In a New Statesman article, Justin Welby is quoted as saying that:
“Secularism is a crisis because where do people find their hope and their trust?”
Stephen Evans objects to this on two grounds. First he argues that Welby has confused his vocabulary. Evans insists that “secularism” is “a political idea” and that Welby should have talked about atheism. He then goes on to argue that atheists do “find hope, trust, meaning in their relationships, communities, interests. In philosophy, art, culture, nature, the universe.”
We will come back to whether Welby correctly uses the word “secularism” shortly. Let’s assume for the moment though that he did intend “atheism” which is after all possible in an off the cuff comment for this kind of magazine article rather than the technical precision we might look for in a lecture or debate.
Simply responding that “yes we do find hope, trust, meaning” isn’t really sufficient on the athiest’s part. We can of course have emotional sensations which are not the same as actually having those things. It is possible for our hope, trust, sense of meaning to be false. After all, as one prominent atheist has argued, those who believe in God are deluded. Is it not possible that the atheist is deluded.
No, Stephen really needs to set out his stall in terms of what that “hope” is and what it is that he is trusting for. Then he needs to show how atheism offers that hope and trust. It is worth noting that when we talk too about philosophy, culture etc that we need to be more precise about that. Hope cannot be in philosophy generally but in a specific philosophy. There are numerous examples of philosophy and that arguably point towards despair, sometimes seemingly intentionally. Indeed, an atheistic worldview at its most consistent should in fact question the existence and value of such concepts as “hope”, “trust” and “meaning”. After all, are we not mere vehicles for selfish genes?
However, I want to come back to Welby’s specific point that “secularism is a crisis”. Interestingly, I’m not sure whether he means that “secularism is in crisis” here which is highly probably and there has been a typo or whether he means that “secularism is a crisis” as quoted. I think the latter statement is both stronger and in fact correct.
It is helpful to hear the Archbishop in context. Here is the relevant paragraph in full.
“Secularism is a crisis because where do people find their hope and their trust?” he asks me in Market Drayton. “The Psalms are so realistic about this: ‘Put not your trust in princes.’ There isn’t, anywhere, an ideal government that will mean all problems are solved. Money is very nice and certainly it gives you more security, but in the end, it lets you down. It can’t stop you dying. It can’t make relationships work.””[1]
Notice that he has specifically linked secularism not to atheistic denial of God but to trust in governments, institutions and society. In so doing, I think he rightly understands that secularism is a political concept but it is also more than that. It is a worldview. It is a way of approaching life, of attempting to find meaning, trust, hope. Now, it is possible to be a secularist in the sense that you believe that state and religion should be separated and many Christians would hold that particular view. However, secularism as a contemporary worldview has much more of the sense that even if you believe that there is a God that your beliefs about him and therefore he, himself is excluded and banished from public, corporate, community life. That is in effect to silence him and to marginalise the place of faith, not just in society but in our personal lives. Even if we keep some space for him in our personal, private domains, it is worth remembering that there is very little that our secular society in fact allows to be treated as private and personal.
So, the question remains, where do we, together as a society find hope? Welby notes that the Bible says that we cannot find it by putting our trust in humans and human institutions. That is rightly the dividing line between a Biblical worldview and a secular worldview. If my hope is not in God, then where is it. It may be un culture, philosophy, economics etc but these are the very things that secularism places under human control.
The Bible’s point is that those humans and those institutions will let you down. You cannot trust them. Recent history has surely proved the Bible right.
[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2023/10/justin-welby-its-better-to-be-woke-than-asleep-archbishop-of-canterbury-interview
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