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Religion & Modernity

The three texts referenced present three different paradigms to describe the shift that

occurred in Western civilization that we have defined as modernity. Gustavo Benavides, Jacques

Barzun, and Franklin Baumer also wrestle with the question, “How does religion fit into the

modern man’s existence?” Interestingly, the authors in question answer this in basically the same

way: secularization has decreased the religious appetite. This may seem obvious, but Benavides

points out that recently, “the concept of secularization has been subject to critical examination.”

While keeping this in mind, he goes on do define secularization on his own terms and squeezes

this concept into the modern paradigm. Barzun and Baumer move in similar ways, but they have

different outlooks on secularization, different outlooks on modernity, and different ways of

approaching the question; when did God disappear and why did He leave? Because they answer

this question in a different way, their outlook on secularization and modernity is defined for

Benavides as ruthless self-reflection, for Barzun as decadence–becoming bored and dispensing

with a common culture to pursue another impulse, and for Baumer as a shift in thought pattern

from “being” to “becoming.” I shall demonstrate that these are compatible ideas and, indeed,

must be fused and not just hinted at if we are to ascertain the details of modernity’s and religion’s

complicated relationship status.

I do not need to repeat here the central role that religion, as passed on by tradition,

custom, and sharply defined by theologians and papal councils (often for political convenience

rather than theological integrity), played in pre-Reformation Europe. Although there are

exceptions (woman mystics and the highly ascetic or meditative monastic orders come to mind),

most medieval theologians, especially in the heyday of scholastic theology, referenced

traditional, approved sources of theology, philosophy, and history, rather than their own
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meditations. In theological debates, even when using Aristotelian logic, they would frequently

cite authorities for the heart of their argument, rather than for creative emphasis. However,

although Martin Luther (there are other reformers, but we shall take him as the prime example)

certainly had the deepest respect for Scripture—his ultimate authority—he also relied heavily on

his own personal feelings to define his attitude towards his theology. His incredibly large corpus

shows a deeply reflective man, whose self-scrutiny resulted in great personal humility before

God. His attitude would shape the following years as people began to ask themselves, rather than

church councils and papal bulls, for answers to the great questions—questions that Baumer

defines as centered around five subjects: God, nature, man, society, and history.

Although it is certainly true that many more events and people defined the new self-

scrutinizing culture, the Reformation represents a clean(ish) breaking point with a holy order

(that is to say, an order defined solely on the divine authority of the pope) imposed from outside

the self, and the beginning of a migration towards a “modern” society centered on the individual.

This happened in increments, of course, but it essentially passed the divine right from the pope

and papal legates to the State, and then to the individual conscience, until society no longer

needed Divine Right to effectively govern a society. In the Enlightenment, human reason begins

to play the central role. Through this internal scrutiny and delegitimization of the religio-political

powers, Baumer notes a paradigm shift: from “being” to “becoming.” “Being,” the eternal world

created by God rather than the constantly changing world, was then dealt a final blow by Darwin,

resulting in a new outlook, one that focused on the dynamic world rather than the infinite world

as ordained by God.

Benavides sees the shift to modernity in a different light; in keeping with the dominant

metanarrative of our times, he has a more sociological perspective rather than one based solely
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on intellectual history. He sees modernity, which presupposes regarding a past outlook as naive

and then consciously distancing oneself from that outlook, as “oppositional, distancing, and self-

referential [in] nature.” This outlook certainly has value and also explains the legitimizing power

of religion steadily decreasing as history moves towards the modern world. He sees this as the

process of secularization, which he defines as “a process...of differentiation and narrowing of the

institutional religious realm.” He further assures the reader that he has taken into account the

individual’s attitude towards religion in explaining that the process of secularization is a “two-

fold process,” an inverse relationship: as the political world becomes increasingly secular,

individual religiosity plays an increasingly large role in the life of the individual. However, as

