I read that article with interest, however it turned out to have the notable flaw of being unrelated factually to the real world that we live in, e.g.:

"A little more than two centuries ago we began to believe that the West was on a one-way track toward modern secular democracy and that other societies, once placed on that track, would inevitably follow. Though this has not happened..." Heh, say what? In 1807 a generous estimate might place 5% of the world's human beings as living under something vaguely like a "secular democracy". In 2007 if we add up the populations of Western Europe, North America, India, Japan, Turkey, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, some of South America, and a few scattered debatable cases like today's Russia, that's something more than a third of humanity. And since the author's obsession is with the "secular" part then if we add in China that's way over half the world's people living under something other than religious law. A quite literally unimaginable state of affairs for 95% of all those alive in 1807.

One can read that article, and I assume the book, searching in vain for any actual facts supporting the author's thesis. All he offers is a few quotes and anecdotes serving as straw men -- basically he's Ronald Reagan making up "welfare queens" to denounce.

so "why hasn't religion melted away like it was supposed to"? ...

"because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, i will spew thee out of my mouth"--REVELATIONS 3:16

ergo: an answer from the ur-text, or at least one of 'em ... except of course it's apocryphal, a latter-day insertion or corruption per modern biblical scholars--which doesn't prevent its having an effect through all eternity, or at least till the bombs start to drop ...

otherwise what's the point--more bracing than soda water, don't you think?

GLORY HALLELUJAH BROTHERS!

You're right - Quixote did miss the point. This is not just about religion being a useful and powerful tool of the elite (who can argue with someone who convinces you that God is on their side?), but about the profound strangeness for most people of separating their religious and political opinions. Even the most enthralling "secular" political persuasions, like Marxism and fascism, are messianic and all-encompassing. The miracle of the West has been to create a framework, liberal democracy to manage competing "political theologies" so their adherents are not shooting each other in the street. But few people are genuinely enthusiastic about the framework as the ideologies being managed, so if one ideology becomes extremely popular, it can destroy the weak framework meant to contain it, like what happened to Weimar Germany, or is happening in Venezuela. I think what Lilla is saying is that we should not attempt to export liberal democracy to individual states, but find a way to manage so a world with differing ideological states does not blow itself up. Isn't that what the UN is supposed to do?

Interesting point, Paul. So are the secularists winning still, gradually, and are just too impatient to notice it? Are fatwas and US Attorney General John "no King but Jesus" Ashcroft just blips in a benign trend? It would be fine by me, just as I was pleased to learn some time ago that the environment is not in fact getting worse in every respect!

Precisely so.

Arguably the secularists' winning pace is not so gradual. For example the one-quarter of humanity within the borders of China became drastically less religious and more secular in just a few decades, a scale and pace of such change that was without previous human precedent. The percentage of Americans professing no religious belief has now basically doubled for two generations in a row. Etc.

And it's also worth keeping in mind that outside of Islam, the range of opinion held by the religiously-orthodox keeps sliding leftward generation by generation: e.g. the Mormons of 1920 (never mind 1870) would consider Mitt Romney apostate. The churches now labeled by us secularists as "fundamentalist Christian" hold a variety of tenets which in 1930 or 1830 wouldn't even have been discussed never mind allowed. And how many Catholics are left in Europe or North America who actually follow the Pope's directions on, well, anything?

Paul, I think you're missing a major point about the article. It isn't simply talking about secularization; it's talking about the separation of religious political theory from liberal democracy. And, as Michael pointed out, many of the "secular" ideologies are semi-religious and messianic in nature in nature, with belief being more important than rationality.

You mentioned China. But was Maoism ever really anything more than a non-theistic religion to the average Chinese peasant? And now that Maoism, at least intellectually, is fading away, other religions are growing exponentially. As for your "Do any Western Catholics follow the Pope?" thing, from what I saw growing up in Catholic schools in St. Louis, the answer is yes, and there are more of them each year.

I dunno about St. Louis, but across the West generally it's quite clear that fewer of them are following the Pope's wishes with every generation. The last couple of Popes have been painfully aware of the fact, too.

I wasn't missing the point about certain allegedly-secular ideologies being in fact religions (Marxism, etc.), indeed my fundamental disaffection from modern American liberalism is that it has become faith-based rather than reality-based. But that's a separate, if obvious, point. And it doesn't change the core reality that Lilla's claim that religion has "failed to melt away" is not supported by any long-term facts (which is why, presumably, that he doesn't even attempt to offer any).

Paul,

If you mean to tell us that there are sinners amongst us, I can assure you that it is not a recent phenomenon.

JBP

Paul, I don't think Lilla would argue, that in a certain sense, religion *has* "melted away." By this I mean "pure religion," not paired with a political movement. Look at mainline Christianity in this country, for example. It has "melted away" because very few people are drawn to the personal, intellectual faith it offers. What evangelicals have done is rediscover what most of the world never forgot - that people are naturally drawn to religious ideas when they are twinned with political power.

As a more or less secular person, I find this fact sort of frightening, but Lilla just wants us to have the humility not to try to secularize the world - goodness knows we have our hands full here.

Yes I get that, but my point is that Lilla is talking about an alternate plane of reality than the one we live in. In this universe there is no need to "try to secularize the world" -- the world has been steadily secularizing for a couple centuries now and the trend is if anything accelerating.