey

“Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.”

Sam Harris's blurb on Dacey's book shows his fear that secularism is self destructing

"Dacey seeks nothing less than to interrupt a suicide, and he has written a beautiful primer on how our secular tradition can be rescued from self-defeat. The Secular Conscience reveals how simplistic notions of privacy, tolerance, and freedom keep dangerous ideas sheltered from public debate. This is an extraordinarily useful and lucid book."

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation

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