The Age of Reason and Capitalism: Christianity in a Godless Age
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what cost did Christianity turn
its back on new learning and the
new industrial world order?
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The control of knowledge has
always been an issue for the
Christian Church.
Across history, the church
has alternately encouraged
and sponsored the
preservation and search for
knowledge and suppressed
and destroyed it.
Churches in Portugal are
decorated with scientific
instruments which enabled
exploration of the seas (and
missionary activity).
The church initially
sponsored Copernicus in his
studies of the planets.
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In 1615 the Church officially
condemned Copernicus’
thesis that the earth revolved
around the sun.
In 1633 Galileo was ordered
by the Inquisition to recant
and never discuss his
teaching about the working
of the solar system.
Unable to reconcile previous
Church doctrine and literal
Scriptural teaching with
science, the Catholic Church
retreated into Dogma and its
old techniques to silence new
discoveries.
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On October 31, 1992, Pope John
Paul II formally proclaimed that the
Church erred in condemning
Galileo. The condemnation
resulted from a "tragic mutual
incomprehension," said the Pope,
and became a symbol of the
Church's "supposed rejection of
scientific progress."
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It is suggested that this
retreat by the Church was a
turning point for scholars
and ordinary people who
turned away from the old
world order controlled by
the church, to science and a
new world order that was at
least free-er to explore
boundaries of knowledge.
If it wasn’t before, the
Church became irrelevant to
the lives of the increasingly
literate society it sought to
control.
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The Industrial Revolution was a
period from the 18th to the
19th century where major
changes in agriculture,
manufacturing, mining,
transportation and technology
had a profound effect on the
socioeconomic and cultural
conditions of the times.
It began in the United
Kingdom, then subsequently
spread throughout Europe,
North America, and eventually
the world.
Hundreds of thousands of
people were displaced, moving
from village life and farms to
cities, from self sufficiency
and life around a village
church to squalor and disease
and godlessness.
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The traditional authority of the
church, the village, and the
family were being undermined
by impersonal factory and city
life.
Still locked in a medieval world
view, most traditional church
groups could offer no answer
to the hunger for meaning in
the miserable lives of city
Unable to cope with religious
and political revolutions, the
Church was just as unable to
cope with the enormous social
upheaval faced by ordinary
people.
In Ireland, devastated by the
potato famine, a number of
religious orders arose to care
for the poor- e.g. the Irish
Christian Brothers, Sisters of
Mercy; Presentation Sisters.
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The inability of the church to
respond to the Industrial
Revolution, except with calls for
increased piety and devotions, led
Karl Marx (1818-1883) to accuse
religion as conspiring with
capitalism because it did nothing
for people on earth, but consoled
them with a promise of a better
afterlife.
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After a personal conversion
experience in 1738 John Wesley
developed a set of General Rules
as a method for salvation.
Wesley, an Anglican clergyman,
set out to bring the Church of
England into the modern age.
However, eventually the
movement became a separate
sect- the Wesleyan Methodists.
His great contribution was to
appoint itinerant, un-ordained
preachers who travelled widely to
evangelize and care for people
wherever they were.
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The Church would go
where the people
were, rather than wait
for them to come to
it.
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Wesley focused on personal
holiness: wherever one
was, one could live by three
principles: Do no harm; Do
Good; Attend the
Ordinances of God.
As systematic as science, it
shed the layers of theology
and directly appealed to
the hearts and minds of
ordinary people.
Its appeal was that they
needed no church: they
preached any where,
anytime, in any conditions.
In the cramped and sordid
slums, this was critical.
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For some fifteen hundred
years, Christian society had
operated on the presumption
that all believed in God and
that Revelation, received from
God, was the ultimate source
of knowledge and Truth.
17th Century Philosophy,
drawing on Rene Descartes's
famous “I Think, Therefore I
am” stated that knowledge
comes from human reason.
God becomes unknowable, if
existing at all, and can be
known, either through the
application of logical argument
or empirical examination of
the universe.
Revelation is not necessary.
God gave humans reason to
work out for themselves what
they must do.
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The Age of Reason and the
Age of Enlightenment fit
together: the philosophers
such as Voltaire and Rousseau
who felt that human progress
would only come through
intellectual and spiritual
enlightenment—not blind
obedience to authority.
Enlightened humanity could
bring an end to poverty,
injustice, racism, and all the
other ills of society.
They were dismayed by the
religious and political leaders
who claimed to be the special
agents of God's revelation in
order keep the common
people shackled in ignorance.
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In the latter half of the 19th century,
atheism rose to prominence under the
influence of rationalistic and freethinking
philosophers.
