originally published 7/1/1999

Sociologist Craig Gay, author of The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist, speaks of the charge that Christianity is an otherworldly religion. It is the otherworldliness of Christianity that has brought much redemption to the social structures of the world by valuing people based upon their value in another world, not based on property and power. Gay goes on to explain how much Christian doctrine in the modern era has been marked by a desire to control the world. This control seemed so successful that the Church in the West has been tempted to think that there is not another world which should define our reality. This interview was originally published on Volume 38 of the Journal and was, until now, only available on cassette tape.

12 minutes

PREVIEW

The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.

Transcript of Feature introduction

Because the introduction to this Archive Feature touches directly on the mission of Mars Hill Audio, we’ve decided to share the text of it with our listeners:

In the first chapter of the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he describes the gospel he preaches as something regarded by his Gentile contemporaries as foolish. The wisdom of God appeared to be nonsense to those who professed a love of wisdom, a philosophia.  One of the several editorial goals informing the production of these tapes is the pursuit of a better understanding of the specific maneuvers whereby our culture, late 20th century North American culture, has come to regard the wisdom of God as folly. What is it about the shape of our culture, not just its professed ideas but the actual way we live, that makes the Christian message seem implausible, even to those who profess to believe it?

To my knowledge, the term “plausibility” does not appear in the Scriptures. It is nonetheless a very useful term, drawing attention to the fact that we believe things or disbelieve them from within a framework of understanding. A word that the Bible does use that alludes to the same idea is “worldliness,” a condition condemned throughout the New Testament and, by implication, the Old Testament as well. Theologian David Wells has observed pithily that ”worldliness is what makes sin look normal . . . and righteousness seem odd.” Worldliness, in other words, makes righteousness seem foolish or implausible.

Craig Gay, who was trained as a sociologist, also uses the term worldliness to describe a framework of understanding. Gay is now an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Regent College, and in a recent book, he takes issue with the conventional assumption that worldliness is a term best applied to describe the succumbing to certain personal moral temptations. He suggests that the essence of worldliness is the sustaining of an interpretation of reality that essentially excludes the reality of God from the business of life. “It is possible for us,” writes Gay, “to imagine our world in such a way that we ignore the real reality of God’s gracious presence within it.”

Not only is it possible: it is virtually inevitable. Many aspects of what sociologists call modernity, which informs our social, economic, political, and cultural institutions, carry the seeds of a practical atheism. Craig Gay’s book is called The Way of the Modern World: or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist. In the introduction he defines the thesis of the book so: “One of the most consequential ideas embedded in modern institutions and traditions and habits of thought is theological. Stated bluntly, it is the assumption that even if God exists, he is largely irrelevant to the real business of life. Contemporary society and culture so emphasize human potential and human agency and the immediate practical exigencies of the here and now that we are for the most part tempted to go about our daily business in this world without giving God much thought.”

Gay goes on to say that practical atheism is a temptation uniquely plausible in contemporary culture because of ideas and assumptions embedded within modern institutional life. His book looks in turn at institutions often unambiguously defended by conservative Christians, including democracy, science and technology, and industrial capitalism.

What these and other modern institutions have in common is the proud assumption that human beings have the power to control reality by rational-technical means. Furthermore, the ends and the means of good lives are defined only in terms of this world, without reference to God or the fully redeemed world that is to come. Given such a culture, Craig Gay thinks that Christians shouldn’t be overly sensitive to the charge of being “other-worldly.”

