The Varieties of Secular Violence |
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Religious people often face pressure to disavow violent acts committed in the name of their faith. Christians, for instance, get badgered about owning the legacy of the Crusades, while Muslims are made to wear the mantle of jihadist terror. |
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Especially when deployed against peaceable, well-meaning adherents of major world faiths, such rhetorical moves have the unmistakable flavor of moral blackmail. So I’m hardly in favor of using secular violence against religious people to play gotcha games with atheists. Still, a saner, more well-rounded public discourse might acknowledge the following: While religious extremism can precipitate oppression and bloodshed, extreme animus against religion can do likewise. |
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As Valparaiso University professor Thomas Albert Howard argues in Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History, we too easily forget the death and destruction wrought by contemporary regimes that sought to drive religion not merely underground, but entirely out of existence. Or else, we wrongly treat their tyrannical abuses as incidental to their fanatical secularism, rather than organically connected. |
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Yet Howard brings nuance and caution to his subject, emphasizing that "not all secularists are cut from the same cloth," as Colson Center writer Timothy D. Padgett notes in his review for CT. |
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"Howard," he writes, "classifies these varieties of secularism as passive, combative, and eliminationist. The first is what you might see in the United States, the broader English-speaking world, and a few European nations. In this passive secularism, there may be a formal separation of church and state (as in America) or a functional one (as in Britain), but governments are likely to see religion as a partner rather than an opponent. Since there is little to no violence in such contexts, Howard spends almost no time on them. |
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"Under combative secularism, religion is neither friend nor partner, but it doesn’t rise to the status of mortal enemy. This is what you might call the French model, implemented most notably in the French Revolution and in the secularizing movements of the early 20th century in France, Mexico, and Turkey. As the name suggests, combative secularism could be and often was violent, but its motive was removing or evading obstacles to state goals rather than destroying them outright. |
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"Eliminationist secularism is exactly what it sounds like. Here, religion is not an ally or even just something to be avoided. It is a deadly enemy, even a rival faith, which threatens the people’s loyalty to the state and the grand cause of human improvement. This means that those who refuse to join the revolution and abandon their faith are not simply tolerated dissenters but enemies of common sense, justice, and even humanity itself. |
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"Within regimes that embraced such thinking, Howard writes, the endurance of religion was ‘a major embarrassment, a worrisome sign of the failure of theory, not to mention a rival source of moral judgment and a breeding ground for political dissent.’ Surely this goes some way toward explaining why 20th-century Communist regimes persecuted believers with such intensity." |
The Human Face of Immigration Policy |
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Christians, it stands to reason, will draw different conclusions about immigration policy. The Bible sets down a broad moral framework oriented toward compassion and welcome. It also affirms the prerogative of governments to make and enforce laws—one that surely covers core questions of citizenship and belonging. |
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How all this plays out in a modern nation state with millions of people, ranged along political and cultural fault lines, is—and likely should be—the subject of vigorous debate. What should not be up for debate, among Christians at least, is the basic, image-bearing dignity of all who arrive at America’s borders. |
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Mennonite minister Isaac Samuel Villegas keeps this conviction front-and-center in his recent book Migrant God: A Christian Vision for Immigrant Justice. Abilene Christian University professor Myles Werntz reviewed the book for CT. Here’s his conclusion: |
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"Villegas explicitly states that he is not trying to change anyone’s mind about immigration policy or the ethics of immigration. His aim is to give a human face to an issue often obscured by policy. At times, however, the book strays from this premise and stretches into analysis—theorizing about policing, the nature of borders, and the violence migrants suffer. This is, I think, inevitable: Beginning with testimony leads us to ask more questions about the dynamics underlying those stories. It is natural to turn to thinking about how we might remedy the suffering to which Villegas witnesses. |
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"Yet whatever quibbles we might have over the place of testimony in deciding difficult political and moral questions, Villegas’s work stands out for never losing view of the migrants themselves. This is a habit to be widely imitated if we want more constructive debates about how to humanely and mercifully respond to immigration—if we want to do justice to those seeking a new life elsewhere and to those who are there already. |
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"Migrants are witnesses to a life many of us do not know. That’s not to suggest that their testimonies shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny or that those testimonies generate unassailable policy conclusions. But it is to say migrants cannot be reduced to obstacles or objects of pity or fear. Migrant God offers readers clear eyes and scriptural vision about God’s care for migrants, putting before us the stories and faces too often lost in our debates, mistreated by our laws, and diminished in our politics." |
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Even amid scandals, cultural shifts, and declining institutional trust, we at Christianity Today recognize the beauty of Christ’s church. In this issue, you’ll read of the various biblical metaphors for the church, and of the faithfulness of Japanese pastors. You’ll hear how one British podcaster is rethinking apologetics, and Collin Hansen’s hope for evangelical institutions two years after Tim Keller’s death. You’ll be reminded of the power of the Resurrection, and how the church is both more fragile and much stronger than we think from editor in chief Russell Moore. This Lent and Easter season, may you take great courage in Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:18—"I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." |
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