Secularism 

Everywhere
by Thomas Brewer
You’ve heard the word before. It’s like a creeping darkness in our culture. We often hear the word
used as a label. “Secular” school. “Secular” music. “Secular” society. The label is often used without a
lot of explanation. Concern over secularism has only grown in recent years though. Such concern has
grown for a variety of reasons, including Supreme Court decisions, shifts in the views of young
people, and changes in pop culture.

Just what is secularism? It is an ideology that promotes the absence of any binding theistic authority
or belief. It’s a way of viewing the world that recognizes only the here and now. Whether the spiritual
world exists isn’t a concern for secularism. Secularism says we may as well live as if it doesn’t.
Secularism, in contrast to the strong atheism of certain ideologies such as the new atheism or
communism, is a more subtle form of atheism. It doesn’t always demand that we declare “there is no
God.” It simply implies that God isn’t relevant to the discussion—ever. And, in its most pernicious
strands, secularism even implies that God is destructive to society.

Secularism can be obvious. For example, the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges legalized
same-sex marriage in the United States. In this ruling, the court essentially assumed the right to
define marriage. However, human institutions don’t have this right. This is a right that belongs to
God (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:21–33). Since secularism recognizes no God, man plays God for the purposes
of his own moral imaginings. Paul tells us to expect such things when man abandons God
(Rom. 1:28).
The Obergefell decision didn’t occur in a vacuum, of course. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and
1970s marked a rebellion against the Christian sexual ethic. It promoted the acceptance of sex and
sexual expression outside of marriage both in our personal lives and in entertainment. The tumult of
those years was accompanied by a major Supreme Court ruling in 1973: Roe v. Wade. Legalized
abortion on demand marked a major shift away from the Christian worldview toward secularism. It
was a conscious decision to choose death and man’s will over life and God’s will. Obergefell was
merely a parting shot in an upheaval that has been taking place for decades.
Another obvious place where secularism has advanced its cause is in our higher education system.
The promotion of moral relativism in classrooms lends itself to a general moral relativism among
students. The elimination of any reference to a Creator from textbooks abandons even the idea
of God.

Secularism has also appeared in various other ways in our culture. The mainstream acceptance of
aberrant sexual expression, “right to die” movements, and the general animosity toward orthodox
Christian views in the public square all indicate that secularism is everywhere around us.
It makes sense that Christians would recognize these examples of secularism as significant and seek
to resist them in various ways. The creeping darkness in our culture is cause for concern. But too
often we think of secularism as something “out there” rather than something nearby—something
even in our own hearts. Secularism is also evident in the materialism of our culture, in its disregard
for the spiritual world, and in the sexual revolution’s effect on our lives. Even Christians can live as if
secular assumptions are true.

Secularism, being a subtle atheism, recognizes the material world as the only world. There is no
spiritual world or afterlife. In such a world, material pleasure is the highest good. Such a mindset
lends itself to worshiping money as god, for what greater way of acquiring material pleasure is there
than money? Such a materialist mindset is especially apparent on TV, on the radio, as we browse the
web, and even as we drive down the highway. Commercials, TV shows, celebrity culture, and
billboards incessantly demand that we buy some-thing—anything—to make us happy. Too often,
Christians believe the message that material things will fill the void in our lives. That “thing” will
make us happy. If our thoughts incessantly dwell on our money, what to buy, and when to buy it, we
have likely adopted our culture’s way of thinking. If our joy is tied exclusively to our next purchase,
we are not worshiping God. Rather, we have abandoned God and substituted a secular idol in
His place.
Secularism has entered our thinking in other subtle ways. Given our materialist mindset, many of us
ignore or forget the realities of the spiritual world. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 that our struggle isn’t
fundamentally against powers of this world but against “spiritual forces of evil” (v. 12). Christianity is
a religion that believes in the supernatural. That is, we believe in a world beyond this world. We
believe in angels and demons. We believe in heaven and hell. We believe that God, a spiritual being,
created the heavens and the earth. If the loss of our material resources causes us utter hopelessness
because we believe we have nothing left, we have forgotten the Lord. If our prayer life is nonexistent
or merely compulsory, we’ve misunderstood our spiritual situation. Instead, having a biblical
mindset will give us an eternal perspective on this life, allowing us to claim with Paul that “whether
we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:8). It will cause us to pray without ceasing
while giving thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess. 5:16–18), for we know that our Lord has conquered
the spiritual forces arrayed against us. 
Secularism has also affected us in the wake of the sexual revolution. Addiction to pornography is a
problem that many Christians struggle with. Just viewing Netflix or browsing the web often requires
running a gauntlet of sexually tempting imagery. We often don’t honor our marriages as we should.
We often unwittingly accept what entertainment tells us men and women should be. If we are simply
absorbing our culture’s definitions of manhood and womanhood rather than searching Scripture,
secularism has infiltrated our hearts. If we have become desensitized to sexual imagery or expose our
family to inappropriate entertainment, it’s likely that secularism is shaping us more than Scripture.
In such a culture, the Word truly is a lamp for our feet and a light for our paths (Ps. 119:105).
There are, of course, other ways in which secularism manifests itself. The obvious shifts of our
culture over the past fifty years have been jarring for Christians who have grown used to a general
societal mindset that accepts what are often called Judeo-Christian values. Yet the shifts aren’t cause
for despair. 

Why? There are a number of reasons. First, secularism isn’t the dissolution of Christianity. God has
promised that His Word will not return to Him void and that the gates of hell will not prevail against
His church (Isa. 55:11; Matt. 16:18). Moreover, the New Testament doesn’t only predict Christians
will be persecuted; it assumes it (1 John 3:13). Rather than representing the dissolution of
Christianity, secularism more so represents the dissolution of nominal Christianity. God is not
failing, and He is not failing His church. He is still as in control as ever.