Related reading and listening

  1. A prophetic “wake-up call” — In this 2024 lecture honoring the bicentennial of George MacDonald’s birth, Malcolm Guite explores MacDonald’s power to awaken readers’ spirits and effect in them a change of consciousness. (59 minutes)
  2. Victorian ideas about belief and doubt —
    FROM VOL. 148
    Timothy Larsen situates George MacDonald within a Victorian understanding of faith and doubt. (17 minutes)
  3. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 163 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Youngblood, R. J. Snell, Nicholas Denysenko, Nigel Biggar, Robert McNamara, and David Cayley
  4. The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
  5. Goodness, truth, and conscience — David Crawford examines Karol Wojtyła’s thought on the relationship between conscience and truth. (37 minutes)
  6. How words are central to the human experience —
    FROM VOL. 95
    Craig Gay reflects on the essential linguistic nature of humanity: how our growth (or decline) in life is tied to words. (18 minutes)
  7. The relationship between prudence and reality  — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how the virtue of prudence is fundamentally connected with a deep and anchored understanding of reality. (54 minutes)
  8. A metaphysics of realism, relationality, and personalism — John Milbank gives a survey and critique of the efforts of 20th and 21st century theologians to articulate a Trinitarian ontology that reflects reality and counters secularization. (61 minutes)
  9. Forms as portals to reality — Ken Myers explains the ancient classical and Christian view that music embodies an order and forms that correspond to the whole of created reality, in its transcendence and materiality. (54 minutes)
  10. Christopher Hitchens vs. G. K. Chesterton — Ralph Wood compares Christopher Hitchens‘s view of the cosmos with that of G. K. Chesterton, arguing that Chesterton succeeded where Hitchens failed. (44 minutes)
  11. No neutral view of the cosmos — Ken Myers argues that Christians need to recover a “whole-earth discipleship” that enables them to think Christianly about all areas of life, including public life. (50 minutes)
  12. The gift of objective reality — Moral philosopher Oliver O’Donovan makes an argument for the consistency of the idea of law when it is conceived in a theological context. (40 minutes)
  13. Experiencing literature in its wholeness —
    FROM VOL. 50
    Glenn Arbery uses the analogies of sports fandom and ritual to explain how a “long habituation” in learning about form in literature enables one to enter into a greater depth of experience of reality through literature. (26 minutes)
  14. Faith and unbelief —
    FROM VOL. 98
    This Archive Feature revisits two conversations, one with Roger Lundin and one with David Bentley Hart, on what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (39 minutes)
  15. “How deep the problems go” —
    FROM VOL. 103
    Eric Miller discusses the late historian and social critic Christopher Lasch’s intense commitment to understand the logic of American cultural confusion. (20 minutes)
  16. Creation as beauty and gift —
    FROM VOL. 67
    David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 minutes)
  17. Dreary atheist fundamentalism — David Bentley Hart defends the naturalness of religious belief against the assertions of the Naturalists
  18. The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
  19. The rediscovery of meaning — Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite explains Owen Barfield’s idea of the development of consciousness over time, an evolution made evident through language that reveals an earlier, pre-modern way of seeing the world. (63 minutes)
  20. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
  21. Gay, Craig M. — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Craig M. Gay is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Regent College, Vancouver, B. C., Canada. Gay lectures in the area of Christianity, society, and culture.
  22. “I buy, therefore I am” — As counterpoint to the spirit of Black Friday, excerpts from the work of sociologist Craig Gay about the secularizing effects of modern economic habits are followed by an interview with Vincent Miller, author of Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. (28 minutes)
  23. Earthly things in relation to heavenly realities — In this lecture, Ken Myers argues that the end of education is to train students to recognize what is really real. The things of this earth are only intelligible in light of heavenly realities. (59 minutes)
  24. Albert Borgmann, R.I.P. — Albert Borgmann argues that, despite its promise to the contrary, technology fails to provide meaning, significance, and coherence to our lives. (47 minutes)
  25. Deconstructing the myths of modernity — In order to counter modernity’s fragmentation, Paul Tyson argues that we must recover a foundation of reality based on meaning and being. (35 minutes)
