Who is this ‘we’?

At the outset of his The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society , Brad S. Gregory takes aim at Charles Taylor’s overly simplified portrait of the shift from the medieval “naive acknowledgment of the transcendent” to the “exclusive humanism” of the modern era. We are no longer porous but buffered selves, Taylor claims ( A Secular Age ).

To this, Gregory wisely responds with a “Who is this ‘we”?: “In the Western world today ‘we’ include, for example. Angela Merkel and Sarah Palin, skinhead racists and Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore, young-earth creationists and antireligious atheists, Judith Butler and Condolezza Rice . . . .” (11). You get the idea. A great point.

Too bad Gregory forgets himself a few pages later when stating the practical aims of his book. It seems odd at first glance that he would include concern for global warming as a reason to write a book on the impact of the Reformation, but one word makes sense of the point – Weber. Insofar as the Reformation is implicated in the rise of capitalism, and insofar as capitalism is responsible for environmental damage, re-thinking the Reformation has its part in making sense of environmental concerns (17). Fair enough.

But in developing the point, nuance goes out the window. “Most people seek . . . ever greater material affluence and comfort.” “Westerners now live in a society without an acquisitive ceiling.” “There is literally no such thing as ‘too much.’”

To which Gregory should ask, “Who is this ‘we’”? And we could answer, “In the Western world today ‘we’ include, for example, Donald Trump and the new monastics, hustlers and volunteers at soup kitchens, pols and cronies growing fat on other people’s money and philanthropists who dispense billions . . . ..”