I wrote the following short essay as part of my application to the Cardus NextGEN Fellowship, which I’m excited to take part in. The application question asked, “Do you think religion can play a role to promote greater flourishing in modern democratic societies? If not, why not? If so, what do you think are the biggest barriers or challenges to that today?”
Truth. Goodness. Beauty. Western philosophy and religion often focus on these three great “Transcendentals”. As I contemplated the question of religion’s role in social flourishing, the transcendentals immediately sprang to mind. (I will speak primarily about Christianity’s role in modern society, because my knowledge of the transcendentals in other traditions is limited.) Christianity and other major religions obviously strive to serve the Good, especially by helping marginalized or suffering people. And while many might deride Christianity’s views of the Truth, there can be no doubt that Christianity contends with the Truth and tries to promote it in modern society. Yet, Christianity faces obstacles to its promotion of Truth and Goodness, and these obstacles hinder its ability to promote social flourishing.
Two pervasive ideologies, in particular, act as obstacles: materialism, which subverts the Good, and postmodernism, which subverts the True. One path forward for Christianity to break her “deadlock” with these two forces is the “via pulchritudinis”, the way of Beauty. Christianity can promote social flourishing by being a passionate cultivator of Beauty.
Both ends of the traditional “political spectrum” are short-sighted in their goals for human flourishing. Too often, they limit their focus to only the material Good. Whether we think of left-wing politics that advocates for redistribution of property to end poverty, or right-wing politics that wants to expand production and employment in order to build economic wealth, modern politics focuses heavily on how to make sure that humans have enough “stuff”. To be fair, a society cannot thrive if its citizens lack sustenance, shelter, and healthcare. Religious groups rightly devote enormous amounts of energy to serving the poor. The meeting of material needs is necessary, but it is not sufficient for a truly flourishing society, because it does not address the existential poverty that can afflict even the wealthiest person. As psychologist Viktor Frankl lays out in Man’s Search for Meaning, it is possible to have all one’s material needs met, yet still experience despair. He speaks compassionately of his patients who are “haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness” due to a “feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives” (128). He prescribes not more physical comforts, but rather more tension, as a tonic to this malaise: “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal…What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him” (127). His psychological theory echoes Christ’s response to the Devil in the Gospel of Matthew. When Satan tempts the fasting Christ to turn stones into bread, Jesus responds by emphasizing the spiritual needs which only God can fulfill: “But he answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Furthermore, the focus on only material needs betrays an underlying materialist philosophy. Materialism undercuts the very possibility of the Good, since Goodness is not a physical entity we can see and touch. The historian Yuval Noah Harari recently gave a startling example of this tension between materialism and the metaphysical Good. On the one hand, he voiced a materialist objection to the concept of human rights, saying, “Human rights, just like God and heaven, are just a story that we’ve invented. They are not an objective reality; they are not some biological effect about homo sapiens. Take a human being, cut him open, look inside, you will find the heart, the kidneys, neurons, hormones, DNA, but you won’t find any rights.” Yet Harari frequently speaks out on social justice issues, giving moral counsel on wars, the pandemic, climate change, and more. His clear belief in moral standards for human behaviour stands at odds with his materialist commitments. Materialists who want Goodness are forced to “borrow” from metaphysical philosophies, but they weaken their own implicit ethic that it is good for humans to have their material needs met; they saw off the proverbial branch on which they sit. In a materialist culture where “God is dead,” Christianity will have to contend with an increasingly “post-Goodness” world. Atheist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote, “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist.” Without Goodness, there is only power. Unlimited freedom inevitably devolves into power struggles. In this context, Christianity will have a far more difficult time convincing people to protect the vulnerable. The desire for the Good cannot be eradicated from the human heart, but it can certainly be numbed, and long enough for plenty of social damage to happen.
