Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 97

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE DOCK

consensus is not just another example of the type of "consensus
outlook" (172) he criticizes.

M

arsden suggests that we are living at the twilight of the
American enlightenment. While it is certainly true that we
are living through the demise of the Enlightenment's model of
rationality, I would suggest that the conclusion toward which the
analyses of these volumes point is that the age we are living in is
best understood as the twilight of American Christendom. (After
all, on the showing of Marsden's own analysis, the loss of shared
moral capital that defines the contemporary scene would seem
to have as much to do with the hollowing out of American Christianity as with the failure of Enlightenment reason.)
By Christendom I mean a society whose culture is informed by
the vision of God and man, world and society, issuing from Christian revelation. European Christendom died generations ago;
now that same process is being repeated (with accidental variations) here: the gradual loss of the faith followed by the gradual
rejection of the Christian vision of man and society, followed by
the gradual-or not so gradual-rejection of Christian morality.
Indeed, the cultural revolution of the past fifty years has consisted in the gradual evacuation of the Christian substance of society, and its replacement by a new and very different ethic rooted
in a very different understanding of the nature and destiny of
man. We may still be a nation most of whose inhabitants are still
at least nominally Christians, but our public culture is no longer
Christian. In fact, it is now clearly post- and, in some important
respects, anti-Christian.
The waning of American Christendom, I would suggest, is
the decisive political and cultural event of our time. Against this
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Modern Age - Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
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