Canada's Religions: An Historical Introduction

15. Modernity versus Conservatism

CHAPTER 15 Modernity versusConservatism Since the sixteenth century, modernity slowly developed as a cultural mindset in the West, to the point that itbecame the dominant oneby the year 1900. In the Christianity of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the primary current of evangelicalism had come to dominate the churches both Protestant and Catholic. However, Christian evangelicalism was simultaneously subdivided and buffeted by the numerous crosscurrents of holiness, millennialism, Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, and ultramontanism to name only the better known. Inevitably this crusading evangelicalism of the Christian churches clashed with modernity, because the former's primary criterion of truth was the Word of God and tradition, while the latter's was contemporary attitudes. In their fight against modernity, Christian evangelicals were driven to emphasize the traditional, the foundational , and the fundamental doctrines of their faith. I will designate this group as conservatives. At the same time, other religious believers , Jews and Amerindians for example, were also driven to react to the challenge of modernity. The meaning ofmodernity Theword modernity canbe understood in anumber ofways.Basically, the word modern designates that whichpertains to present and recenttimeas opposed to ancientor remotetime.However, the word alsopertains to the historical period that followed the Middle Ages, that is the period that began in the 1450s,the beginning ofmodernhistory.In addition, theword 312 Canada's Religions modern isused to describeattitudes and stylesthat are current, recent, and up-to-date, as opposed to those which are antiquated and outdated. In sum, modernity is simultaneously a time period and a cultural and ideological attitude that valuesthe recent and present while denigrating the ancient, the traditional, and the customary. In the West at the turnof the twentieth century,a time of strong belief in progress, evolution, and similar values, all things modern were considered particularly good while all things traditional tended tobe suspect of backwardness. Modernity was the main challenge to conservative religion in the West at the turn of the twentieth century. All the religions of the world eventually faced the challenge of modernity, but in early twentiethcentury Canada, the Christians and the Jews stood at the forefront of the battle within their own faith traditions. Indeed, a growing number of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews valued the new, the recent, and the novel in their cultures and societies, while questioning the traditional doctrines and practices of their religions. The challenge led to a polarization within each faith community, each party feeling compelled to harden its theological stance. This translated into the formation of doctrinal and theological parties within the religions, parties that frequently became new denominations or distinct associations that flew the standards of their particular belief. The conservatism that developed in reaction to modernity is sometimes designated as fundamentalism . However, the latter term usually designates the harder-edged traditionalists among the conservatives. Modernity is the reverse side of the coin of conservatism or fundamentalism in religion. It was a cultural and ideological mindset that had grown from the sixteenth century through a series of major, indeed revolutionary, cultural, social, economic, scientific, intellectual, and political changes that had transformed Westernsociety.Fromthe fall of the Christian Byzantinecity ofConstantinople to the Muslim Turks in 1453, the customarydividingpoint betweenthemedievaland modern periods, the fifteenth-century West had witnessed Gutenberg's inventions inprint technology,the scandalousnadir in the moralityofpopes during the rule of AlexanderVI (d. 1503), and the growing unrest within the Christian church that led to the Reformations of the sixteenth century.While the Protestant and Catholic Reformations transformed Christianity in the sixteenth century, world exploration led to the discovery ofAmerica by Europeannavigators, the foundingofnew colonies there, and a revolution in trade and commerce that eventually transformed European society. There followed during the seventeenth century not only the growing Modernity versus Conservatism 313 strength of the American colonies, but the blossoming scientific and philosophical revolutions led by a brigade of intellectual giants such as Rene Descartes (d. 1650),BlaisePascal (d. 1662),JohnLocke (d. 1679), and IsaacNewton (d. 1727).Then, during the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, another group of scholars and authors focused the new rationalist and empirical spotlights on the study of human beings and society.Denis Diderot (d. 1784),Voltaire (d. 1778), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778)led the intellectualchargeagainst Christianity before the American Revolution (1775) and the French Revolution (1789) sounded the death knell of the traditional Christian church domination of Westernsociety. As the pace of change further accelerated during the nineteenth century, the...