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.
Go deeper: Christians & Politics
Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers.
Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.
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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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