The Culture of Atheism Impacts The Culture of Life
“On some positions, cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular, but he must take it, because conscience tells him it is right.”
A factor that will heavily influence our ability to advance the Culture of Life in the United States is the ever-changing religious landscape of America. A recent Pew Research Center survey highlights this situation. This is the third time Pew Research Center has conducted a Religious Landscape Study (the other two were in 2007 and 2014).
The survey reveals a continuing decline of Christianity in America. According to Pew Research, “In the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS), 62% of respondents identify as Christian, which is lower than the Christian shares measured in the 2007 (78%) and 2014 (71%).” The Executive Summary notes that “in future years we may see further declines in the religiousness of the American public.” The summary bases its conclusion on several reasons, one being that “young adults are far less religious than older adults.” The survey cites the reasons for this, reporting that,
No recent birth cohort has become more religious as it has aged. The ‘stickiness’ of a religious upbringing seems to be declining: Compared with older people, fewer young adults who had a highly religious upbringing are still highly religious as adults. The ‘stickiness’ of a nonreligious upbringing seems to be rising.
Also, the percentage of those identifying as religiously unaffiliated (also known as religious “nones”) is markedly higher in the current survey (29%), as compared to previous surveys in 2007 (16%) and 2014 (23%). This increase isn’t limited to growing irreligiosity among any particular group but is “demographically broad-based,” says the Pew Research Center. “There are fewer Christians and more ‘nones’ among men and women; people in every racial and ethnic category; college graduates and those with less education; and residents of all major regions of the country.”
A Secularization of the World
Why should the de-Christianization of America worry us?
The loss of America’s Christian identity has huge implications for everyone, Christian or not. Because if America loses the Christian faith, it will influence our understanding of fundamental moral issues like the sanctity of life and sacredness of marriage, care for the sick and dying, reproductive technologies, human rights and freedoms, etc. This is especially true for the Catholic Church, which is often the only religious entity standing against the tsunami of moral evils and social injustices of our day.
Catholics from the very beginning have exerted an inexorable influence on American society, benefitting social, cultural, and political infrastructures, educational and healthcare systems, and the general principles of American religion. Today, Catholic principles and social teaching continue to offer a meaningful ethical framework for both Catholics and non-Catholics that help them navigate contemporary moral complexities. In other words, Catholic teaching serves as a foundation within society and culture, contributing to a more just, moral, equitable, and compassionate world.
In recent years, there has been a fascinating trend among the cultural elites, i.e. the growing number of prominent intellectuals who are expressing deep worry about the secularization of society, out of a growing recognition of how Christianity has been a civilizing force in the world. In some cases, those expressing this alarm are those who have worked most vociferously to undermine the Christian worldview.
Dawkins Cultural View
One of the most prominent of these is Richard Dawkins, who made headlines when he declared himself a “cultural Christian.” “I’m not a believer,” he told an interviewer, “but there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. … I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. … We [in the U.K.] are a ‘Christian country’ in that sense.”
Dawkins seems to be increasingly alarmed that, rather than the secularist utopia that he thought would ensue the collapse of religious belief, instead what has been created is a spiritual vacuum that is being filled with far more pernicious ideologies, ones that have little concern with such things as the intrinsic dignity of the human person, fairness, generosity, peace, self-sacrificial love, or basic common sense.
Dawkins has singled out two specific ideologies: radical Islam, and “woke” secularism. “If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time,” he said recently. “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.” Ironically, Dawkins, a biologist, has in recent years found himself under violent attack by his fellow atheistic secularists, simply for defending one of the most self-evident biological facts, i.e. the truth that there are two biological sexes. For this, and his expression of concern about how transgender ideology has become cultlike in its demands for total acquiescence in the face of absurd claims, Dawkins has had awards revoked, and been rendered a persona non grata in many leftist circles.
