fixed element in Western culture’.^39 It harbours no theocratic yearnings, but
‘conserves’, as Lee Oser puts it,‘the radical middle between secularism and
theocracy’.^40 Christian humanism, then, is not identifiable with any concrete
political programme^41 but relies on the indirect effect of Christian revelation
and grace. At the same time, however, the transforming humane influence of
grace is salvific in the full sense of Christian redemption and thereforedoes
have an intrinsic political dimension. Living out the eschatological promise of
a new creation at some point requires public social and political involvement.
Christian redemption, as the essays in this volume make clear, is not mere
inner piety or adherence to a belief system, but the transformation of body and
soul into true humanity. This transformation has always been, and should be,
the ultimate telos of the Christian life and thus also of Christian civic respon-
sibility as reflected in all aspects of public life. Christian humanism is always
also politically involved civic humanism.
There are principally two reasons for reconsidering Christian humanism at
this particular point in time. For one, the ideological secularism that has
provided the interpretive framework for the academy and leading intellectuals
in Western societies is quickly losing credibility as the most plausible, com-
prehensive explanatory grid for human experience. Secularists adhere rather
dogmatically to the subtraction narrative that social improvement and know-
ledge advancement entail the eclipse of religion; but, as sociologists and
political theorists have come to realize, this story fails to account for recent
significant political and cultural changes across the globe.^42 The ongoing collapse
of secularism in no way entails abandoning the ideas of democratic secular
societies and religious plurality, but these concepts will increasingly require
opennesstowardsreligiousfoundationsandreligiousmotivationsforsuch
cultural models. Christian humanism provides important religious roots for
education, tolerance, fair economic practices, philanthropy, and humane politics.
The second reason for re-envisioning Christian humanism is the general
loss of purpose within Western society’s most important cultural institutions,
such as churches, universities, and hospitals. These institutions were born
from and nourished by Christian humanist incarnational anthropology.
The incarnation demonstrated, as the church fathers expressed it, God’s
‘philanthropy’, which inspired, neither universally nor instantaneously but
nonetheless truly, concern for the well-being of other creatures. To be sure, the
(^39) Martin Marty,‘Foreword’, in Joseph M. Shaw, R. W. Franklin, Harris Kaasa, and Charles
W. Buzicky (eds),Readings in Christian Humanism(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing
House, 1982), 17.
(^40) Lee Oser,The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance
of History(Columbia, MO and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 5.
(^41) Shaw et al. (eds),Readings in Christian Humanism, 203.
(^42) See, for example, Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and Van Antwerpen (eds), Rethinking
Secularism.
12 Jens Zimmermann