The Faith of Demos

Fallen man, we are told, having refused to acknowledge his maker, worships creatures instead. What we find here is a curious reality, the intersection of man’s fallen and man’s created natures. Creature worship, strictly speaking, isn’t the exact opposite of Creator worship. They’re both worship. Fallen man will not bow down to God, but because of God’s image, he must bow down. The creature part, that’s the fall. The worship part, that’s the image of God. Fallen man does not do the exact opposite of what the redeemed man does. Instead he creates a parody of what redeemed man does. Thus secular culture is not, strictly speaking, secular. It is instead following a distinct and discernible religion.

We can expect, when looking to this secular faith, to discern there a view of man, a view of God, a view of ethics, a view of truth, a view of aesthetics, a view of eschatology. You could, in short, write up an entire systematic theology of this secular faith, the faith of this nation, the faith of the people. It has a both a low and a high view of man. It is low in its understanding of man’s origins and man’s destiny, but in the meantime, it’s homo mensura, man the measure. Its god is progress, its ethic pragmatism. Both its epistemology and its aesthetic is relativism. Its eschatology is postmillennial. That is to say, the faith of the people believes that we are building paradise on earth, that this systematic theology, when it is sufficiently embraced and followed, will lead us to heaven in the here and now. The job of getting this done, in every faith, falls to ecclesiology and sacramentology. The church, in practicing the sacraments, is the very power to change the world. They believe this, and we believe it too.

Where, though, are the churches of our broader culture? Surely one wouldn’t argue that the statistically insignificant Unitarians are it. One might make the case that the mainline churches represent the faith of the people. But, statistically speaking they are fast chasing the Unitarians into oblivion. No, the church of this particular faith is still going strong. It is our only national established church. Its houses of worship dot nearly every town in the country. Yup, it’s the schools. These are the churches of this age.

Jesus told us that where our treasure is, there our heart it. Right now Americans spend each year over 750 billion dollars on education. The priests of this religion represent the largest single grouping of employees in the country. There are more of them than there are soldiers in the military of the world’s most potent super-power. There are more of them than there are lawyers in the world’s most litigious country. They are the only unionized organization that has its own cabinet level department in the federal government. They exist to catechize our children into the faith.

If the schools are our churches, what then is the high and holy sacrament? It is education itself. We may bicker over how to do education. But all sides agree that education is the magic pill. It alone has the power to cure us, to sanctify us. We, as a nation, have been persuaded that education is the key to the good life. Education is the pathway to financial blessing. Education is the solution to our social ills. Education will end poverty, ignorance, unwanted pregnancies, smoking, gun violence, racism, pollution, drug abuse, obesity, bulimia, social awkwardness, computer glitches, bad breath, poor musical taste, war, bad fashion sense, sickness. If you can come up with something bad, you can rest assured there will be a priest of the state religion promising that education will make it go away.

This faith, like every faith, has consequences. It too comes out the fingertips of those who embrace it. This faith is what causes our taxes to rise constantly. This faith fills our news days as more and more students, “graduate,” embracing the teleology of this faith, that nothing really matters in the end, by going on shooting rampages, and then turning the guns on themselves.

It is a sick world, and a twisted faith. What is more twisted, however, is that we in the church have embraced this same faith. We affirm its most basic tenets. When asked what was the most important thing a parent could give to his or her child in a recent poll, Christians did not answer overwhelmingly, “grounding in the faith.” They did not reply that the best thing they could instill in their children was a commitment to the Word of God. They answered, just like their secular counterparts that the best thing they could give their children was a good education. Even the demos believes, and we shudder.

Many of us were taught to read in these state run churches. This may well have been a strategic mistake on their part. For now we can read our Bibles. Now we ought to be able to distinguish between this faux faith and the living faith to which we are called.