The Crisis of European Modernity

We are publishing a transcript of Dr. Anthony Monteiro’s opening remarks from the Saturday Free School’s December 21, 2024 session. The Free School meets every Saturday at 10:30 AM, and is streamed live on Facebook and YouTube.

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We talk a lot about the current crisis. Without a concept or knowledge of what this crisis is and how it affects various classes within American society and in particular the Western world; without understanding all of the complexities of the crisis, you can’t understand it. And I find it interesting that so many people who are radical use the word but do not use it properly. I know liberals and conservatives talk about “a crisis.”

It’s a crisis of modernity. In a lot of ways, the history of modernity is the history of the European struggle, the class struggle, and the ideological struggle. In 333 AD at the Council of Nicaea, which is really in what is today Turkey, the Roman Empire which had collapsed was then appropriated by what became known as the Holy Roman Empire, the Empire dominated by Christianity and the Catholic Church. Catholic meaning the Universal Church. 

That unity would be broken initially by the separation of the Greek and Russian, ultimately Ukrainian, Orthodox Churches from the Western Church. So when we talk about Catholicism, we’re talking about the Western Church. And as such, ultimately about Western Civilization. And what is called the Middle Ages: middle because it comes between the period of the Roman Empire and the period of the rise of the bourgeoisie, of liberalism, of science, and of a new stage in the struggle with the Church.

In a lot of ways we can loosely associate Martin Luther in 1517 posting his edicts on the door of a Catholic church in [Wittenberg] the town. By the way, Martin Luther was a bishop in the Catholic Church. So what he did, as a protest, as an attack upon the Catholic Church—it was a break from within this Universal Church, which claimed itself as the center of an empire. 

It did unite all of these various factions, and groups, and classes within western Europe and southern Europe under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire. I don’t think we should take this lightly. It was more than a religious unity. It was a political unity. The Church, as the Church, was a powerful state and political entity. 

The center of the Holy Roman Empire was the Vatican. While there would be monarchies throughout Europe, they all declared obedience, so to speak, to this larger ideological unity. I think this is very important to understand, because we talk a lot about ideology and its significance. 

Once you say that it is an empire based upon Christianity, or as they call it, Christendom, you are saying it is an empire that is held together by ideology. Hence an attack upon the Christian church as Martin Luther did, could be considered an attack upon the unity of this vast empire. Just keep in mind that nothing similar happened—at least I don’t know of anything similar to have happened—in the Greek Orthodox, or the Russian Church, or the Ukrainian Church, or the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, you know. Which was very similar in its ritual and so on, to the Russian Church. I don’t know of anything similar. 

This was a Western movement. And what Martin Luther did is now viewed by many historians as one of the first political actions of a rising bourgeoisie. 

The capitalist class would have looked very differently had there not been an ideological break with the church. Which meant with the empire. And the very classes, in particular the landlord class that upheld it. The merchant landlord and other elite classes. 

A few years after Martin Luther’s 95 edicts upon the church door, an uprising, a peasant rebellion kicks off in Germany. Led by a peasant leader who was all so a priest within the Catholic Church by the name of Thomas Müntzer. And there’s a very famous small book written by [Frederick Engels] called [The Peasant War in Germany]. And this famous figure Thomas Müntzer. And these kind of peasant uprisings were occurring all over the world; we hear about them in China in particular. Similar to the peasant uprising in the 1520s in Germany. 

For almost 400 years, Europe was beset by permanent war and permanent civil strife. In this country, you know, a lot of people talk about the great achievements of philosophy, of art, of literature. And all of this was taking place in the throes of this great ideological struggle for modernity and the future. I’m fascinated by figures like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Their patrons were the church. But they, in painting you know, these ceiling paintings in churches and so on, and murals, as it were, they were also expressing certain values that were not in line with the Church’s theology. 

I think scholars look upon them, Leonardo and Michelangelo, as not just avatars of the European Renaissance, but as figures of modernity. And I think if you study the figures in the paintings. For instance the Sistine Chapel and all of that type of thing, it reminds you of what Shakespeare would be doing in literature. We could come back, but nonetheless through these 400 years of civil conflict, seven-year wars, permanent wars between states, between groups in society—real artists produced that which was new. Which suggests that revolutionary struggle produces great art. There is no great art that is not associated with revolutionary struggle. Mediocre art, counter-revolutionary art, decadent art is associated with counter-revolutionary times. 

The European Renaissance, which by the way, depends on how you define Renaissance; there was an Italian Renaissance, Dutch Renaissance, you know, there were Renaissances all over the place. But usually the Renaissance is seen as preceding the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is more associated with people like Martin Luther and that period. But the Renaissance comes, you could say the 14th and 15th centuries, kind of you know this embryo of something new about to be born. And its earliest expression was in art, and it was still confined within the church because the artists needed patrons, the church or rich landowners. 

