Daniel J. Mahoney - The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity

Praise for The Idol of Our Age

Daniel Mahoney is one of those true intellectuals whose wide reading feeds into and is fed by his experience of life. Few writers today are so aware of the pervasive influence of ideas, especially among those who have no ability to grasp them. In this study of the religion of humanity, Mahoney shows the great damage done by forgetting that man is made in Gods image. His devastating criticisms are backed up with refined studies of thinkers who today are unjustly neglected, partly because they saw what is at stake in the religion of humanity. Those thinkers do not agree about the alternative to humanitarian ways of thinking, but they are united in their belief that being human consists in the search for something higher than the human. I recommend this book to all who share that belief, and who want to know exactly why it should be adhered to.

Roger Scruton, writer and philosopher

In times like these, when so much is deeply unsettled in both the Church and the world, there are few reliable guides to our predicament. But one has just appeared: Daniel Mahoneys brief but powerful book The Idol of Our Age.

Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing

To believers who have noticed a disconcerting distortion of Christianitys ideals of love and charity, Daniel Mahoneys The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity may be a godsend.

Chandler Lasch, RealClearReligion

As an account of the ways in which the earthly and heavenly cities tend to get fused and confused these days, I recommend this book with enthusiasm.

Travis D. Smith, Convivium

Mahoney is no facile optimist or facile pessimist. Hes a prophet calling us to listen with the heart, avoid the humanitarian siren song, and heed the civilizing memories of some figures, too little remembered. Short and suggestive while also full-bodied and programmatic, The Idol of Our Age is a guidebook to the spiritual opioid crisis of an age that denies we are spiritual.

David P. Deavel, National Review

As ambitious as its subject might sound, the book delivers.

Juliana Geran Pilon, Law & Liberty

I found this to be an impressive approach to a very timely and essential issue. Daniel Mahoney is an unapologetic Christian thinker, and he presents a cogent case.

Father Steven Kostoff, Orthodox Christian Meditations

Mahoneys book is deep and well-researched. But its highly readable. Im finishing it slowly because each chapter sparks so much thought. And entices further reading.

John Zmirak, The Stream

As a firm Catholic realist, Mahoney must exercise his own courage, moderation, prudence, and justice in speaking truth to two of the regnant moral authorities of his own time. In so doing, and particularly in his chapter on the pope, he even illustrates what might be described as statesmanlike scholarship.

Will Morrisey, VoegelinView

Daniel Mahoneys new book, The Idol of Our Age, offers a sharp indictment of the humanitarianism that has become the implicit faith of our time. Mahoney offers a helpful corrective to the thought and feelings that have become instinctive in our politics and in Christian communities.

Nathaniel Peters, Public Discourse

But his is a message that our world urgently needs.

Alexandra Hudson, Catholic Herald

The Idol of Our Age seeks to reconnect rationality to a larger tradition of thought.

Gerald J. Russello, City Journal

Three themes emerge from Mahoneys treatment of the subject that identify the most salient characteristics of our shrug of the shoulders moment: a rejection of the reality of sin and evil, an irrational trust in humanity, and a commensurate loss of faith in God.

Casey Chalk, The American Conservative

The Idol of Our Age

The Idol of Our Age

How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity

Daniel J. Mahoney

2018, 2020 by Daniel J. Mahoney

Foreword 2018 by Pierre Manent

Preface 2020 by Daniel J. Mahoney

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601,
New York, New York 10003.

First American edition published in 2018 by Encounter Books,
an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc.,
a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation.

Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com

Manufactured in the United States and printed on
acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets
the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992
(R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

First paperback edition published in 2020.

Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-64177-092-7

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Names: Mahoney, Daniel J., 1960 author.

Title: The idol of our age : how the religion
of humanity subverts Christianity / by Daniel J. Mahoney.

Description: New York : Encounter Books, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018003458 (print) | LCCN 2018035438 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781641770170 (ebook) | ISBN 9781641770163 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: ChristianityEssence, genius, nature. |

HumanitarianismReligious aspectsChristianity. | Humanitarianism. |
Faith and reason. | Christianity and politics.

Classification: LCC BT60 (ebook) | LCC BT60 .M325 2018 (print) | DDC 230dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003458

Interior page design and composition: BooksByBruce.com

For Alain Besanon
Remarkable scholar, devoted friend,
and scourge of the totalitarian and humanitarian Lies

Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition

As the author of The Idol of Our Age, I have been delighted that this profoundly countercultural reflection has received such a respectful, thoughtful, and, at times, enthusiastic reception since its original publication in December 2018. I have told numerous interviewers that the book seems to have struck a chord among serious Christians (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox alike), as well as with thoughtful non-believers who remain committed to the best of Western civilization. I believe that it has done so by giving a name to, and providing a serious analysis of, a multifaceted Western cultural pathology: the religion of humanity. This ersatz religion is a mix of doctrinaire egalitarianism, aggressive secularism, and fanatical humanitarianism that has become the substitute for transcendental religion, sober political thinking, and, in general, for realism and moderation in human affairs throughout the Western world.

Readers have welcomed the sustained analysis of the sources of this new religion, starting with August Comtes combination of scientific positivism, with its deep aversion to theology, metaphysics, and traditional morality, and a new morality where humanity itself would become the Grand-tre, the new deity to be worshipped by man. Hence the religion of humanity. Like his fellow nineteenth-century sociological thinker, Karl Marx, Comte was an enemy of human liberty rightly understood and had contempt for the old religions and nations. He advocated a thoroughgoing deChristianization and depoliticization of the West, one where transcendent religion and political self-government would disappear. Altruism, that is, humanitarian sentimentality, would replace Biblical love of God and man. The necessity for the defense of freedom and civilizationand, with them, warwould disappear. This prototype of a new religion was at once hubristic and utopian, and it was anti-human in its humanitarianism.