During the second half of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution began, first in Great Britain. Emphasis switched from agriculture to the production and manufacture of goods with the aid of machines and chemical processes. This upset a largely agricultural and rural society, sending thousands of people crowding into cities for work. Pockets of unemployment, housing shortages, poverty, and various work-related ills resulted.

Would Christendom be able to cope with this triple threat of science, Enlightenment, and industry?

Easing God Out, if Ever So Gently

People persuaded by Enlightenment thinking blamed religion for many of the ills of society. The idea that “society should be constructed according to the preordained blueprints of divine and natural law,” says The Encyclopedia of Religion, “was replaced by the notion that society was, or could be, constructed by man’s own ‘artifice’ or ‘contrivance.’ A secular, social humanism thus came into being that, in turn, would beget most of the philosophical and sociological theories of the modern world.”

These theories included the “civil religion” advocated by influential French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It centered upon society and human involvement in its concerns rather than upon a divine Being and his worship. French memoirist Claude-Henri de Rouvroy advocated a “New Christianity,” while his protégé Auguste Comte spoke of a “religion of humanity.”

In the late 19th century, the American movement known as the social gospel developed among Protestants; it was closely related to the European theories. That theologically based idea asserted that the main duty of a Christian is social involvement. It finds great support among Protestants to this day. Catholic versions are found in the worker-priests of France and among the clergy of Latin America who teach liberation theology.

Christendom’s missionaries also mirror this trend, as a 1982 Time magazine report indicates: “Among Protestants, there has been a shift toward greater involvement with the basic economic and social problems of the people . . . For an increasing number of Catholic missionaries, identification with the cause of the poor means advocacy of radical changes in political and economic systems​—even if those changes are being spearheaded by Marxist revolutionary movements. . . . Indeed, there are missionaries who believe that conversion is fundamentally irrelevant to their true task.” Such missionaries evidently agree with French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who once suggested: ‘The real object of religious worship is society, not God.’

Obviously, Christendom was easing God out of religion, if ever so gently. Meanwhile, other forces were also at work.

Replacing God With Pseudoreligions

The churches had no solutions for the problems created by the Industrial Revolution. But pseudoreligions, the products of human philosophies, claimed they did, and they rapidly moved in to fill the void.

For example, some people found their purpose in life in pursuing riches and possessions, a self-centered tendency pandered to by the Industrial Revolution. Materialism became a religion. Almighty God was replaced by the ‘Almighty Dollar.’ In a play by George Bernard Shaw, this was alluded to by a character who exclaimed: “I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.”

Other people turned to political movements. Socialist philosopher Friedrich Engels, collaborator with Karl Marx, prophesied that socialism would eventually replace religion, itself taking on religious attributes. Thus, as socialism gained ground across Europe, says retired Professor Robert Nisbet, “a prominent element was the apostasy of socialists from Judaism or Christianity and their turning to a surrogate.”

THE HIGHER STANDARD OF LIVING made possible by the Industrial and Science Revolutions promoted egotistical self-interest and brought social injustice and inequality to the fore. Christendom compromised by neglecting divine interests in favor of getting involved in human interests of a social, economic, ecological, or political nature.