Why were only traditional Catholic and protestant countries hit by secularization, while Muslims and Orthodox weren't?

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Timi_Celcer

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If we look at the West, it is almost completely secularized. Traditional Catholic and Protestant countries are mostly secular and while most of the population still indentifies themselfs as Christians they are mostly unpractising. If we look at traditional muslim or orthodox countries(except for former communist one) they are mostly religious. Why is that? I think that that happened because of the RCC mitigation of some strict rules after Second Vatican council. There need to be strict rules, because that literally forces people to follow other teahings of the Church. When the most strict rules go, that is the time when people start ignoring others as well. What do you think?
 
The effects of the “enlightenment” movement didn’t reach as far or hit as hard in the East. It was present, though, for example in the actions of Tsar Peter of Russia, and the eventual Russian Revolution.
 
Russia, Romania, Albania, and Bulgaria were about as secular as you could possibly get.
 
Why are you discounting communism? What is it about the countries that became communist that lead them to that? And why do you think Vatican II had any effect on Protestants or Protestant countries? Your question has some odd assumptions and limitations.
 
Most of the Orthodox-leaning countries were communist like TRH1292 said above. They were obviously secularized because of that.

When it comes to Muslim nations, they impose strict Sharia law, and anyone who tries to rise up against it in favor of secularism is quickly crushed. For this reason, secularism never took hold in most of those countries who aren’t democratic ane crush any opposition with brute force.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
If we look at the West, it is almost completely secularized. Traditional Catholic and Protestant countries are mostly secular and while most of the population still indentifies themselfs as Christians they are mostly unpractising. If we look at traditional muslim or orthodox countries(except for former communist one) they are mostly religious. Why is that? I think that that happened because of the RCC mitigation of some strict rules after Second Vatican council. There need to be strict rules, because that literally forces people to follow other teahings of the Church. When the most strict rules go, that is the time when people start ignoring others as well. What do you think?
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You are asking a question that the Church is currently puzzling over.

There is no definitive Church dogma on what is happening, but there is one theological hypothesis I’ve heard at length about over the past 20 years. While there are many, it seems in my limited world of understanding to be the most popular (and sobering). It is the possibility that we are either in or witnessing the beginning of what Jesus referred to as the end or fulfillment of the “times of the Gentiles.”–Luke 21:24.

In Romans 11:25, St. Paul stated that his own people, the Jews, were to be few in accepting the Gospel of Christ until a certain event occurred.

Blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles should come in.

According to Jesus in Luke 21:24, the city of

Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

At the end of the Six-Day War, upon Israeli troops reaching the Western Wall, then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was reported as saying: “We have returned to all that is holy in our land. We have returned never to be parted from it again.”

Since the outbreak of the world wars and very much since this occurrence the previous lands of Christendom have become more and more secular. Is this a coincidence? Perhaps. It would be foolish to rush to judgment and say for ourselves what only belongs to God to say.

But even in the Church there has been a watchful eye on this turn of the nations of Christendom away from God, with Europe being the hardest hit. Religion in the Americas has become somewhat hollow as well, assimilating itself to Western culture and mores instead of converting from them.

While countries where the Orthodox are feeling the change too, though in some ways not as dramatically, it is the Eastern cultures that have nothing to do with the Gospel of Christ that have remained culturally intact (though that has begun to fade drastically in many respects). Muslims and Jews have a religion that intertwines with the culture, whereas Western culture demands that religion stay separate from it.

Is this a definite answer of any kind. No. Have the times of the Gentiles expired? We can’t say for sure. Is there any advantage to belonging to other faiths that are connected to their culture more readily? They themselves are fighting (and in some ways losing) the battle against secular Western culture. It’s not religion of any type that is at fault, it is the formidable appeal of secular culture and its ease of assimilating so many to the point of abandoning their heritage, religion and ethnic.

So to answer “Why?” Beyond this it may be something we can only answer in hindsight, once it is all over.

It should be noted that there are other ways to define many of the things I’ve discussed here. There may be valid arguments to the contrary of what I’ve written. The comments above should not be inferred as a testimony representing my personal convictions on these matters.
 
I think secularization has something to do with wealth. Yes, this is just my hypothesis and it may be completely off base, but it seems to me that once groups of people in a region have a significant amounts of disposable income, they seem to think they no longer need God . . .like they have the money to buy whatever they need so they don’t need to rely on Divine Providence to provide.
 
Orthodox countries were hammered with belligerent atheistic communism for over 50 years. That sounds like secularization to me, but in a very different way. Eastern secularization was from the top down. Western secularization is more from the bottom up.