Barzun observes, whenever individual approaches towards religion are prioritized above

a received tradition, the culture loses its “common background of knowledge,” which keeps a

culture cohesive and allows for a “common culture” to stabilize, which provides a sense of

continuity, a community on which to build the changing self, a stable background on which one

observes the temporary players of history. When one loses this common culture, Barzun asserts

that “decadence,” which simply means “a falling off,” is imminent. He points to modernity as the

prime example of this. He, however, does not see Benavides’ outlook on self-reflection as the

reason that the modern world has dispensed with a common culture. Rather, he sees the shift as a

stripping away of mystery, the removal of the miracle, the laying bare of human’s inability to

grasp the “final cause,” the “hook from which...the chain of reasoning” hangs. However, he does

not make the reasons behind this ravenous search as clear as Benavides does. He sees it instead

as a result of the religio-political order being called into question with the text of the Bible:

“Bibles laid open, millions of surprises!” He sees the “wars of religion” as the defining break

with the old order, and the publishing of the vernacular Bible and the subsequent peasant
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readership as the force behind the individualization that later caused the decadence. While he

points to these incidents as causes, I think that Benavides (and I) would call them instruments of

change rather than the final causes. Barzun hasn’t grasped the hook. Even though he often hints

at it, he never explicitly points to self-reflexivity as the beginning reaction that used the catalysts

named above to hasten and sharpen the individualization and subsequent secularization that led

to the “decadent” modern world.

Baumer takes an even wider view than this. He sees intellectual history as the

relationship, at any given time, of the intellectual movements to the “big questions” named

above. As mentioned before, he sees modernity as taking the “being” and shifting it, through

self-questioning, to “becoming.” Besides a notion of an infinite God, the “I think, therefore I am”

attitude of the Enlightenment (which implies a certain continuity of self as well), and the concept

of an immortal soul trapped within the confines of a mortal body, We could certainly say that the

common cultural backdrop referred to in Barzun’s book could also be a part of that “being.” In

other words, besides the mere stability of the eternal realm, there was also a certain continuity of

culture, even though it was being threatened by the conscious distancing that resulted eventually

in modern self-reflexivity. When a culture focuses so intently on the “rights” of an individual and

always puts culture in quotation marks, that, for Baumer, is the final stage of “becoming.” Not

only was the philosophy of eternity done away with, but the entire notion of a common culture

was also dispensed, all as a result of self-reflexivity.

I have examined each author’s view of modernity and religion in light of the other

authors’ views, but perhaps have not laid out the relationship of all three. While each focuses

intently on their own outlook (Benavides and self-relection, Barzun and decadence, Baumer and

becoming), they each also imply the ideas and causes that the other authors clearly define. If one
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were to take all three of their outlooks and integrate them, one gets a very clear view of

modernity and religion’s extraordinary place (or absence) in it. The relationship could be stated

like this: As the religiously legitimated powers of Europe subjected their political counterparts to

abuses, thinkers began to reflect on themselves to determine what they thought was “right.” The

political (secular) powers fought back, thus sundering the political and religious sphere, which

led to further self-reflection. This intense introspection was coupled with the realization that the

self is not eternal—it changes, just as the afore-thought eternal Rome had been changed.

Thinkers, instead of meditating on the infinite God of the Bible, the infinite self of Descartes, and

the infinite clockwork universe of Newton, instead focused on personal religious outlook,

psychology and social “conditioning,” and the evolving world of Darwin. This was most potently

realized in the disposal of a common cultural ground—Christianity and the Bible, which, in turn,

has caused the modern man to be “decadent,” a baseless, self-centered, self-reflective,

economically-based creature, with an individual spirituality unfettered by the cultural weight

previously keeping him from being “self-actualized.” The modern man (or post-modern,

although Benavides criticizes this word, calling it an especially intense period of self-reflection),

rather than defining his existence from a common cultural background, culturally defined roles,

an orthodox spirituality, and traditional ways of thinking about the world, relies instead on

psychology, sociology, linguistics, and individual spirituality (pulling piecemeal from a variety

of cultures) to define and direct his existence.

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Works Cited

Barzun, Jacuqes. 2000. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. New
York: Harper-Collins.

Baumer, Franklin L. 1977. Modern European Thought: Continuity and Change in Ideas,
1600-1950. New York: Macmillan.

Benavides, Gustavo. 1998. “Modernity.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. by Mark C.
Taylor, 186-204. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.