Enemy of Freedom

In an article at First Things, Ross Douthart explains something that Christians need to understand in this season.

The question of the nature of freedom is, I believe, crucial to a proper understanding of Christianity’s decline, because secularism has always opposed Christianity in the name of freedom. In taking on the mantle of freedom, secularism has turned Christianity’s own claim of being a gospel of liberation against Christianity.

In late antiquity, Christianity was the cause of truth, justice, and freedom. The Christian gospel was defeating superstition, oppression, and vice. Christian reform movements throughout the ages would recall the same -dynamic: seeing themselves as championing truth, justice, and freedom against superstition, oppression, and enthrallment.

The Protestant Reformation saw itself precisely as the cause of truth and freedom against ignorance, superstition, and oppression. The Enlightenment began as a movement among believing Christians, but with time its more radical proponents came to see themselves as championing reason against Christian pretensions of revelation.

The spirit of Christian reform is turned against Christianity itself. Now Christianity is ignorance, superstition, and oppression, while secular reason is the cause of truth and liberation.

This change is the result of excessive use of salvation by law.

See Season Change.