Naturalism and the Trajectory of History

Abstract

Although contemporary law and culture are often described as “secular,” that term can carry ― and obscure ― a variety of meanings. It can sometimes cover over underlying divergences between competing religiosities. Extracted from a longer project defending T. S. Eliot’s argument that the future of Western societies would be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism,” this paper argues that the conventional diagnosis of modernity in terms of secularism, naturalism, and Weberian disenchantment is misleading. In important respects, our own period is better understood in terms of a clash between the transcendent religiosity of traditional biblical faiths and an immanent religiosity characteristic of ancient paganism and recently rearticulated in, among other manifestations, Dworkin’s Religion without God.

Keywords: Religion, Religious Freedom, History, Christianity, Culture Wars