Christian apologists in the U.S. write a great many books, but generally they fall into two classes: treatises too learned for the hurried layman to wade through, and inspirational works which are clearly written but have little philosophical heft. In a new book, The Retreat from Christianity in the Modern World (Longmans; $2.75), an English visitor has set his American friends a good mark to shoot at. The Rev. Julian Victor Langmead Cas-serley, 43, is a cheerful scholar who this year took over the chair of dogmatic theology at Manhattan's General Theological Seminary (Episcopalian). His new book is a readable discussion, reinforced with some painless history lessons, about the broad problems of Christianity in the 20th century world.
The current retreat from Christianity, as Anglican Casserley sees it, is not solely a modern phenomenon; other times have had their lapses too. What distinguishes the retreat now is its confusion, and one of the two "avenues" it takes. The first, the retreat into the "vacuum" of irreligion, has always been a passing phase. The second is far more dangerous. It occurred when disciples of the "scientific outlook" or "atheist humanism," who began their movements as a protest against Christianity, fell prey to substitute "religions" of their own devising. "[This] retreat from Christianity into religion . . . may fill that [spiritual] vacuum . . . giving life to the paganisms and idolatries . . . from which the gospel once delivered us."
Christ in a Pantheon. There are three modern retreats from Christianity into religion. The first, "natural religion," grew out of the optimistic rationalism of the 18th century. It survives as a faith that man's reason and philosophy can provide the only valid moral standards. The second substitute religion is what Casserley calls "comparative religion." Its disciples strip Christ of his divinity and Christianity of its divine mission, but concede that Christianity contains certain "basic" ethical truths. The result: "A Christ who would never have inspired the martyrs ... a Christ who would be quite happy in a pantheon, His image tolerantly rubbing shoulders with those of Buddha and Confucius, Mahomet and perhaps Gandhi."
Third, and most dangerous, there is the "pseudo-divinity of the modern state . . . a divinity thrust upon it by masses of insecure and frustrated people, insistently demanding some powerful and venerable object of faith and trust." Author Casserley compares the modern revolutionary movements to "the more discreditable phases of church history." Their symptoms: "A minute and hairsplitting dogmatism enthusiastically engaged upon for its own sake: the persecution of deviant shades of opinion; an enthusiastic cult of the [human] savior."