Renewing America’s Soul: Part IV of Faith and Civil Society

By Barbara J. Elliott                              

         When did the conversation of conservatives in America shift predominantly to the realm of politics, to the exclusion of virtually everything else?  What was once a rich philosophy of ideas imbedded in imaginative literature, philosophy, history and theology has thinned out to a one-note samba played on a political tin drum. Both political parties have reduced their vision to the material realm, where the only disagreement is over whether the government should be vast and bankrupt now or large and bankrupt soon. The assumption is that the government must provide all significant solutions. Is politics really the main engine that drives history? 

        

Seeking Secular Salvation

        

Deep beneath this shift toward the political realm was a philosophical drift that began in an undercurrent early in the 13^th century.  Eric Voegelin, one of the most astute critics of modernity, argued that the modern age has been characterized by the emergence of politics as a secular means of salvation.  He traces the unraveling of order back to Joachim of Flora, a medieval mystic who depicted man’s history in three ascending ages, which would bring about the final age of perfection.  According to Voegelin, Fiore “and his successors replaced faith in God with faith in man’s ability to build heaven on earth.  The new earthly faith depended upon the fallacious notion that history itself has a purpose:  the achievement of human perfection.  Salvation was to be sought in this world, through the pursuit of temporal achievements aimed at making material the transcendent world of God.” [1]  Hobbes and Rousseau took the next steps, claiming that the political order could provide the means to rescue man from his fallen state and remake his image.