Historical Research Provides Christian Evidence
Arguably one of the most powerful lines in the entire New Testament is found in the Gospel of Luke. At 23:34, Christ, while dying on the cross, prays that His Father might “forgive” those who have crucified Him, “for they know now what they do.” This expression of radical forgiveness, and all-encompassing love, is the most-potent expression of the epoch-changing ethos of Christianity, i.e. an ethos based upon a deep recognition of the intrinsic value of every human being, even including one’s enemies. Unfortunately, so deeply is our society suffused with this Christian ethos, that many people fail to recognize it as the revolutionary force that it once was.
Recently the historian Tom Holland set out to remedy this blind spot. In his best-selling book Dominion, Holland documented the horrific violations of human dignity that were pervasive in pre-Christian pagan civilizations. Indeed, prior to the coming of Christ, it seems hardly to have occurred to anyone that all humans, and not merely the members of one’s own group or nation or economic class, possessed intrinsic value. And thus, the wanton slaughter or enslavement of whole cities or classes was common. Pagans who possessed the power to subdue others simply did so. Often, it never even seemed to occur to them that they might be doing anything wrong.
Holland, who was raised Anglican, but subsequently became an atheist, has in recent years begun referring to himself as a Christian. It was the writing of Dominion, he says, that opened his eyes to the way in which the Christian ethos suffuses the entire Western world, and indeed, practically the entire world. Most people, he argues, simply have no clue how many of their most fundamental, unquestioned moral positions, based as they are upon ideas of truth, justice and mercy, are anchored in Christianity, and scarcely existed prior to the coming of Christ.
In a powerful passage in his book, Holland waxes eloquent:
To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth. Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.
Astonishingly, recently the famous historian Niall Ferguson, and his once-virulently atheistic, formerly Muslim wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, announced that they had converted to Christianity. In a widely read essay in Unheard, Hirsi Ali explained her realization that atheistic secularism simply lacks the spiritual power to withstand the forces of militant Islam, and woke leftism. Ali and Ferguson, however, also seem to have come to believe in the actual, historical truth of the Christian claims, including the Resurrection of Christ.
Holland, Hirsi Ali, Dawkins, Ferguson, are just a few of a growing number of people, many not actively Christian, who are profoundly concerned that as influence of Christian principles on the conscience of America (and the world) decreases, we will see a growth of truly perverse and dangerous ideologies.
The Church Must Uphold The Culture
So, what does this mean for the future of our civilization? As the Pew Research shows, in order to alter the current decline in Christianity, or at least to halt its progress, “today’s young adults would have to become more religious as they age, or new generations of adults who are more religious than their parents would have to emerge.”
Is that possible? Sure. In fact, there is some reason for cautious optimism. Research by Pew has also revealed that the decline of Christianity in the United States seems to have significantly slowed down, or even stalled altogether. This isn’t entirely surprising. As the recent conversions, or at least expressions of sympathy, of prominent thought-leaders towards Christianity suggest, there is a deep spiritual hunger out there. People are not finding the meaning for which they crave in the mindless pursuit of wealth, power, or pleasure. As the popularity of the podcasts and books about the Gospels produced by the likes of Jordan Peterson indicate, people want something more: they want, above all, the deep truths expressed in the Gospel.
The most-urgent task for the Catholic Church, therefore, is to restore integrity through an intensive emphasis on authentic Catholic evangelization, catechesis, and education. She must denounce and challenge the pervasive contraceptive mentality that undermines the sacred institution of marriage, and invite couples to welcome life. She must defend and support marriage and family life. She must reclaim and restore Her education and healthcare institutions, demanding they uphold and assert Catholic principles and identity. And She must call all Catholics to adhere to Church teaching, especially those in public office. Only then can the Catholic population serve as an evangelizing and political force in society and culture.
As Dr. King says, we must take “a position that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular.” We “must take it, because conscience tells [us] it is right.” The significant collapse of Christianity in the public consciousness has created a spiritual vacuum: if the Church rises to the occasion, She will be able to provide souls with the “living bread” for which they are famished, and the “water of life” for which they are parched.