A transcendental even more under attack than Goodness is Truth itself. One of its current adversaries is the ideology of postmodernism. When Jean-François Lyotard first formally conceptualized postmodernism, he defined it as “incredulity toward meta-narratives.” Since this famous declaration, the ideology has had many adherents, but it evades strict definitions. In the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on the topic, Gary Aylesworth writes, “That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.” Aylesworth also traces, in postmodernism, a rejection of objective reality in favour of “de-realization.”
Contrast this destabilizing force with the Christian ethos. Christianity argues for the objectivity of Truth, and argues that we must align our subjectivity with objective reality. Jesus Christ insists that He alone is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”—a statement at loggerheads with the postmodern impulse for endless interpretations. If materialism doesn’t see enough, by rejecting the metaphysical, then postmodernism sees too much. It rejects the “confines” of reason, or of a specific meta-narrative, in favour of an infinite array of interpretations without a conclusion. In this view, Christianity is simply a tyrannical imposition of arbitrary rules.
Consider the outrage against Christianity in the heated “gender wars” of our times. Transgender ideology is very much the offspring of postmodernism, with its prioritization of radical subjectivity over objective reality. If someone’s self-perception clashes with biology, then biology itself is viewed as a tyrant to be deposed. This is Andrea Long Chu’s argument in his recent article, “Why Trans Kids Have the Right to Change Their Biological Sex”. Chu writes that “sex itself is becoming a site of freedom”, but later clarifies what he really means: that without the unhindered ability to change one’s sex, biological sex is a force of tyranny. “Biology could not justify the exploitation of human beings; indeed, it could not even justify biology, which was just as capable of perpetuating injustice as any society,” writes Chu. In other words, any hindrance to one’s self-perception–including biology–is oppressive. Chu therefore views Christianity as bigoted for refusing to uphold any-and-all personal constructions of sex. When describing “the anti-trans bloc in America”, he says, “The first, and most obvious, [group] is the religious right, a principally Christian movement that holds that trans people are an abomination1.” Christianity’s insistence on objective Truth is sadly portrayed as hateful tyranny by those who prefer an infinite array of possible interpretations. But the lack of a transcendent standard for Truth ultimately produces not freedom, but rather despair. After all, freedom itself is unintelligible in a Truth-less universe. Without the light of objective Truth, we stumble in a dark cosmos with no inherent meaning and no final destination.
Both materialists and postmodernists treat Goodness and Truth as relative at best, and tyrannical at worst. How can Christianity contribute to the common good in this hostile environment? One path forward is the “via pulchritudinis,” the “Way of Beauty” (and I am indebted to Bishop Robert Barron for introducing me to this concept).
Beauty pierces the soul. When we encounter true Beauty, we do not experience a mere subjective preference. Consider the word “awestruck”: we do not simply “choose” to manifest awe, but rather, it strikes us, as if from the outside. People can reject the Truth and sneer at the Good, but it is difficult to avoid the instinctive pull of the soul towards the Beautiful, and only the willfully resentful would describe Beauty as “tyrannical.” Where modern societies prioritize utility over aesthetics, Christianity should move precisely in the opposite direction. We need cathedrals that stun us into silence. We need gardens in our noisy cities, to inspire peace and contemplation. Those who are drawn to the Beauty of God Himself should let their praise overflow into beautiful creations that will strike awe into others. The piercing experience of Beauty cuts through the endless rhetoric of postmodernism, and points to spiritual realities beyond the material. As the great theologian G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.” By acting as an unapologetic arbiter for Beauty in the public square, Christianity can touch the human heart and awaken the dormant desire for the Transcendent—the hunger only God can satisfy.
- I categorically reject the view that someone experiencing gender dysphoria or discordance is an “abomination”. That person is made in God’s image and likeness, and deserving of compassionate help. If the confused mind rejects or loathes the body, we should help the person experience mental healing and self-acceptance, not affirm the distorted view that the body itself is flawed.
If gender dysphoria is part of your experience, I encourage you to check out the wonderful community at Eden Invitation. ↩︎
Maria McCann 