About this episode
Michael McDuffee — formerly professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute, now living in Germany — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the seventh episode in the faith and politics series.
The conversation starts with an essay by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas, a lifelong child of the Enlightenment, found himself after 2001 asking whether reason alone could carry the weight of a public ethics, and began describing modern societies as post-secular. McDuffie uses that as a way into the collapse of secularization theory: the assumption that modernization would inevitably shrink religion turned out to describe Europe, not the world.
His sharper claim is that the secular was never a neutral condition but a strategy — a way of categorizing peoples and ideas that maintained a particular hegemony, and one whose vulnerability has opened room for voices it had kept out.
They apply this to America, which McDuffee argues was post-secular before the term existed. The last stretch takes on 1776 and 1619 together, arguing both frameworks share a blind spot, and ends on coveting, idolatry, and Francis of Assisi as a model for finding a voice.
Chapters:
00:00 Introductions
01:19 Habermas and an awareness of what is missing
06:21 Durkheim, France, and the durability of religion
08:38 Why secularization theory described Europe, not the world
11:43 Liberalism, neoliberalism, and the sovereign individual
17:47 Post-secular doesn't mean the secular is over
21:28 The secular as a deliberate strategy
25:00 From Hellenized being to deism to history to ideology
31:44 What post-secular opens up
37:31 Postmodernism gave voices the chops
45:50 A nation with the soul of a church
51:20 1776 and 1619 share a blind spot
57:17 Creation, not nature
1:00:27 Coveting, idolatry, and the inclusio of the Decalogue
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