#1559 The Plight of a Secular Society

Listening to America

This week, Clay Jenkinson interviews Bruce Ledewitz, the author of The Universe is On Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life. Since Nietzsche's famous pronouncement that "God is dead," Euro-American culture has become profoundly secular--and it shows, according to Ledewitz. Without the great tradition of Christian culture, America has descended into radical individualism without any moral anchor for public or private behavior. Ledewitz rejects the Enlightenment's belief that secular culture is a sufficient restraining mechanism for humans who are, in the Enlightenment's formulation, capable of considerable perfectibility. Jefferson's belief in a "moral sense" is not enough to give American culture meaning or restraint. Ledewitz sees little hope for a restoration of a morally grounded American society.