  26. Freedom, real and counterfeit — D. C. Schindler contrasts the classical and Christian understanding of freedom with the modern understanding of freedom, and explains how true freedom is a condition of harmony with reality. (59 minutes)
  27. Aspects of our un-Christening — In this Friday Feature — presented courtesy of Biola University — Carlo Lancellotti talks with Aaron Kheriaty about the central ideas in Augusto Del Noce’s writings. (43 minutes)
  28. What is really true? Why does beauty matter? — Bishop Robert Barron talks about the necessity of persuading people that theological claims are about things that are objectively true, not just personally meaningful. (14 minutes)
  29. What is at stake for us in a self-driving future? — Matthew Crawford vividly details the “personal knowledge” acquired in interaction with physical things, their mecho-systems, and the people who care for them. (16 minutes)
  30. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 147 — FEATURED GUESTS: R. Jared Staudt, Jason Peters, D. C. Schindler, Craig Gay, Mary Hirschfeld, and Patrick Samway
  31. The reality that science cannot see — Philosopher Paul Tyson illustrates features of daily life that science cannot “see,” such as love, friendship, justice, and hope, and argues that such things are nonetheless real. (20 minutes)
  32. Roger Scruton, R.I.P. — Sir Roger Scruton died on January 12, 2020. In this interview from 2015, Scruton discusses the ways in which the sacred or religious sensibility is prefigured in aesthetic experiences and in our relationships to the world. (20 minutes)
  33. Fischer, Hart, and Highfield on freedom — Three past guests on the Journal explore the meaning of freedom and some common modern misunderstandings of the concept — errors with real consequences. (22 minutes)
  34. D. C. Schindler on Robert Spaemann — On this Friday Feature, Ken Myers talks with philosopher D. C. Schindler about philosopher Robert Spaemann’s work in general and his defense of anthropomorphism in particular. (14 minutes)
  35. Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
  36. Further up and further in: understanding Narnia — Joseph Pearce explains how fairy stories can open our eyes to the depths of reality if we read them with the virtue of humility. (15 minutes)
  37. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
  38. Chesterton and Tolkien as theologians — Alison Milbank discusses how both Chesterton and Tolkien restore reason to fantasy and help us to see things as we were meant to see them. (20 minutes)
  39. The mythic song of modernity — In his book Returning to Reality, philosopher Paul Tyson imagines a grand “Song of Modernity.” In it, he captures the triumphant sense of enlightenment characteristic of modern thought. Ken Myers summarizes some of the key themes in Tyson’s book. (17 minutes)
  40. The idiocy of a-theistic society — Luigi Giussani on the irresistible question of God for human flourishing
  41. From darkness [sic] into light [sic] — David Bentley Hart on the ignorant myth that banishes the transcendent from modern public spaces
  42. Seeing the world from somewhere — Robert Spaemann on why education can’t be “objective”
  43. Who strangled God? — James Turner examines the ways in which the pursuit of “relevant” theology helped to make atheism plausible in Western culture
  44. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 115 — FEATURED GUESTS: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Andrew Davison, Adrian Pabst, Gary Colledge, Linda Lewis, and Thomas Bergler
  45. The Worth of Words: Preserving and Caring for Language — John McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing), Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies), and Craig Gay (Dialogue, Catalogue, & Monologue) discuss the glorious possibilities of words lovingly and thoughtfully employed. (65 minutes)
  46. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 100 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jennifer Burns, Christian Smith, Dallas Willard, Peter Kreeft, P. D. James, James Davison Hunter, Paul McHugh, Ted Prescott, Ed Knippers, Martha Bayles, Dominic Aquila, Gilbert Meilaender, Neil Postman, and Alan Jacobs
  47. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 99 — FEATURED GUESTS: Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Paul A. Rahe, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew J. Cherlin, Dale Keuhne, and Alison Milbank
  48. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 98 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Clarke Forsythe, Gilbert Meilaender, Jeanne Murray Walker, Roger Lundin, and David Bentley Hart
  49. With enemies like this . . . — Terry Eagleton presents a blistering dismissal of arguments made by celebrity atheists
  50. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 97 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, Stanley Fish, James Peters, Scott Moore, and Makoto Fujimura
Tags: