God Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World

By John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge

Reviewed by John Gray - 21 May 2009

Contrary to what evangelical rationalists preach, it is perfectly possible both to be modern and to believe in God. But there is no reason to assume that the American religious model will prevail

Faith in the future

“Religion is proving perfectly compatible with modernity in all its forms, high and low.” This conclusion by John Micklethwait, editor of the Economist, and Adrian Wooldridge, the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, seems calculated to enrage secular rationalists of all stripes.

Whether Marxian or Millian, socialist or liberal, secular rationalists have held one tenet in common: religion belongs to the infancy of the species; the more modern a society becomes, the less room there is for religious belief and practice. Never questioned, this is what lies behind the hot-gospel sermons of evangelical atheists: if you want to be modern, say goodbye to God.

At bottom, the assertion that religion is destined to die out is a confession of faith. No amount of evidence will persuade secular believers that they are on the wrong side of history, but one of the achievements of God Is Back is to show how implausible, if not ridiculous, their view of history actually is.

The notion that modernity and religion are at odds is a generalisation from the experience of some parts of Europe. Europe is now largely post-Christian and the majority no longer follows any conventional creed, but things are otherwise in much of the rest of the world, and notably so in the US, which, during most of its history, has been intensely religious and self-consciously modern.

European Enlightenment thinkers have tended to see the US as the exception that proves the rule – an unexplained lag in a universal trend towards secularisation.

Against this view, Micklethwait and Wooldridge show that modernisation and an increase in religiosity go together in much of the world. Some of the most powerful sections of the book feature narratives of religious communities in improbable places – prosperous, highly educated Chinese, among them scientists and academics, coming together in contemporary Shanghai to read and discuss the Christian Bible, for example.

If there is any trend that can be discerned in the parts of the world that are most rapidly modernising, it is that secular belief systems are in decline and the old faiths are being reborn.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge aim to do more than show that modernity and religion are compatible, however.

Arguing that “the great forces of modernity – technology and democracy, choice and freedom – are all strengthening religion rather than undermining it”, they go on to claim that one version of modernity is spreading nearly everywhere. “The world is generally moving in the American direction, where religion and modernity happily coexist,” they write. At this point the authors – one Catholic, the other atheist, we are told – emerge as missionaries for the American Way, and the argument becomes distinctly implausible.

It is one thing to argue that the model of universal secularisation is mistaken, and to show – as the authors do very effectively – that the decline of religion in Europe is not going to be repeated worldwide. It is another thing altogether to suggest that an American kind of religiosity is spreading nearly everywhere.

One problem is the conception of religion the authors deploy.

Nearly always, religion for them means monotheism – more specifically, Christianity and Islam. Polytheistic and non-theistic religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism are allowed a few pages, but only in order to argue that “American methods can work” even for them.

Another is their assumption that modernity is a Good Thing. Like so many western commentators, the authors berate the Muslim world, supposedly stuck in medieval torpor, for its failure to modernise. One had hoped that it was now understood that Lenin, Stalin and Hitler were not throwbacks to the Middle Ages. In their different ways, all three were radically modern – just like al-Qaeda today. If a certain type of pluralism appears only in modern times, the same is true of totalitarianism. There are many ways of being modern, some of them far from benign.

A larger problem is the authors’ Americocentric world-view. It might be argued that this does not matter, as the book is plainly directed chiefly at American readers. Yet it does matter if the authors aim to say something useful about the way the world is actually moving.

A part of their argument is the claim that religions have done well by adopting modern corporate practices.

Religion has become a competitive business, they point out, with faith entrepreneurs actively creating and serving their customer base. They describe a Hindu temple in Bangalore that “uses every modern method to entice and service believers”, including “a website that is as user-friendly as that of any American mega-church”.

No doubt these are valid observations, but the authors use them to argue for “American-style pastorpreneurship” as a universal model. They acknowledge that although the American way of religion is spreading faster than the European, “that does not mean it will conquer every corner of the world”.

They are nonetheless insistent that the American model is better adapted than any other to the modern world.

Here Micklethwait and Wooldridge repeat the canonical fallacy of American theorists of globalisation such as Thomas Friedman. It is true that some American business methods have been widely adopted. That does not mean humankind is embracing an American model of capitalism, or of religion.

Hypermodern Japan has many new religions, some of them very obviously organised as businesses, but it remains a country still largely untouched by individualism. Hinduism is now practised worldwide, but in India its revival has been linked with nationalism rather than pluralism. The same is true of the revival of Orthodoxy in Russia, and the resurgence of Confucianism that is under way in China.

Religion is advancing in many parts of the world, but it is no more likely that a single dominant model of religious practice will emerge from this process than that a single version of capitalism has emerged from globalisation.

Modernity can coexist with religion in many ways, none of which is going to be adopted universally. The authors promote a US-style secular constitution as a global panacea and shake their heads sternly at Britain’s archaic religious establishment, not pausing to ask whether it may have played a part in protecting us from the fundamentalism that has poisoned the American political process.

More generally, they assume that ideas which emerged from within western Christian traditions can be applied anywhere. But as energy and power flows eastwards, the secular ideologies that developed from Christianity are likely to dwindle in influence.

Rightly, Micklethwait and Wooldridge note that the grand secular belief systems of the past two centuries continued Christian ways of thinking: “Marx found it impossible not to think in terms of grand eschatologies . . . He employed numerous religious tropes – communists are latter-day gnostics, communism is heaven on earth, the revolution is the Last Judgement, workers are saved and capitalism is damned.”

In other words, God never really went away, for secular political projects were continuations of Christianity by other means. But if Marxism is a post-Christian creed that is now obsolete, why should liberalism – in its militant, proselytising form – be any different? In fact, it has been in decline for some time, a process that began with the fall of communism.

The Soviet collapse was hailed as a triumph for the west. But communism is a prototypical western ideology, and there was never any prospect that Russia – a country which has always straddled Europe and Asia – would convert to neoliberalism, another western confection. It was naive to expect that post-communist Russia would embrace a western model of government and the economy in the 1990s, and it is even more misguided to look forward to the Americanisation of religion at the present time.

If it is true that faith is now a branch of business, religion may opt to follow the money – a journey that no longer leads in the direction of the United States. While there will be no universal pattern, the rediscovery of Confucianism is probably a better clue to the way the world will look a few decades from now than the proliferation of mega-churches.

God Is Back may not show that the American way of religion is uniquely well suited to the modern condition. Where this urgently relevant book succeeds triumphantly is in demolishing the myth of an emerging secular civilisation.

Evangelising rationalists will continue to deny the fact, but religion – in all its varieties – is shaping the future, much as it shaped the past.

John Gray’s latest book is “Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings” (Allen Lane, £20). He will be in conversation with John Micklethwait on 1 June at the London School of Economics, London WC2

God Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge
Allen Lane, 405pp, £25

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18 comments from readers

taghioff.info
22 May 2009 at 11:33

Very good review, though I notice, John, that you take great pains to step around making value judgements about religion and secularism as partners to Modernity.

I personally prefer to live in Secular Europe than religious America, partly because secular Europe seems so much more moral in compassionate in how it is actually organised, even if it projects a disspassionate and cynical ethic.

America is quite the reverse, and is that not the greatest weakness of the American model of modernity? Namely the idea that good values, voluntarism, entrepreneurialism and charity, rather than a well-organised state, are what is required to improve life for the majority?

Don't be coy John, surely there are significant differences...

darch44
25 May 2009 at 08:42

The religiously-inclined love to attribute faith-like beliefs to the non-religious. It's an old trick. But as an atheist I am perfectly capable of recognising evidence that religious belief may well be on the rise, while deploring the trend at the same time. It is the ability to acknowledge evidence that distinguishes the rational person from the religious one.

John Gray also writes that "There are many ways of being modern, some of them far from benign." Absolutely correct, and the rise of religious belief is precisely one of those "far from benign" aspects of current modernity.

subramaniam shankar
25 May 2009 at 10:22

The misconception apparently is the impact of modernity on religion.Religion stood by itself and it needed propagation in some cases of recent(I mean under 2000 years)origin.The prosperity and poverty of churches was linked to the affordability of the congregation.If oppulance and grandeur was the criteria,then modernity did creep in.It never entered the core but glazed the surface as it does in most religions.I do not for one moment believe that the Roman Catholics dreamed of glitteringly attired bishops and papal officers with Swiss guards and the paraphernalia that looks like a Royal pagent rather than a religious event.It is no different in India where we have temples built of solid gold plates and towers with gold covering and so also in Thailand and Burma,now Myanmar.