The beginning of secularization really was the Reformation itself, if you’re looking for a major event where mankind started turning to individual, customized wisdom. I think the theme in the present day really isn’t any different than what you find in the scriptures; its material success has made it secular. As you gain material success, the heart wanders from God unless it has a well-dug foundation. People in more miserable living situations are not as eager to give up appealing to transcendent forces in their everyday life (which doesn’t objectively necessarily make them any more or less holy, but it does make them more religious)
 
I think it has to do largely as other have said because secularization is more attractive in a democratic country where religion and state are separate. In countries more subject to religious and/or cultural influences, such as Muslim and Asiatic countries, I think secularization is seen as more threatening to the status quo. In democratic countries, on the other hand, people tend to be more tolerant of other points of view. Of course, the danger is that as people become more tolerant of secularism, secularism becomes more intolerant of all other points of view, as we are beginning to see in the US.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
If we look at the West, it is almost completely secularized. Traditional Catholic and Protestant countries are mostly secular and while most of the population still indentifies themselfs as Christians they are mostly unpractising. If we look at traditional muslim or orthodox countries(except for former communist one) they are mostly religious. Why is that? I think that that happened because of the RCC mitigation of some strict rules after Second Vatican council. There need to be strict rules, because that literally forces people to follow other teahings of the Church. When the most strict rules go, that is the time when people start ignoring others as well. What do you think?
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Because Christian peoples don’t cut your head off if you violate the religious rules or if you reject God all together.

Linus2nd
 
Timi_Celcer said:
If we look at the West, it is almost completely secularized. Traditional Catholic and Protestant countries are mostly secular and while most of the population still indentifies themselfs as Christians they are mostly unpractising. If we look at traditional muslim or orthodox countries(except for former communist one) they are mostly religious. Why is that?
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My theory about secularisation is that secularism was proposed as a way to reduce religious conflict (which was falsely blamed for the wars and conflict after the Protestant revolt) and as compatible with religious beliefs, despite the fact that secularism stems directly from the ideas of the so-called Enlightement, which was totally anti-Catholic.

My theory is that secularism and religious belief are incompatible and the attempt to resolve them led many to leave the Church.
I think that that happened because of the RCC mitigation of some strict rules after Second Vatican council.
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I think the reaction to V2 was so quick and sure that the rot was well in place long before the Council. See the history of Modernism in the Church…
There need to be strict rules, because that literally forces people to follow other teahings of the Church. When the most strict rules go, that is the time when people start ignoring others as well. What do you think?
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I am continually tempted to lean in this direction too, but I think it’s an error. Christ did not come to give us rules but to change our hearts. He criticized the Pharisees for birdening the people with rules.

I think that what we need is an acknowledgement that Catholicism and secularism are incompatible and we will be regarded as outsiders, fanatics, and what-have-you, and help in sorting out how to live in the secular**ist **world as Catholics.
 
Just to more directly answer your question: there was a lot of separation between the Christian world and other areas like the Middle East and Asia, so for a long time, I think they weren’t introduced to secularism. When they were, it was accompanied by a lot of helpful modern inventions like vaccinations and telephones. So the amount secularism has been accepted elsewhere depends on what they had and how they handled the introduction of modernity.
 
I believe that this has a lot to do with (a) the Reformation, (b) the Enlightenment, (c) the Industrial Revolution, and accelerated with the so-called (d) “sexual revolution”. The West has been on a slow secularization path for about 400 years, though it hasn’t really been apparent until sometime during the last 50 years how secular we’ve become.

The Reformation separated believers from the magesterium. Without the teaching authority of the Church, Protestants started believing what they wanted to believe and continued to split off from each other. This ended up creating many minority Christian groups, with each specific church claiming to be “the Church”. In addition, often the only thing the divergent Protestant groups had in common with each other was a dislike of of the Catholic Church which ranged from suspicion to outright hatred.

Due to the persecution that occured among differing denominations of Christians, many Enlightenment thinkers (most notably Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other Framers), in order to prevent state persecution of non-authorized religions (which, for them, probably meant the divergent Christian “denominations”, as they were not very familiar with Islam and Eastern religions - their main concern was intra-Christian persecution), encouraged that the State not take sides on which denomination was “True”. This is influenced the “Establishment clause” of the First Amendment. The Establishment clause, especially after the 14th amendment extended the First Amendment to the states, has been interpreted in the 20th century as forbidding (a) the teaching of religion in public schools, (b) religious displays on public land, and many other things that had been done. In other words, since the State was forbidden to promote (or ban) the practice of any given religion, the State has been forced to de facto promote atheism.

