06 — The Critique of Secularism
Schmemann’s two-front polemic: outward against secularism, defined not as the absence of religion but as “the negation of worship”; and inward against a Western captivity of Orthodox theology and a “liturgical piety” that is sincere, intense, and largely disconnected from what the Liturgy says and does.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)
These two critiques are one critique. Schmemann’s charge against the secular man is that he receives the world as an end in itself and so ceases to be a priest of creation; his charge against the pious Orthodox is structurally identical — a religion safely fenced into its own compartment, sanctifying life from outside rather than transfiguring it. In both cases the diagnosis is the loss of the eucharistic relation to the world, and the sacred/profane division is the symptom.
That he attacked both flanks at once is one reason his position has been hard to place, and one reason he has been claimed and rejected from both directions ever since. The inward critique gave the deeper offense, and the answers to it are set out in Section 08.
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Worship in a Secular Age | Secularism as the negation of worship; the refusal of the sacred/profane division |
| The “Western Captivity” and Liturgical Piety | The pseudomorphosis thesis extended to worship; the critique of piety, and the offense it gave |
See Also
- The World as Sacrament — the positive doctrine the critique presupposes
- The Liturgiological and Traditionalist Critique — the answers his critics made
- The Journals — the same critique turned on himself
- Orthodoxy: The Patristic Revival — Florovsky’s “pseudomorphosis,” which Schmemann inherited
- Orthodoxy: Social Ethics — the Church and the secular order