The modernity of a religion is more with understanding the core values of the faith as would benefit and better lives in a changing world.Hinduism is a complex matter and it would be wrong to call it a religion.It is a way of life and it dictated several wrong approaches in the past and is now rediscovering itself and so we have so many pandits and scholars with a plethora of interpretations and explanations to connect events in the mythologies with daily experiences and so forth.One thing certain is faith is the same whether a christian,muslim,jew,hindu or bhuddist is rich or poor,once the identity is accepted.Any thing further depends on individuals attitude to himself and the immediate society and a lot of rational thinking(not modern) so as to peacefully get along in his faith. I do not know if religions have one common approach to where we came from,why we are here,where are we heading once dead and what purpose have we served being in one faith or the other.So science,modernity,history,political changes and so forth cannot affect the core faith but could influence the way the outer garment religion is practiced.It is a large world and modern religions are wet behind the ear.

CharlesY
25 May 2009 at 10:56

Confucianism and Buddhism, at their core, have much more in common with secular rationalism than with religion. The conclusion that religion is advancing defends on the mis-classification of these two philosophies, and related ones such as Taoism. Belief in a single all-powerful and benevolent Deity is indeed in global retreat, and it is America, not Europe, that appears as the anomaly (though atheism is the most rapidly advancing belief system there too).

Of course, trends in the percentage of people holding a particular belief tell us little about the truth of this belief.

stuart munro
25 May 2009 at 15:04

I think Ambrose Bierce rather briskly defined the characteristic that would encourage the world to emulate America, and that would be wealth.

With the conspicuous failure of US financial hegemony, it is implausible that it will be the new exemplar.

I think the anthropoligical interpretation should be given a little more play though. No human society is without a complex system of beliefs, and in the modern world,especially untestable beliefs in economic virtue. The idea that anything except a religion could displace a religion, is naive, and the assertions of self-styled hyperrationalists are inadequate to displace their enlightenment heritage,

which owes more to Hutcheson and Knox than they seem to realise.

All power to the Economist folk for recognising that much. But the muse it seems did not bless them with sufficient knowledge of the past and future to make any kind of credible prediction.

The endurance of the spirit through every generation probably does not actually depend on hucksters and teleevangelists.

jonjermey
25 May 2009 at 22:14

You didn't mention whether the authors actually bothered to look at the statistics on professed religious affiliation and church attendance. These clearly indicate that religion is steadily declining throughout the western world. But perhaps that is irrelevant to their thesis, which seems to dodge all the important issues by blurring the important distinctions between creeds and defining 'belief in God' as a nebulous faith in some ill-defined supernatural being. This is just the residue of organised religion, as typified by the Anglican church in England; and like the Anglican church, it will disappear in a generation or two. There is no reason to believe real religion will reconquer the Western world unless a catastrophe disrupts our current levels of affluence, education and freedom of communication.

But then religious believers have never had any difficulty ignoring evidence, have they?

RogerDButters
26 May 2009 at 10:37

There appear to me to be a number of non-sequiters in this article. As a devout sceptic I assume that certain knowledge is logically impossible, and that any belief which implies conviction is irrational. I am certainly not 'a secular believer', and my assumption that religion is nonsense is a mental choice which I choose to make. Others who choose to a make a different choice, that of 'faith' are of course perfectly free to do so. However I would question their right to take any action which I might regard as against my interests, based on such faith. The number of people who make the 'faith' choice is of course of no relevance to my own views.

Craig
26 May 2009 at 11:27

Who is it exactly that is making the assertion that 'religion is destined die out'? While it is undoubtedly less of a feature in politics and daily life than in the past - for which I personally am grateful - I am unaware of even a single public figure or commentator who claims religion will die out.

Ascribing false, over-the-top positions to one's opponents and then neatly refuting them is the very definition of a straw man argument.

Jared
26 May 2009 at 20:14

"At bottom, the assertion that religion is destined to die out is a confession of faith"

Not at all. It is just the reasonable hope that people will mature and come to their senses.

Christopher Lord
26 May 2009 at 21:14

CharlesY makes a good point. Westerners of all stripes often repeat the odd mantra that 'all religions are the same', perhaps originally a hypocritical admission of defeat from both sides in the Protestant/Catholic conflict in Europe, then extended to Jews and now to Muslims: but this unlikely proposition, which might appear to have some plausibility when it comes to variants of Abrahamic monotheism, is plainly false when it comes to Hinduism and its offshoot Buddhism. The spread of Buddhism from India to Tibet, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan is arguably the most significant philosophical development in world history, meaning exactly the spread of a philosophy and approach to existence whose effects are still felt in the daily lives of billions of people. Confucianism is even less like a religion on the European model, and the Chinese government are gingerly moving in the direction of setting it up as a possible replacement for Maoism one day because its chief value is blind obedience based on automatic respect for the imperial government. These considerations would seem to invalidate the central thesis of the work under consideration, if that is indeed as presented here. But of course neither author knows anything much about religion, or indeed economics.

