By Rev Dr Greg Morgan
Greg Sheridan’s latest book How Christians Can Succeed Today: Reclaiming the genius of the early church reflects upon the Janus-face of modern Western culture. Whether the future holds peril or promise will depend on which direction we Christians orient our own gaze.
The vision we are most familiar with focuses upon the ‘continuing crisis’ of faith as evidenced by various socio-cultural indicators – the much-rehearsed statistical decline in religious practice, the ‘nearly ubiquitous’ rise in either hostility or indifference to the Christian message, and the widespread technocratic assaults on human dignity. As one of Australia’s most perceptive political journalists, Sheridan is acutely aware of such challenges.
Where, however, his book sharpens and deepens this diagnosis is in his realisation that our culture is not so much ‘secularising’ as it is ‘paganising’. His appreciation of the difference (perhaps particularly influenced by Ross Douthat on this point) is refreshing, to say the least.
For some time, I have felt that the apologetical efforts of Christians have too often assumed the ‘secular’ to be our primary interlocutor. Whilst this assumption is understandable (given the extensive literature), it may no longer capture the deeper realities of our age. Indeed, I would argue that public discourse has largely moved beyond the idea of the ‘secular’, because the ‘secular’ seems to depend upon a two-fold confidence in both (1) the power of reason to know reality, and (2) the related idea of public discourse as a sphere of metaphysico-religious neutrality; both of which have largely collapsed with the rise of post-modernism and, more recently, meta-modernism. In fact, I remember a professor at Oxford stimulated my own thinking on this score when he asked me (with a touch of irony), “Why is your church so obsessed with the idea of the secular?”
When it comes to understanding the phenomenon of modern neo-paganism, Sheridan wisely resists the temptation to frame it as a single, all-encompassing narrative. It is not so much, he argues, that “we are a neo-pagan society”, but, rather, that our age has reverted back to “a serious pagan tone” or a new kind of gnosticism that has rendered Christian teachings virtually incomprehensible and, thus, something only to be mocked. (This, again, confirms the collapse of confidence in “secular reason” and dialogue.) Like the paganism of old, neo-paganism is not without attachment to certain immanent “gods”. The principal difference being that the “gods” of today are not worshipped in temples. They are embodied in cultural idols. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captures this shift piquantly:
‘In countless ways, in its focus on the body, in its emphasis on material goods and physical sports, in its prioritising of politics over personal morality as the way to change the world, in its approach to sexual ethics, abortion and euthanasia, the West today has reverted to the values and practices of pre-Christian Greece and Rome.’
Here we turn to the other aspect of the Janus face of our culture and the central thesis of Sheridan’s book – the paradoxical opportunity that modern neo-paganism presents for conversion. In chapters two through six, the reader is given an arresting insight into the ‘genius’ of the early Christians; illuminating how, despite bitter persecution, the faithful were able to pierce the cloud of pagan gnosticism. This most unpredictable of transformations was by no means the fruit of a large budget or a corporatocratic-defensive mindset. Their ‘genius’ arose simply from living and speaking in a manner that made absolutely no sense to the surrounding culture. Sheridan supports this thesis with a wealth of examples, referencing attitudes to sex, slavery, death, and mercy. In all such matters, the early Christians witnessed to a way of life that contradicted that of the pagans. Yet, it was precisely this contradiction that the pagans found perplexingly attractive.
The rest of Sheridan’s book moves to illustrate how a range of very different contemporary Christians have tapped into the evangelical force that flows from this same counter-cultural approach. What unites them, however, is their love for Christ which compels them to love others in a manner that cannot be reasoned with by our neo-pagan age. In the same way that the early Christians would comfort pagans dying with plague – who had been abandoned by their own families for the sake of self-preservation – so, too, St Mother Teresa converted the attention of the world through her selfless love for the dying in Calcutta. And just as the early Christians astonished their persecutors by responding to injustice and suffering with mercy rather than vengeance, so the hearts of our own nation (and far beyond) have been captivated by the radiant witness of divine mercy in the lives of individuals like Danny and Leila Abdallah. Jordan Peterson gets an honourable mention for refusing to be a mouthpiece for bureaucracy, risking instead to draw upon Christian narrative for moral clarity.
Sheridan says that every book review should begin with flattery and then present the “hard truth”. With respect to the former, I truly believe that Sheridan’s excellent book can help us meet the prophetic moment that is our time with spiritual insight and courage. However, I fear the harder task is not so much to do with penetrating neo-pagan culture as it is penetrating our ecclesial culture which perhaps at times has sought to imitate (rather than transform) the very self-preservationist tendencies of neo-paganism. On this score, we must remember the words of Our Lord: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it” (Matt: 16:25). This is the secret to success. More will need to be written on this – and practiced – if we are to turn our face toward the way of promise. But Sheridan’s book will certainly help.