Many prominent German philosophers of
this era denied the existence of deities and
were critical of religion, including Ludwig
Feuerbach, Arthur Schopenhauer, Max
Stirner, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche
It may be more appropriate to consider
Nietzsche ‘s declaration that “God is dead
"as Nietzsche's way of saying that the
conventional Christian God is no longer a
viable source of any absolute moral
principles.
This of course was the greatest threat and
challenge to the Christian Church since the
Roman persecutions.
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The Church response to the
Enlightenment was varied and
not all negative.
It was the church that led the
way in the provision of
schooling for the masses,
especially the poor.
Surrender of Church property
in many places of Europe such
as France and England, meant
that Bishops could focus their
energy on spiritual formation
and education of their flocks
rather than being estate
managers.
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Many of the
abolitionists- of slavery,
child labour and
emancipists were from
Protestant and Catholic
traditions.
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While atheism and rationalism
were part of the new freedom of
speech, the majority of society
was still nominally Christian,
even if observation of Christian
practices fell away, especially in
cities.
Some Protestant denominations
responded with Evangelical
Crusades, to reach people not
coming to church and to win
back those alienated by Church
theological bickering.
The Catholic tradition closed
ranks and turned in on itself, and
still held strict controls over its
people in matters of faith and
morals. The 18th and 19th
century Catholic Church retained
a Medieval, hierarchical and
monarchical world view.
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William Booth (1829-1912) a
Methodist preacher,
established the Salvation Army
to preach and do works of
mercy on the streets as well as
lighten people’s burdens with
music.
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During this period the Christian
churches in Britain held "that it was
'wrong for a Christian to meddle in
political matters.'...All of the
denominations were particularly
careful to disavow any political
affiliation and he who was the least
concerned with the 'affairs of this
world' was considered the most
saintly and worthy of emulation.“
This was at odds with many
Christian Chartists "Christianity was
to them above all practical,
something that must be carried into
every walk of life. Furthermore there
was no possibility of divorcing it
from political science
Christian groups (Puritans) and
individuals advocated the abolition of
slavery, the emancipation of children
from work in the factories, the
emancipation of women, universal
suffrage and other causes for social
justice in the 19th century.
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After 1800 the Papacy
became the center of
conservatism in Europe in
reaction against the
socialism of the French
Revolution and its
supporters.
Pope Pius VII (1800-23) was
stripped of powers by
Napoleon but made a
striking comeback after
Napoleon's fall in 1815
regaining most of the
territories in Italy which
napoleon had seized.
The "ultramontane"
tendency in the Church
centralized more power and
authority in the Papacy.
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Rome established more
administrative and
doctrinal centralization;
established a
homogeneous culture,
aided especially by
universal use of Latin.
It promoted new rites and
folk devotions, especially
those focused on Mary
and other favored saints;
promoted pilgrimages to
holy sites; promoted
many new teaching
orders and schools;
supported intellectuals
and publishing houses.
Above all, Rome
cultivated an image of
theological, canonical,
and moral superiority
over other Christian
denominations and the
secular state.
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The provision of education, and
to a degree health services to
increase the opportunities for
the poor became the focus of
Catholic endeavour in the 18th
and 19th centuries.
Membership of male and female
Religious Orders and Lay
institutes which opened schools
exploded.
As well as the Jesuits,
Franciscan, Dominican,
Augustinian and other order
schools opened.
This was the time of Catherine
McAuley; Nano Nagle; Edmund
Rice; Don Bosco; Mary Ward,
Elizabeth Seton and Mary
MacKillop who established
orders to teach the masses.
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The Syllabus of Errors of Pope
Pius IX in 1864 rejected the liberal
doctrines of the modern world.
It denounced pantheism,
naturalism, nationalism,
indifferentism, socialism,
communism, freemasonry,
theological rationalism,
separation of church and state,
removal of public schools from
Church control, and other modern
views.
The Pope claimed for the Catholic
Church total control over science
and culture. Liberals viewed this
as a declaration of war by the
Church on modern civilization.
Opponents stressed the Papacy
had become intolerant and
medieval and largely political in
nature.
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In 1869, with the Papal
States under threat by
soldiers of the kingdom of
Italy, Pope Pius IX called the
First Vatican Council.
The most significant
declaration of that war
interrupted council was the
Doctrine of Papal
Infallibility, which taught
that the Pope, speaking ex
cathedra, on matters of
faith and morals, was
incapable of making a
mistake.
The Council also
condemned freedom of
speech, of the press, of
assembly and universal
suffrage.
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As the 19th century came
to a close, and many
other Christian
denominations engaged
with the inevitable
changes facing the
world, the Roman
Catholic Church and the
Orthodox Churches of
the East and Russia
turned in on themselves,
rejected the new and
focused on keeping their
own houses in order.