RobGl
27 May 2009 at 17:28

Jared:

""At bottom, the assertion that religion is destined to die out is a confession of faith"

Not at all. It is just the reasonable hope that people will mature and come to their senses."

There's more chance of the dinosaurs coming back.

Ian dA
28 May 2009 at 12:06

One reason why a belief in God (as distinct from a specific profession in a religion) may be on the increase is the paradox that, as science and modernity progresses, we get the sense that we know less, rather than more. Thus, God as "residual unknowable" achieves a greater, rather than lesser, importance.

Trevor Holt
28 May 2009 at 15:06

As a subscriber to Thomas Kuhn’s idea of ‘scientific revolutions’ and observing the world generally, there seems to be emerging a number of ‘revolutions’ which include the scientific, economic as well as the spiritual. All are related and involve the deep human nature where the foundational beliefs and ways of doing things are being seriously challenged. The authors have touched on religious and spiritual aspects.

The scientific and economic security of naturalism and materialism which many throughout Europe and the USA have enjoyed for many years is in a way crumbling before our very eyes. As observed throughout Europe religious belief has succumbed to naturalism and materialism, while in the USA people have maintained a form of Christianity but greatly influenced by the same things. This seems to have rendered the religion impotent as those in the churches do not seem to live differently from those outside. With the increasing awareness that naturalism, as defined by the prevailing evolutionary paradigm and promoted by a small number of vocal atheists, and the dependence on material things, as well as a realization that in the main the spirituality which has sustained many in the recent past is being put to the test, it seems inevitable that a religious awareness is emerging as suggested by the authors. Admittedly in parts of the world non Christian religions are gaining adherents but in many parts of the world a revival of simple Jesus Christ centred Christianity devoid of Americanization and materialism, and based on who the writer of the letter to the Colossians declares is the Creator of everything, is emerging. The acceptance that Jesus Christ had for the Old Testament writings including Genesis and earth history is also being accepted, as the credibility of the evolutionary view comes under more and more pressure. Therefore it seems the authors may have made a reasonably accurate observation.

MaxDunbar
28 May 2009 at 17:18

This piece is an instructive reminder of what a one-trick pony John Gray is.

I haven't read the book under review and I didn't learn much about it from this article, because Gray uses the space solely to plug the same tired theory he's been repeating for what feels like the last two thousand light years.

I think if you commission a book review, you should be able to have the reasonable expectation that the critic will engage with the book, rather than go on and on about themselves.

Pierre
30 May 2009 at 18:50

If he shows up I will take notice, Until then I will ignore the frightening bunch of cross dressing salesmen that purport to speak on his behalf.

Cruickshank1
31 May 2009 at 13:36

Religion may indeed be on the rise. But it certainly is in decline in Europe and for that i am very thankful. It is a shining example of how at least in this respect Europe is leading the world in the advancement of civilisation.

Rashid Mughal
20 June 2009 at 14:29

Religion is the surest route to hurtle back to the Dark Ages whence we came. Throughout history Religion has remained the biggest butcher of humanity on this planet. Besides, what does Religion teach us anyway?

The American people's idea of God can go to hell!

Daniele
06 October 2009 at 15:20

I find the idea that religion is" shaping the future, as it shaped the past," profoundly depressing , considering that all religions bring intolerance and is a good excuse to murder other human beings in the name of your God.

Please don't tell me that atheists such as Staline and Mao committed murder and mayhem because they were atheists.Religious people happen to be among their numerous other victims and were killed for political reasons not in the name of atheism.In contrast the consecutive popes and their Inquisition murdered non -believers or anyone with slightly different versions of their beliefs, in the name of God and the Church.

But there is so much nonsense in this article where do you start?

"Britain's archaic religious establishment" would have played " a part in protecting us from the fundamentalism that has poisoned the American political process" Really? are you serious? What about the French secular state then? since the French Revolution, the Church has been kept well away from public affairs and it has worked very well in France thank you very much.No fundamentalism there, not a whiff of religious interference in French politics, thank God(!!).It is taboo and rightly so!

And please, please, do not call atheists "fundamentalists" or "evangelical". That really annoys me! How can anyone be "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" about believing in NOTHING! Check you dictionary and stop misusing vocabulary. it is irritating and trying to put atheists in the same bag as religious nutters while we are the exact opposite, using rational arguments and not wanting to kill anybody!

The truth is that any organised religion is intolerant by nature and my only hope is that religion, in all its aspects, is destined to die out eventually, when humanity has reached a truly rational and civilised state.