Between Secularization and Christianity... a Misunderstanding

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

During my attendance at the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches between August 30 and September 8 in Karlsruhe, Germany, I held some meetings with Christian religious leaders from different countries of Europe, during which we discussed the path of European Christianity and its current status in light of the social changes taking place in the ancient continent.

What I deduced from the discussions and from field observations, which I added to the readings I make during my work as General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, brought me to a conclusion that I can neither say is satisfactory nor positive for Christianity in Europe.

Municipal records, where European citizens apply for their Christian religion to be removed from their personal record, churches that are closing, sold or rented, Christian institutions that are declining and the level of donations is declining, are all indications of a shrinking Christian extent in the faith map in Europe.

This shrinkage is not the result of competition between religions, nor of a religious campaign carried out by one religion against another, nor of the temptations offered by the missionary institutions to attract people from Christianity to it.

People in Europe are turning to secularization at a high rate, and it is impossible for this transformation to be an apostasy from and hostility to Christianity. When I said to someone, “If the path is like this, then this is not a shift to secularization, but to atheism,” he answered: It is true, that people are turning to atheism.

My generation in Lebanon has dealt with secularization since the seventies, and secularization was a basic requirement for all youth movements that aspire to social change towards a better society, but it never occurred to us that the path would lead us to atheism. Some may have gone through a period in his youth during which he asked major existential questions that made him go through crises in his relationship with the Creator, so he thought and approached as an atheist, but denying that this universe has a mighty Creator who was not on the agenda of our generation.

Our generation was mainly aimed at separating religion from the state, and this may lead to the secularization of society, that is, that social, political, economic and other relations are not conditioned by religious considerations, and that religion is a special and personal relationship existing between the creature and the Creator.

Our society has suffered, and still is, from political sectarianism that organizes political life in Lebanon on the basis of sectarian affiliation, which makes people in a state of subordination to the so-called "sectarian princes" who discovered, after the end of the war in Lebanon in 1990, that political sectarianism is the only way. To protect their practices from any accountability.

As for Europe, what makes an economically sufficient society that enjoys all possible freedoms turn into atheism when it is able to live a secular life in which religion is separated from the state?

There are several reasons that may be behind the transformation of atheism, or nihilism, experienced by some segments of European society.

The first reason lies in the economic-social-cultural transformations, including legislation, that these societies are going through, whereby human relations have turned into purely material relations, and lost the emotional and spiritual dimension that marked them during the "Christian era". The communication between people, materially and dryly, has become characterized by a lot of estrangement, except for the circles that are still under the Christian faith and whose relations are still characterized by the warmth of love with which Christianity gained the world.

The second reason lies in the Church's relationship with people, as its institutions, during its distant and recent history, committed errors that amount to sins. It is true that the Church practiced self-criticism and corrected many of its mistakes, but reputational damage has occurred and done its best, especially since bad institutions focus on these shortcomings and use them in order to destroy the reputation of Christianity and destroy its image in the world community.

The disintegration of family ties in many segments of Western society is the result of the two reasons mentioned above, but it is also a reason for the further progress of Western society in this direction. There are research and political institutions that denounce any return to family ties that may appear in any of the societies of Europe, considering that this constitutes a derogation from the state's role towards citizens and a violation of equal opportunities among people.

The most dangerous thing that Western society can go through is the disintegration of Christian and family ties, and this is what threatens it directly now.

To yearn for a society of equality, justice, social contract and inclusive citizenship is one thing, and to revert to the belief and values ​​that made these things possible is another. The freedom that Christianity secures is what allowed the secular society to be produced, and it is now reverting to it.

Here we must admit that the Church in the West, as it is called, is doing a mighty work in order to be a support for society and to accompany it in its problems and crises, and it plays an essential role in its life, despite this decline in faith that it is witnessing. But its challenges remain great in a post-modern society, where freedom reaches the point of stagnation, and where any fisherman with murky waters can wreak havoc on the land before the state agencies seize him, and the damage he has done may be very great.

The secularists with atheistic tendency must remember that the master incarnate from the father was the first to separate religion from the economy and the state, first when he expelled the temple merchants, and secondly when he told them that what belongs to Caesar and God belongs to God.

Record with you that your freedoms, values, and secularism are the products of Christianity that you are rebelling against today.