But yet still, the Renaissance, which more than not, is associated with painting, I think that’s its highest achievement, although also literature, but really the painting. I guess the most lasting

element of the Renaissance is painting. And of course later on, the Dutch Masters, the painting, this realistic portraiture. See, portraiture is very important too, because it established the unique and individual qualities. And just, you know, small thing. You know, that’s why Baldwin could write, and he sounds like a “Man of the Renaissance,” you know. Or he can talk about [“Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare”]. These types of things, where there is a certain resonance of that revolutionary moment in art and painting, et cetera. And you know, by the way. Just Baldwin and his detail to the individual; this constant search for the biographical and the autobiographical, which is, I think, just the way I receive it. It’s more like the Renaissance and it is the Enlightenment, you know, pure and simple Enlightenment.

This long 400-year history of Europe is the history of the breaking of various people and nations from the Church. And that is why there are the great debates within modern political theory: Church and State. Where does the state begin and the church end? Is the church the state? Does the church legitimate and authorize the state? By the end of early modernity this conflict, this two-sided conflict. Atheism and Protestantism were attacks upon the Church. We must see it that way. Rationalism is an assault upon the church. When I say the church—because the church then becomes the authority of what Christianity is and what piety is, what faithfulness is, how you interpret the Bible, what is the Bible. The split between the King James Version [of the Bible]—King James, of course English—and the Catholic Bible; the same in many ways but not identical. 

Different theologies, even. But we can come back to that. In the United States we did not have this thing of “the Church.” We have what we call denominations. You know, Methodists, and Baptists. The AME. They’re all denominations. Unitarianism. They’re all denominations within this vast network of ways to express Protestantism. Protestantism is from the word “protest.” And that’s why you know, all protestantism in one or another way is rooted in liberation theology. Because it is a fight against authoritarianism and the authority of the church. 

We are a nation that did not go through this long period of ideological struggle associated with defining Christianity. The positive thing about the American Revolutionary framing of things is that because we don’t have a church, people can find their own way. And you know, we’ve been studying that to a certain degree in Black Christianity. You know, Black Gods of the Metropolis, you know it’s no big thing. We’ll set up you know, like Prophet Cherry: “I am a Jew.” And the Jews say, “Well no you’re not.” He said, “Well you can’t define Judaism for me because you’re fake.” You know, that back and forth. Or the Nation of Islam: “We are practicing Islam.” The Saudis say, “Well no you’re not.” And they say, “Yes we are.” And they say well, “We in Mecca and Medina, we are the center. And our tsar in Egypt, the great university, we are the center of Islam.” And The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “That Islam. But we had to reform Islam,” you know what I’m saying. 

It’s uniquely American, where we didn’t have to fight a church, you know, like the Catholic Church. We would just form a denomination, you know. And I think no people have done that more prolifically than Black people. We have so many denominations, it’s hard to know where they begin and where they end. That’s why when Alice and Edy and I went to The Garden of Prayer; now they’re part of a denomination—which one, I don’t know. You know, but it’s a denomination, and we do our thing, you know what I’m saying. It’s really a very democratic process in this sense, and it should be studied more.

So the lack of a church. And this this is something that we have to understand about American history: yes there was genocide, of some Native Americans. Not all Native Americans. And in some ways we have to understand the history of Native America. The Seminoles are not the Cherokees. The Cherokees are not the Plains Indians. Very different histories. And so the Seminoles, who a lot of people say were a mixture of native peoples and Africans. And the Seminoles were a safe haven for slaves who were running away. 

Now they, in so many different ways, are not the same as Plains Indians, who didn’t know anything, pretty much, about enslavement or Black people. But the Cherokee did. Each of these peoples constitutes something singular and unique. To call them Native American is a shorthand way of saying “the people who were originally here.” Where they came from, we usually think across the Bering Straits. They are in a lot of ways Mongol people, Asian people. What we call Native Americans are descendants of Asia. 

Moorish science will say that the Native Americans, especially the Seminole, are instances of Africans having crossed the Atlantic before Europeans did. And I think there’s some evidence of that. And Moorish science claims that they were early Moors, that they were Moors, you know, the Moors who ruled Spain and the Iberian Peninsula for 600 years; they were North Africans.

