HONEST RELIGION NEEDS A SECULAR SOCIETY

I read something today which first alarmed me and then had me thinking: the suggestion that Putin dreams of leading, along with the racist, fascist Bannon and his minions, a Great Revival of white ‘Christendom’. He wants to revive the ancient error of the ‘Cross-and-crown’ framework of society using a coalition of counterfeit ‘Christian’ nationalists here, reactionary Romans (I question just how ‘catholic’ these people might be) and the Orthodox churches which have always been organized on an ethno-national basis. This ‘coalition’ would have three enemies: Islam, China (which has always feared Islam; why do you think they’re persecuting the Uighurs so cruelly?) and….modern secularism.
That last gets me really thinking. I grew up in a ‘sekler-HEWM’niss’ family. I started to become a Christian when I was in college and am still becoming one; I am and have been an in-process Christian just about all my adult life. Neither my church nor any Rationalist body called on me to cut off ties from the first part of my life, by the way.
To me, ‘secular humanism’ is a few things: first, I’d say it belongs to spiritual adolescents at that stage of development where they see their parents as Utterly Hopeless Creatures, which we know to belong basically to high schoolers, college students (and maybe other young people of corresponding ages) and tends to begin to change in one’s early twenties. Perhaps starting regular jobs has something to do with that.
Second, I see it as a way-station between moving beyond the god many of us know from childhood and our parents. We move through the…