The Post Christian America

In a recent article in Breakpoint, evangelical leader Chuck Colson brought to light the British government’s stance against any reference to Christianity in the constitutions of its St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha, and Ascension territories. The constitutions of the islands generally declare that “religion finds its expression in moral living and social justice.” Thus they affirm that they are a “God-fearing country based on traditional Christian values.”

The British Foreign Office told the islands they should consider removing the affirming Christian statements because the UK is now “multi-faith.” However, after being brought up in Parliament, the Office is now considering ordering the islands to removes these statements. The British government is attempting to remove any reference to Christianity in any of its governances.

This, Colson says, represents a growing ideology. Britain is no longer a non-Christian country, but rather it is a post-Christian country. In formulation, post-modernity and post-Christianity are similar. Moderism attempts to strikeout any influence from Enlightenment area modernity, which elevated absolute truth, universal morality from reason, and scientism. Post-modernity, on the other hand, emphasizes the relativity of truth, a cultural or personal basis for morality, and a philosophy that suggests that language creates, rather than defines, reality.

In like kind, post-Christianity attempts to remove any and all Christian symbolism, language, and philosophy from the public sphere. In his book The New Atheism, Victor Stenger, an adjunct professor of philosophy at University of Colorado and emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii, makes the battle lines sharp when he declares that he and the other “New Atheists” do not “take a benign view of moderate religion”(p.13). That is to say that the New Atheists are opposed to even a mild religion that is more tolerant of other religions (e.g., Emergent Church, Unitarian Universalists, etc.). He uses war-like terms when describing “the real war between rationalism and superstition (p. 14)”. He even goes so far as to say, “Faith is always foolish and leads to many of the evils of society” (p. 15).

These New Atheists are the vanguard of post-Christianity, indeed, post-religion. Another example of post-Christianity in America is the indie film Religulous (2008) by comedian Bill Maher and producer Larry Charles of Borat fame. The film was touted as a humorous exposé on religion in general, with host Maher singling out Christianity, Islam, and Judaism specifically. Not wanting to discriminate, he also takes on Rastarafianism, Mormons, and even homosexual Muslim activists. Any thought of this film being an honest dialogue giving religion a fair shake faded when Maher, while interviewing an ex-homosexual man married with three kids with his ex-lesbian wife, jokingly observed that the judge is out on whether his children will end up so. At that moment in the movie, I knew he was no longer the humorous intellectual, but rather a heavy-handed antagonistic agnostic. He was not looking for a dialogue, but rather to deride and ridicule the faithful and sincere.

Maher and Stenger are but a few of the New Atheists that are seeking not to relegate religion into the private sphere, but to abolish it wholly and completely. It is a jihad against any kind of religion, especially Christianity and its denominations. Britain has already begun this trend towards post-Christianity and America is not far behind. America may not be physically persecuted as it is in China and other anti-Christian nations, but it is being viciously and venomously persecuted by these New Atheists with these “quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain that awe” themselves into a mild stupor, drunk on their own perceived intelligence.