The First Abolitionist

The rise of modern ethical values such as tolerance, equality, and fraternity is supposedly rooted in Western Enlightenment ideals of the 17th and 18th centuries -- or so secular historians would have us believe. Not so, challenges David Bentley Hart in his masterful work "Atheist Delusions." The narrative of Western history which most of us have come to accept, which I had accepted before Hart opened my eyes, sounds something like this:

Once there were rich, diverse cultures that embraced polytheism. No god was seen as superior to another god and, therefore, no religious war needed to be fought. These happy pagans celebrated uninhibited sexuality and enjoyed fine food and wine. Unfortunately, a monothestic, exclusionary religion named Christianity emerged within the pluralistic culture of Rome and eventually began to extinguish all dissenting religious opinions through power, wealth, and corruption. This monster-religion wedded itself to kings and princes in the West and, as a result, scientific advancement was stunted, wars over miniscule points of doctrine were waged, and the freedom of ideas vanished into history. Christianity brought upon the West nothing but ruin -- the dark ages, the Crusades, the perpetual ignorace of the masses, the wars of religion, etc. Thankfully, a few brave individuals sparked a philosophical and rational revolution which would eventually overthrow the tyranny of the Church in what we today celebrate as the Enlightenment. Today's modern values concerning individual human life, ownership of private property, tolerance and pluralism, and the liberty to pursue happiness found their birth only after the tyranny of the Church had been overcome and unadulterated reason was allowed to prevail. In other words, today we celebrate the civil rights movement, the equality of women, the freedom of the press, and so on and so on because a few brave men snubbed the Pope. Or so the great scholars Dawkins, Hitchens, and Co. would have us believe.

Hart debunks this mythology piece by piece. He demonstrates how Christianity has been a force for good in the West and how the grander ideals of our moral consciences are rooted in the biblical, Judeo-Christian story rather than in the godless Voltaires that Dawkins so admires.

One example. Much to my delight, I have recently discovered that abolitionism was born not out of the post-Enlightenment West. No, the earliest abolitionist is none other than Gregory of Nyssa. And the precursor to all the brilliant diatribes of Fredrick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth was preached during Lent in the year 379.

Hart explains: "Whatever it is we think we mean by human 'equality,' we are able to presume the moral weight of such a notion only because far deeper down in the historical strata of our shared Western consciousness we retain the memory of an unanticipated moment of spiritual awakening, a delighted and astonished intellectual response to a single historical event: the proclamation of Easter. It was because of his faith in the risen Christ that Gregory could declare in his commentary on the Beatitudes, without any irony or reserve, that if Christians truly practiced the mercy commanded of them by their Lord humanity would no longer admit of divisions within itself between slavery and mastery, poverty and wealth, shame and honor, infirmity and strength, for all things would be held in common and all persons would be equal one with another" (180).

Just imagine... the thought of abolitionism was almost unthinkable to most Unionists even during the American Civil War in the 1860's! (We are, by and large, incapable of thinking outside of our context. Hence we who read Western history are often aghast to find even the most powerful of intellects spewing forth prejudice and ignorant hatred). And yet we find sprouting up within the fertile soil of post-resurrection Christianity a single shoot already reaching to the sky and crying, "Free all slaves! Slavery as an institution is vile!" Abolitionism does not date back merely to the mind of William Wilberforce; it can be found over 1300 years earlier in the mind of a Christian mystic and theologian.

This is but one example of Hart's demolition of the atheist's narrative of history. But I revel in it. I glory in the rich, life-giving, beauty-embracing ethic of my faith. David Hart gives Hitchens the academic middle finger and I applaud it and laugh with delight as he does.