Orthodoxie En Secularisme: De Tegenstrijdige Krachten Binnen Kerk En Samenleving

Abstract

Orthodoxy and secularism are two opposite forces within church and society. Right from the beginning the church had a missionary task, i.e., to preach the Gospel throughout the world. The doctrines o[ the church evoked reactions from various directions resulting in a variety of philosophies and ideologies. 'The church occupied itself with many ethical problems dealt with in the Bible problems such as the employer-employee relation, property vs. poverty, the authority of the state, abortion, euthanasia, etc Less than 50 years after Marx had presented his theses, the Roman Catholic Church produced Rerum Novarum, followed by Quadragesimo Anno 40 years later; the Protestant churches, notably the Calvinist churches, also grappled with these problems. Society, however, produced counterforces to the developments within the churches, giving rise to secularism and atheism. The process of secularism manifested itself in two forms: social secularisation influenced daily life while dogmatic secularisation presented itself in a variety of “theologies”. These theologies were closely tied to “critical sociology” as practised by the Neo-Marxists, and had their roots in both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.