What
passes for “world order” in the 21st century
was created in the German region of Westphalia in 1648.
It was created without
the involvement or
even the awareness of
most other continents or civilizations.
It
was created to end the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), which was like
a wildfire in which political and religious disputes commingled. Combatants
resorted to total war against population centers. After nearly a quarter of
the population of Central Europe died from combat, disease, or starvation, the
leaders of the nations and religions involved met to define a set of
arrangements that would end the bloodletting.
●
Religious unity had fractured with the spread of Protestantism.
●
Political diversity remained because autonomous political units had fought
to a draw.
The
arrangements they made created what we now call the “sovereignty of the
state.
●
A multiplicity of political units, none powerful enough to defeat all others.
●
Many political units adhering to contradictory philosophies and internal
practices.
●
Agreement to search of neutral rules to regulate their conduct and mitigate
conflict.[i]
The
Westphalian Peace reflected a practical accommodation to
reality, not a unique moral insight.
●
Peace relied on a system of independent states refraining from
interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s
ambitions through a general equilibrium of power – a balance of power.
●
No single claim to truth or universal rule prevails.
●
Each state was assigned sovereign power over its own territory.
●
Each state would acknowledge the domestic structures and religious vocations
of its fellow states as realities and refrain from challenging
their existence.
Religion was redefined as
“a private and personal activity
separate from mundane
affairs, like politics and economics.”
●
The Church was forced into a subordinate realm, a process that involved a
fundamental reallocation of authority and resources.
●
A new word, secularization, was coined in France -- “the
transfer of goods from the possession of the Church into that of the ‘world’
[saeculum].”
●
Legislative and judicial powers that had been under the Church’s power were
gradually transferred to the new sovereign state.
Like
most states, these early modern kingdoms were achieved by force: all
struggled to annex as much land as possible and had internal battles with the
cities, clergy, local associations, and aristocracies who jealously guarded
traditional privileges and immunities that sovereign states could not permit.
The church, which had been so integral to medieval government, also had to be
subdued.
The new sovereign
states relegated “religion” to the private sphere.
A
crucial figure in this development was Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury
(1583-1648). His most important work, De Veritate, influenced such
important philosophers as Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Rene
Descartes (1596-1650), and John Locke (1632-1704).
Herbert argued that Christianity was neither an institution nor a way of
life but a set of five truths that were innate in the human mind:
(1)
a supreme deity existed,
(2)
which should be worshipped
(3)
and served by ethical living and natural piety;
(4)
human beings were thus required to reject sin, and
(5)
would be rewarded or punished by God after death.
Because
these notions were instinctive, self-evident, and accessible to the meanest
intelligence, the rituals and guidance of a church were entirely unnecessary.
These
“truths” would, however, seem strange indeed to Buddhists, Hindus,
Confucians, or Daoists, and many Jews, Christians, and Muslims
would also find them bleakly unrepresentative of their faith. Herbert was
convinced that “all men will be unanimously eager for this austere
worship of God; everybody will agree on these natural tokens of
faith.” But then he added this:
Insolent spirits who
refused to accept them
must be punished by the
secular magistracy. [ii]
When
you open the Bible to teach your children are you teaching them “a
private and personal activity separate from mundane affairs, like politics and
economics;” or “a holistic way of life as a member of a community?”
Choosing
Lives 1st by Doing TOV,
Jim
Myers
Helping People Examine Their Beliefs
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