Secularism separates all things, says Rev. Anthony Perkins in this week’s Acton Commentary, even sacred ones, from their source and turns them into objects.
These are difficult times that divide Christians from their neighbors and from one another. In large part this is because we do not agree on how to relate with secular culture and which parts of it, if any, can be blessed. Eastern Orthodox theologian and ethicist Vigen Guroian’s new analysis of secularism and how it insulates us from the power of the Gospel is timely and spot on. We can look to his work, and especially the collection of essays in The Orthodox Reality: Culture, Theology, and Ethics in the Modern World (Baker Academic, 2018), to see where he comes down on each of the major issues. He is, for example, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage and family, and pro-reestablishment of communion between East and West. But his views on specific issues are less important than understanding the process he used to arrive at them. His main point is that the widespread application of that process – a living connection to God through traditional worship – would lead, not just to a consensus on issues, but to the creation of a culture that can actually replace (rather than just battle) secularism.
The full text of the essay can be found here.
