Without God, Without Creed
Marsden, George M.
Books: MAKING GOD UNNECESSARY WITHOUT GOD, WITHOUT CREED THE ORIGINS OF UNBELIEF IN AMERICA James Turner Johns Hopkins, $26.50, 316 pp. George M. Morsden WHEN Ralph Waldo Emerson once met an...
...We do not blame the car driver...
...But what mattered for the new generation of agnostics was that Darwinism lent credence to their faith that one day science would have answers to all such problems...
...So we should not blame the forces of modernization for unbelief...
...Unbelief emerged," he says, "because church leaders too often forgot the transcendence essential to any worthwhile deity...
...Though Turner assumes the stance of a detached observer, his analysis suggests a helpful point of view, reminiscent of neo-orthodoxy...
...Turner's suggestion is that church leaders should not have given up the sense of transcendence and mystery of the Christian God...
...Particularly, he insists that the rise of agnosticism was caused not simply by the rise of modernity, but primarily by the churches' responses to modernity...
...What about Europe, where agnosticism arose in a variety of theological contexts...
...They had too confidently proclaimed that investigation of material reality provided scientific proofs for Christianity...
...Perhaps the church leaders were not so much like the pedestrian who throws himself under a speeding car...
...It is marred only by Turner's flair for the dramatic, which (while making interesting reading) fosters some unreliability...
...Turner is at his best making this point by dealing with the rise of agnosticism in America after 1865...
...These moves prepared the state for the rise of agnosticism...
...This is important analysis...
...The churches' responses, he says, were like those of a pedestrian who throws himself in front of a moving car...
...Perhaps they were more like people trying to stop a moving train, who, rather than slowing it the very little bit they can, sometimes climb aboard...
...It would be too bad, though, if such defects distracted much from the main point this book demonstrates...
...In the background portion of his book, covering from 1600 to 1865, facile generalizations are sometimes misleading on deism, common sense philosophy, pietism, evangelicalism, and the "New Divinity...
...Darwinism, of course, was not proven and said nothing about the origins of the universe...
...So in response to the scientific revolution, they claimed Christianity was the most scientific of all doctrines...
...The subject begs for comparisons...
...Similarly in response to the humanitarianism that became strong in the nineteenth century, they made God a humanitarian who gloried in humanity and was interested primarily in morality...
...As Newton was deified," he observes aptly, "so the temptation was great to Newtonify the deity...
...Were theological differences the key variables...
...Contrary to our usual assumption that modernization made inevitable the decline of theism, Turner sees the rise of agnosticism as caused by human choices...
...What was the alternative...
...On these grounds, they could dismiss the strongest argument for theism, that the apparent design in the universe entailed a deity...
...Moreover, they used Darwinism to support their new definition of "science" as confined to that which dealt with the material world...
...It might have gone differently...
...Nonetheless, he always returns to blaming the responses of church leaders as more important than the external forces to which they responded...
...If science, humanity, and morality set the standards for God, the next move was to keep the standards and dispense with the Christian God...
...Looking at Protestantism (he rarely mentions Catholics) from the 1600s in England through the 1800s in the United States, Turner argues that the churches adjusted to the modern outlook by making God fit the standards of modernity...
...Agnostics, he points out, saw themselves as the prophets of simple intellectual honesty and a higher morality...
...His own, generally excellent, accounts of factors such as comparative religions, historical criticism of the Bible, and the social and economic changes suggest a more balanced multi-cultural explanation for the rise of unbelief...
...The churches indeed set themselves up for this disaster...
...They embraced this compelling vision with religious fervor...
...Or were social 20 September 1985: 501 forces, such as ethnicity, more important...
...George M. Morsden WHEN Ralph Waldo Emerson once met an atheist, his excitement was unbounded at having encountered such a rarity...
...These they saw as the keys to progress...
...By 1880, however, "agnosticism" as Thomas Huxley first called it in 1869, was a most respectable viewpoint...
...More importantly, his main thesis, as significant as it is, is a bit overstated...
...For us it is difficult to realize that only a little over a century ago disbelief in God was hardly an option...
...James Turner's significant essay explores how it became possible to disbelieve...
...Of course, there were lots of practical unbelievers, and "infidels" scoffed at Christian doctrine...
...But especially in the AngloAmerican world before 1860, almost no one claimed that the universe made sense without a deity...
...The overstatement of the valuable thesis reflects a weakness in method...
...Their unreserved enthusiasm for Darwin is the clearest evidence of the cultic character of their new outlook...
...If we are to blame Protestant church leaders for losing the sense of the transcendence and mystery of God, why not compare them with Catholics...
...Or what about the Ivan Karamazovs of Russia, where agnosticism developed even though the church maintained mystery and transcendence...
...If churches simply try to make God and Christianity fit modern ideals, people will soon realize that modern ideals are their deities and will dispense with the churches...
...This thesis has much fo recommend it...
Vol. 112 • September 1985 • No. 16
