A historian and former UC chancellor looks back. ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. In a 2019 [essay]( in our pages, the literary and cultural critic Simon During discussed what he calls the âsecond secularization,â a process whereby âthe value of a canon that carries our cultural or, as they once said, âcivilizationalâ values can no longer be assumed.â Just as, in an earlier era, religion had lost the authority to offer an overarching horizon of meaning for all but had become just one lifestyle option among many, today the âculture which was consecrated in religionâs placeâ â Matthew Arnoldâs âbest which has been thought and saidâ â has become âmerely a (rather eccentric) option for a small fraction of the population.â Those are compelling but necessarily abstract claims, with major stakes for the fortunes of the academic humanities. Recently, also in our pages, the historian and former University of California chancellor Nicholas Dirks [revisited]( Duringâs essay in the course of an autobiographical reminiscence about his father. An Iowa farm-boy turned aspiring minister turned academic humanist, J. Edward Dirksâs career might be taken to encapsulate one peculiarly American version of the transformation of religious into humanistic energy characteristic of the secularization processes of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th (late phases of the âfirstâ secularization). âHe became preoccupied,â Dirks fils writes, âwith how theologians turned to philosophy to modernize the tenets of their Christian convictions, in the process seeking to balance the gravitational pull of faith with the centrifugal force of new and ever-changing knowledge.â One fruit of that preoccupation: the journal The Christian Scholar, which J. Edward founded in 1953. NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, [sign up]( to receive it in your email inbox. The Christian Scholar might be thought of as a local, somewhat late, and still specifically Christian instance of a larger movement whereby âthe humanitiesâ emerged in response to two perceived threats: first, âthe demise of core Christian (Protestant) values as the base for moral education"; second, âthe rise of the research university itself,â where âresearchâ entails a kind of scientism at odds with Arnoldian ideals of culture. âThe humanities,â Dirks writes, âbecame the cluster of departments and courses that was fashioned as a modern substitute for religious values.â The ecumenical and humanistic turn among progressive theologians is homologous to the larger-scale process whereby culture supplants religion. Dirksâs essay is concerned in part with tracking the second secularizationâs causes, some of which are internal to scholarship (the relativism arising from Boasian anthropology and its descendants; the recognition, under multiculturalist pressure, that canons are particularistic and even chauvinistic) and some of which are external (declining funding). âHave the humanities,â he asks, âfinally come to the end of the road?â He hopes not, and he offers his fatherâs experience with The Christian Century as, in a sense, a model for a healed humanities, one in which an ecumenical pluralism restores, with a difference, whatever was lost with what During calls âthe erosion of canonicityâ and âauthority.â Dirks leaves vague the specifics by which âa more ecumenical approach to cultural artifacts, intellectual traditions, political positions, and ideological debatesâ might mitigate the current grim situation â a vagueness that is perhaps for the moment unavoidable. But he is surely right that something will replace whatâs been â whatâs being â lost. In Duringâs words, âIt is important to remember that religious secularization does not mean the end of religion. The same will be true of cultural secularization.â Read Nicholas Dirksâs â[The End of Disenchantment and the Future of the Humanities]( and Simon Duringâs â[Losing Faith in the Humanities]( ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. The Latest THE REVIEW | ESSAY [The End of Disenchantment and the Future of the Humanities]( By Nicholas Dirks [STORY IMAGE]( On my fatherâs journey from farm to church to university. ADVERTISEMENT THE REVIEW | OPINION [The New Campus Fanaticism]( By Robert S. Huddleston [STORY IMAGE]( Exclusion, scapegoating, and extremism are taking over. 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