The Industrial Revolution meant that fewer and fewer people lived in rural areas. People were now living apart from their families, having smaller families, and were more tempted into sinful behavior, as they were more anonymous. The more sinful choices people make, the more they tend to justify them and sink into even more sinful choices. Eventually, they feel like they have no need for God.

Finally, the sexual revolution has simply destroyed families. With the whole mantra of “if it feels good, do it” and “if you don’t want it, destroy it”, it is the sexual revolution that brought us hormonal contraceptives, no-fault divorce, “Gay Pride”, abortion on demand, “shacking up”, and the normalization of pornography.
 
In short, I think people in the West are drunk on pleasure, with consumerism and materialism playing a big part. Do people feel the need for God when the satisfaction of their noticed desires are clicks and money exchanges away? People try to buy happiness, put themselves in positions to satisfy their desires even by immoral means, and they are enabled by living in a time and place where their decadence is covered up by this society’s higher position and stability relative to other regions of the world. And when the religious come along and tell the people in the secular west that they are on the wrong path, that they shouldn’t be behaving the way they are, that they need reform, they need conversion, they need God, the religious are mocked and attacked with a venom that is scarcely seen in our society.

Is this the product of the enlightenment and progress? Nations of ignorant zombies, pacified by celebrity culture, sporting events, pornography, immoral expressions of sexuality, drugs, alcoholism, consumerism, the addiction to empty pleasure? We are a very weak society, this weakness is hidden by the fact that we stand on the accomplishments of better generations, and if we pull the rug out from under our feet as many secular atheists would like us to, tearing down the Christian heritage that is in the DNA of our civilization, we are going to see our society devolve into something very very ugly.
 
My opinion, and this is after visiting several Muslim countries and places with a heavily orthodox population is that the reason why you don’t see secularization in this group is because there is no such thing as a “cafeteria” Muslim. Either you are fully practicing Muslim or you are not. They don’t have the well I was born Muslim and I am Muslim but I don’t agree with xyz etc. This results in that people practicing the religion fully believe in what they are practicing and you can see this heavily in countries like turkey or Lebanon which have secular governments. I have Also seen this in places with heavily practicing orthodox population. There is no option to be a cafeteria orthodox. You are or you are not. They religious position tend to be very rigorous if compared to the catholic church. That relaxation of the catholic church is an open door for secularism. I have always thought that catholics and the church can learn a lot from practicing Muslims. Catholics for some reasons sem to be very affected by what others are doing and what is accepted by the secular world while Muslims seem to care very little about it.

I also think that education plays a part on it. Muslims tend to be very diligent in transmitting the faith to younger ones and making them follow it and giving the example. Again is not an option, you have to follow it. On the other hand, catholics seem very permissive about the faith and throwing the faith education on CCD classes or others to teach the faith. That is not good. Again I think there is a lot we can learn from Muslims when it comes to practicing the faith.
 
In the Orthodox and Islamic countries, there is much less of a tradition of separation of Church and State

Even under Communism, there were ties between the State and the Church, for good or for ill.

Materialism also has a great impact. Where material goods are seen as the source of happiness, that is where people will put their ‘effort’ and spend their time pursuing.

When God is seen as the source of happiness, that is where people will look.
 
Brendan said:
In the Orthodox and Islamic countries, there is much less of a tradition of separation of Church and State

Even under Communism, there were ties between the State and the Church, for good or for ill.

Materialism also has a great impact. Where material goods are seen as the source of happiness, that is where people will put their ‘effort’ and spend their time pursuing.

When God is seen as the source of happiness, that is where people will look.
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Keep in mind that there are Muslim countries where there is a separation between church and state, or which that separation started about at the same time as most of the western world (Turkey). Also keep in mind that the secularism phenomenon is very particular to Europe and the US.
 
you say the strict rules force people into following other rules. and might be true, but do they believe? we can’t tell how many atheist were in the middle age, since many of them would be too scared to say it. the thing that the Church is trying to do is to get people to believe and to follow by their own, and not to force people to do something they don’t believe in.
 
Timi_Celcer said:
If we look at the West, it is almost completely secularized. Traditional Catholic and Protestant countries are mostly secular and while most of the population still indentifies themselfs as Christians they are mostly unpractising. If we look at traditional muslim or orthodox countries(except for former communist one) they are mostly religious. Why is that? I think that that happened because of the RCC mitigation of some strict rules after Second Vatican council. There need to be strict rules, because that literally forces people to follow other teahings of the Church. When the most strict rules go, that is the time when people start ignoring others as well. What do you think?
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Regarding Orthodoxy how many historically Orthodox countries stayed free from communist rule?

Secularization requires a high standard of living to gain traction amongst the common people or major government intervention undermining religion in society.
 
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