The Triumph of Progressivism: A Religious Quest for an Ideal Society

The idea of progress - the belief that humanity has been advancing constantly from past to present, and that this process will continue for the foreseeable future - is a worldview that has developed exclusively in the Western world. The idea has occupied a central position in the thinking of modern civilization from the late seventeenth-century Enlightenment to the present day. It is much more than a political theory. In its heyday, it permeated every area of social life. No one could avoid its pervasive influence; even those who took a negative view of abstract ideas succumbed to its irresistible charm. It came to constitute the predominant civil religion of Western civilization - a general religiosity in the political realm. Furthermore, it became part of the modern idea that every attempt to criticize amounts to an act of infidelity. It is time to realize that the ideology of continual social advance and human improvement essentially constitutes a religion in its own right, which, despite often bearing the name of Christianity, is in resolute opposition to biblical beliefs.