Bampton Lectures 2022 - Lecture 4

The age of Hitler, and how we can escape it
This year, the Bampton Lectures are delivered by Professor Alec Ryrie FBA is Professor of the History of Christianity in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham.
The age of Hitler is not the 1930s and 1940s: it is our own lifetimes. It is the period in which Western culture has come to define its values not by Christianity, but by the narrative of the Second World War. It is the period in which our most potent moral figure has been Adolf Hitler, and in which our only truly fixed moral reference point has been our shared rejection of Nazism.
Which is good: but it’s not enough. And even if defining our values this way was wise, it’s clear that this postwar, anti-Nazi moral consensus is unravelling, and our whole system of values coming under pressure. What is going to come next? These lectures will give an account of how the ‘secular’ values of the postwar world came about, and what will happen now that the age of Hitler seems to be passing. They will show that for a new shared system of values to emerge from our current turmoil, we will need to draw creatively both on the newer, secular, anti-Nazi value system and on the older Christian value systems which remain powerfully present in European and Western culture. And they will show that such a creative synthesis is not only desirable, but also possible - perhaps even likely.
Tuesday 17 May
11.30am Lecture 4: A Crossroads
As the postwar moral era comes to an end, Christians find themselves divided as to how to respond. With the assertively secular values of the post-1960s era beginning to feel brittle, it is unsurprising that many Christians across the world have sensed an opportunity. The result is an acceleration of culture wars, with certain kinds of Christianity positioning themselves in opposition to particular forms of secular modernism. The instinct to turn back the clock and to return to the old certainties of Christendom’s value systems is very understandable. This final lecture will argue that it would nevertheless be a grave error; that even (or especially) doctrinally or socially conservative Christians ought to seek a constructive engagement with the anti-Nazi values of the postwar age, which are much less antagonistic to Christianity than their construction as ‘secular humanism’ suggests. This is partly because, in such a culture war, assertive Christendom-Christianity will lose. Indeed, it emboldens its secularist ‘enemies’ by giving them precisely the kind of opposition they crave. Yet this approach is flawed theologically as well as tactically, based as it is on a hollowed-out Christian identity politics as brittle as any secular alternative. The lecture will suggest some alternative, subtler ways in which Christians can engage with fracturing secular values, breathing life into those values’ inadequacies but while also learning from them. As numerous commentators involved in the revival of virtue ethics have suggested, deploying and modelling unfashionable but essential practices such as humility and repentance both makes it possible to learn the very hard-won moral lessons of the modern era, and to demonstrate that, essential as those lessons are, they are not enough. The lecture will conclude by pointing to signs of an emergent Christian politics, especially but not only in parts of the global South, which suggest that such a constructive synthesis between Christian and secular values is not only necessary, but already happening.
You can find the other lectures on the Bampton Playlist: • Bampton Lectures
Produced by Ana-Maria Niculcea, Communications, Digital and Marketing Officer

[@gystiel]

Always enjoy listening to Professor Alec Ryrie, great lecturer.

[@brianhagan3290]

Excellent series of lectures, marred only by the unfair and unnecessary dig at Corbin’s Labour Party in lecture two.
Still, no one is perfect

[@psg5555]

Wonderful lectures. Many complex ideas explored. I am going to have to spend a lot of time reflecting on these observations. Thank you for uploading.

[@roberthopgood6404]

Alec identifies many of the issues & problems of the 'Age of Hitler' but his solutions are unworkable for many reasons.

[@hi1gr196]

sorry, but calling Darth Vader and Sauron depictions of pure and unredeemable evil shows a lack of knowledge about these characters and nothing else.

[@fabianmiron2782]

You think the ethics of fictional characters was the important part of those lectures ?

[@hi1gr196]

@@fabianmiron2782no.