{"id":62116,"date":"2022-09-07T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T10:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=62116"},"modified":"2022-09-09T08:09:46","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T12:09:46","slug":"the-price-of-secularism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2022\/09\/the-price-of-secularism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Price of Secularism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Does it seem to you that our society is mentally ill?<\/p>\n

Unhinged leaders, senseless violence, and irrational behavior are part of every news cycle.\u00a0 Paranoia, delusion, projection, obsession, anti-social psychosis\u2013these clinical terms are descriptive of our politics and government, our social media and our opinions.\u00a0 And, on the individual level, who hasn\u2019t been plagued by anxiety, depression, and hopelessness?<\/p>\n

There is a word for what happens when the society and the people in it seem to have lost their collective minds:\u00a0 Anomie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The word literally means \u201clawlessness,\u201d not in the sense of violating laws but of not having any.\u00a0 \u201cNormlessness\u201d may be a better synonym, trying to live in a society that has no \u201cnorms,\u201d no accepted standards of any kind.\u00a0 Here is the dictionary<\/a> definition of anomie<\/em>:\u00a0 \u00a0\u201csocial instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values. . . .<\/span><\/span>personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals.<\/span><\/span>\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The concept derives from the work of \u00c9mile Durkheim<\/a> (1858-1917), the father of the discipline of sociology.\u00a0 He saw anomie as a consequence of the rapid social change and economic displacement brought on by the\u00a0 industrial revolution of the 19th century, as populations shifted from the close communities of rural villages into depersonalized cities and their work changed from farming and skilled crafts to mechanized factories.\u00a0 In his study of suicide, Durkheim saw anomie as a major factor when people kill themselves.<\/p>\n

As historian Patrick Leech<\/a> explains, Durkheim saw anomie as being the result of \u201cmassive socio-cultural changes, such as industrialization and modernization. According to Durkheim, these processes stripped an individual\u2019s life of meaning and purpose, while displacing them from traditional social support networks. Thus, societies suffering from anomie exhibited markers of personal dissatisfaction, such as high rates of suicide, divorce, and alcoholism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leech has written a guest post for Patheos blog Anxious Bench<\/em> entitled The Growing Crisis of Anomie in the United States: Learning from Hungary\u2019s Cold War Past<\/a>.\u00a0 He argues that the anomie that afflicts Western culture today can be directly related to the rise of secularism.<\/p>\n

He begins with a thought experiment raised by another scholar:\u00a0 \u201cWhat would be the consequence if all religious institutions in society shutdown today?\u201d\u00a0 Leech says that \u201cwe know the consequences of what would happen if all religious institutions shutdown because it happened in Hungary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the war, Hungary<\/a> was officially Catholic, with significant Reformed and Lutheran minorities.\u00a0 Churches were very influential and powerful, though charges of corruption and collaboration with unpopular governments began to alienate much of the population.\u00a0 When communism was imposed on the country, religious institutions of all kinds were suppressed and silenced.<\/p>\n

In 1956, Hungarians rose up against Communism, but the revolution was brutally put down by the Soviet Union.\u00a0 Afterwards, though, Hungarian communists implemented reforms, including some free-market practices, designed to give citizens a higher standard of living.\u00a0 But the loosening up did not apply to religion, which was still restricted by the state.\u00a0 Comments Leech,<\/p>\n

Although these programs succeeded economically, they coincided with drastic increases in alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. By the early 1960s, Hungarians experienced the world\u2019s highest rates of suicide\u2014including among children and adolescents\u2014and remained atop that list for two decades, a rate which rose by 70%. During this same period, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related deaths dramatically increased, as did other indicators of social fragmentation, like divorce and drug abuse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1977, after trying everything else, \u201cthe state cited these social problems as justification for readmitting religious institutions into civil society, despite the party\u2019s persistent opposition to religion.\u201d\u00a0 The state began to allow religious institutions to operate.\u00a0 Churches started ministries to address social problems.\u00a0 Evangelists, including Billy Graham, were allowed into the country. Sometimes church leaders showed up!<\/p>\n

\u201cThese efforts did not magically fix the problems in Hungarian society,\u201d says Leech. \u201cRather, they seem to have injected a slow-acting antidote: hope. While hope is hard to quantify, the plateauing rate of suicide suggests these programs blunted despair.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the fall of communism, churches have again assumed their influential role.\u00a0 Now 80% of the population considers themselves to be Christians, though only 15% go to church regularly.\u00a0 Though Leech doesn\u2019t go into this, the controversial prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a> presents himself as a defender of Christian values and describes his rather illiberal and authoritarian ideology as \u201cChristian Democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leech concludes,<\/p>\n

While the causes may differ from those of socialist Hungary, these symptoms sound eerily familiar. The United States is facing high rates of suicide, along with abuse of drugs and alcohol, sometimes in the toxic mix labelled \u201cdeaths of despair.\u201d Some people exhibit the social dislocation of anomie through grievance or intolerance. The most tragic examples of this phenomenom include young men, who commit acts of mass violence, like the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. Additionally, many recent books anchor today\u2019s political and social hyperpolarization to social fragmentation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Certainly, we are enduring much social change apart from religion\u2013such as the technology revolution, economic dislocations, and the decline of the family\u2013that no doubt also contribute to anomie.\u00a0 But certainly, in Durkheim\u2019s terms, the loss of religion, almost by definition, \u201cstripped an individual\u2019s life of meaning and purpose, while displacing them from traditional social support networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breakdown of the family\u2013evident not only in divorce but in the new phenomena of people now refusing to get married and refusing to have children\u2013is certainly a major contributor to anomie, the family being the ultimate \u201csocial support network.\u201d\u00a0 But the breakdown of the family is related to the breakdown of norms regarding sexuality, which, in turn, is connected to the breakdown of the church.<\/p>\n

Even many of those who hold to a religion see it not so much in terms of belonging to a community of fellow-believers, who constitute a support system, but as a private, interior experience.\u00a0 Thus, many congregations are less of a community than they used to be.<\/p>\n

So could it be that our current anomie\u2013that is to say, the madness rampant in our society and the dysfunctions of those who participate in it\u2013could be the direct result of the decline of religion?\u00a0 Is anomie the inevitable price of secularism?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration:\u00a0 Edvard Munch, \u201cThe Scream,\u201d CC0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does it seem to you that our society is mentally ill? There is a word for what happens when the society and the people in it seem to have lost their collective minds:\u00a0 Anomie. And, according to a historian, the syndrome can be related directly to the decline of religion. That is to say, anomie may be the price of secularism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":62233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,19,20,37,42],"tags":[12379,12382,11851,1059,1984],"class_list":["post-62116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","category-culture","category-government","category-history","category-psychology","category-social-science","tag-anomie","tag-emile-durkheim","tag-free","tag-hungary","tag-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Price of Secularism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Does it seem to you that our society is mentally ill? There is a word for what happens when the society and the people in it seem to have lost their collective minds:\u00a0 Anomie. And, according to a historian, the syndrome can be related directly to the decline of religion. 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