Three kinds of secularism, three critiques of centralism

Thomas Howard’s Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History (Yale University Press, 2025) brilliantly flips the meme summarized by Christopher Hitchens in the title of his 2007 book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I debated Hitchens that year and offered examples of Christian compassion that should have pushed him off absolutism, but he was adamant: “Everything.”

Howard, though, shows how extreme secularism poisons societies. Howard helpfully distinguishes among three kinds of secularism: passive, combative, and eliminationist. “Passive” is what the First Amendment offers: The national government should not favor any particular religion nor interfere with citizens’ free exercise of faith, unless it’s faith in killing or injuring others.

Passive secularism worked well in the United States for two centuries, but in the past several decades some Americans have tried to imitate Europe by promoting “combative secularism,” which began in the French Revolution and in the twentieth century became popular not only in France and its neighbors but also in Turkey, Mexico, and other countries. In combative secularism governmental authorities do not separate church and state but do all they can, short of violence, to separate citizens from churches.

The worst kind, Howard shows with specific detail from communist societies, is “eliminationist secularism,” where revolutionaries see churches and religious leaders as such obstacles to progress that they must be burned and killed. (Fascist governments are similar, but they may maintain a patina of religiosity.) Howard asks, “why the curious blind spot among many educated Westerners with respect to violence committed under the aegis of ideological secularism?” Instead of abstract statements about church/state separation and religious violence, Broken Altars helps us to ask: “Which secularism, whose religion?”

Two collections of lectures and essays delivered or published over several decades show us the benefits of passive secularism and the liberty it generates, and a third book critiques the religion urban renewal. Gems of American History (Encounter, 2025) is a set of delightful lectures by University of Pennsylvania historian Walter McDougall about blessings brought about by philanthropist Stephen Girard, curses resulting from the madness of Woodrow Wilson, and much in between. Backbone (Mountain Marsh Media, 2025) includes vigorous essays written from 1996 to 2006 by thoughtful Karl Zinsmeister, who progressed from being a champion college rower to a collegial chief domestic policy advisor to President George W. Bush.

Zinsmeister’s subtitle, Maverick Essays in Praise of Middle America: Why American Populism Should Be Welcomed, Not Feared, brought me back to that decade when compassionate conservatism was in the saddle. Zinsmeister shows how “American society was brilliantly constructed to thrive without rulers,” and that (as he entitled the epilogue) “The Real Danger Isn’t Populism, It’s Centralism.” Megan Kimble’s City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways (Crown, 2024) shows the destructiveness of centralism in city planning. Urban renewal, lowlighted by running massive highways through poor areas, destroyed neighborhoods.

Briefly noted

Two books on theology couldn’t be more different, but they’re both useful. Kevin DeYoung’s Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology (Crossway, 2024) provides readable chunks about “Concursive Operation” (how the Bible is inspired), “Theopaschitism” and “Patripassianism” (does God suffer?), “Perichoresis” (how the Trinity works), “Amaraldianism” (for whom did Jesus die?), “Hypostatic Union” (the joining of Christ’s human and divine union), and more.

As opposed to those important but complex matters, John Cleveland’s 40: A Collection of Modern-Day Parables (Publish Authority, 2024), provides what its subtitle says: Simple Stories of Faith, God, and Humanity. Cleveland’s parables parallel many of Christ’s but play off 21^st century phenomena: pet dogs rather than sheep, celebrities rather than prodigals, and even cruise ships and spaceships. Like DeYoung’s doctrinal guide, 40 is best consumed bit by bit.

For a short but sweet understanding of Christian hope, try My Only Comfort: The Heidelberg Catechism for Devotional Reading (P&R, 2024). For a thorough but long analysis of those attacking Gospel accounts, try On the Resurrection: Refutations, by Gary Habermas (B&H, 2024). And for something middle length, readable, and deep, try David Gibson’s The Lord of Psalm 23 (Crossway, 2023). 

A personal note: Next month is my 49^th anniversary, and I don’t see anything better about both loving a spouse and loving God than the last sentence of Walker Percy’s great novel, The Second Coming (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980): “Am I crazy to want both, her and Him? No, not want, must have. And will have.”