2 weeks ago
24
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
David Brooks
Nov. 13, 2025, 5:26 p.m. ET
Every once in a while I come across a passage in a book that hits me with the force of revelation. Here’s one: “A person’s way of being human is the most authentic expression of their belief or unbelief. A person’s life speaks more about their faith than what they think or say about God.”
That passage is from Tomas Halik’s book “The Afternoon of Christianity.” Halik is a Czech sociologist, priest and philosopher. When the Czech Republic was Communist, he served in the underground church; after 1989, he was a close friend and adviser to Vaclav Havel and an admirer of Pope Francis. I like the passage because Halik is cutting through the categories we commonly use to define people.
That is a rarity. These days a pollster or a social scientist might call you up and ask some superficial questions and put you in a box like “believer” or a “none” (a person without belief). And somehow people are content to accept and live within these crude categories of separation.
Once you put people into categorical boxes, you are inviting them to see history as a zero-sum conflict between this group and that one. And sure enough, today we live in a political, cultural and religious war between two impoverished armies.
On the one side are the Christian nationalists, who practice a debauched form of their faith. Christian nationalism is particular rather than universal. It is about protecting “us” against “them” — the native versus the immigrant. It is about power more than love. It is about threat more than hope. It is rigid and pharisaical rather than personal and merciful.
On the other side are the exhausted remains of secular humanism. That humanism started out trying to liberate people from dogma, but it has produced societies in which people feel alienated, naked and alone. It has failed to formulate a shared moral order that might help people find meaning and solidarity in their lives. It is so enfeebled that it is being replaced by the religion of the phone — by shallow, technological modes of living.
