Secularism, he argues in his book, America’s Secular Challenge, is just as much a religion as the Islamic jihadists who threaten its survival and the Judeo-Christian worldview it has managed to supplant over the past 200 years. I suspect that, for most adherents to secularism, the charge that they are devotees of a religious worldview will seem highly improbable. After all, they will argue, religions have gods, and we don’t believe in God. Religion requires faith, and we believe in science. Religion is about a specific set of morals, and we’re open to all kinds of moralities. How can Herbert London actually believe that secularism is a religion?

Indicted by its own criteria
Simply because, by its own criteria, secularism matches the description to a “T.” London writes, “Of course, faith comes in many forms. Secularism itself is a kind of faith, as is the dogmatic commitment to scientific rationality, to which so many secularists appeal in the hopes of answering moral and ontological questions that were once answered by religion.” He continues, “secularism is itself not unlike a religion. It is grounded in several ideas that are valued by its adherents as deeply and unquestioningly as any spiritual creed.”

In the religion of secularism the only meaningful ultimate is matter, particularly as that is embodied in the individual person. In the secular worldview each person is free to decide his own course in life, to determine his own choices based on whatever most pleases him. All of life becomes devoted to pleasing the autonomous self, which is the supreme ultimate in life.

No amount of scientific evidence can be marshaled to demonstrate that this is a valid starting-point for a meaningful life. The secularist bows before the god of self as an article of faith; secularists passionately believe in the power of the individual to make the best possible life for himself. And this creates a morality of absolute relativism, the belief that man as his own god is best qualified to decide the question of which ethical path to walk.

Does the secularist acknowledge a supreme being to which he bows with the utmost devotion? Indeed he does: his own self. Does he pursue this worship of self as a matter of science or of faith? Completely by faith, selectively reinforced by science and anything else that happens to be convenient – which excludes, of course, the Christian religion. Does he follow a systematic moral code? He does: whatever works for my happiness at any moment can be justified by every means. The secularist, Herbert London points out, is as much a man of faith as the Christian he seeks to run out of the public square precisely because he is a man of faith.

A religion of futility
The great danger in this, Herbert London argues, is that a religion of self-pleasing cannot generate the sense of sacrifice for a greater good that will be necessary to restore the virtues and valor that made America the greatest nation in the world. Only something like a revival of evangelical Christianity can accomplish this. London, a Jew, wonders whether Christians will be able to rise to the challenge. At the end of his book he writes, “it is equally important to ask whether Christendom, which has often wanted to sit out the battle, will mobilize the spiritual strength to fight for the greatest and most liberating tradition the world has ever known.”

That question lands like a gauntlet at the feet of every follower of Jesus Christ.

For more insight to this topic, get the book, Scaling the Secular City, by J. P. Moreland, from our online store.