The populating of what we call the Western Hemisphere probably took place through two ways. One, over the Bering Straits, which assumes already that Asia had begun to be populated in a major way. That there were Southern Asians, there were North Asians. But that these, we would assume, basically nomadic peoples, ultimately transversed Northern Europe and Siberia, and came down through the Bering Straits, through what we call Alaska. So that West Coast and the Plains Indians were probably an offshoot of that. Another offshoot, we don’t call them Native Americans, are what we call the eskimos, who had to be technologically very, very advanced to have made productive settlements in that cold region. How did they do it? What was their architecture? How did they survive? Others continue down the West Coast; different culture. 

But then the other path was across the Atlantic. Transatlantic travel probably goes back thousands of years; and it did not begin with the Vikings. Because the most efficient way is across the Atlantic because the Atlantic stream you know, it is easy to travel from West Africa to the Western Hemisphere. That is an easy route. Rather than the Viking route over the northern Atlantic.

I just say all of that to say the early populating of what we call the Western Hemisphere, what we today called the United States, began thousands of years ago. The Native American people are an ancient people. Some are more nomadic. I think the ones that came across the Bering Straits are more nomadic peoples; the ones who came across the Atlantic came later I think and are a more settled people.

Of course, genocide, and I want to make this clear—against some Native Americans. Early tribal peoples were not wiped out completely. And then you must connect them to the Mayan and Aztec civilizations of Mexico and Central America, which I don’t know enough about. But these great civilizations, the foundations of which would become European settlements and ultimately European colonialism. Anyway, we’ll come back to that. 

Ultimately, the church, which lost power in the face of revolutionary ideas, of revolutionary struggles. You know the civil wars in Europe from the 16th to the 20th century have been the most violent wars—I include the world wars along with that—the most violent wars in human history. And it’s so interesting how Europe as a civilization emerges from all of that. It’s very fascinating to me. You get people, for instance Afro-centrists, hardcore feminists, postmodernists who say, “Well all of that is useless. They’re white men, they’re white people. Why should I be concerned with what they think or what they say; I prefer to go back to ancient Egypt. That defines me.” I think that’s fictional and mythological. 

We are all drawn into this vortex, like gravity. The vortex of modernity. Europe defines so much of the modern world. And just like the struggle for European modernity was a struggle against the Catholic Church, the anti-colonial struggle is not a struggle against modernity per se, but a struggle against empire. So there is an analogous thing going on here.

Last week at Zion [Baptist Church], when I thought about it more, it reminded me of the dying Catholic Church in the later stages of early modernity, where there was either open rebellion against the church and the priest and the property of the church, culminating perhaps let’s say, in the American and French revolutions. The British, of course Catholicism in Britain, became the Episcopal Church. Or the Church of England. Very similar to the Catholic Church but different. So we today identify Episcopalians as Protestants.

But in some ways it was a further separation from the Holy Roman Empires. You know, at Zion last week, you had all these young people and a few older people. We showed the documentary, and the younger people were asking questions about the church. And these older people—and we talked about this in the reading group at Zion—were pushing back. 

The young people said, “The church is not speaking to me.” “Well what did you do?” As though they’re defending something that is dying. Zion Baptist Church, and no church is what it was in the period of the Civil Rights Movement. So here you have a church that is contracting. No young people, but that’s not unusual. Young people: I’m not going to argue with you, I’m just going to walk away from you.

And the people who were defending Zion—and I defend Zion, but you know—who cannot look at itself critically. What they saying: “Your walking away from the church is a sin in itself. Walking away from the church is abandoning God.” That’s the way they want to see it. And it’s such a silly thing, frankly. And then they create this whole fiction about what Zion was. The only problem is, I was there, and I didn’t see none of y’all. So I mean, what are you talking about?

It’s analogous to the undoing of the Catholic church in the crisis of modernity. The other thing, it’s not unusual or specific to the Black churches—the whole issue of Mainline denominations. They’re the white denominations which are considered the pillars of modern Christianity in the United States. The Unitarian Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church. I think two or three others, I forget off the top, maybe the Southern Baptists. The Mainline denominations, as we spoke about in Free School, are in crisis and decline. Part of the crisis, we see it in the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church, if it doesn’t appeal to immigrants and essentially illegal immigrants who they protect. Without that, they do not attract the American people to that, and especially young people. 

And that’s the crisis. The crisis of the Unitarian Church, the crisis of the Episcopaleans. And they have no members. Nobody comes. I know with Unitarianism, at least here in Philly they try to replace their great civil rights and anti-slavery struggle with a kind of queer theology, which is a postmodern theology.

I say all of that to say that these ideological foundations of the modern Western ruling classes— when they are weakened, when the masses of people walk away from them, it weakens the capacity of the ruling class to rule. This is what we’re looking at today.

I would suggest that the American ruling elite have never been this weak. Have never been this confused. Have never been this ideologically and politically uncertain. And this crisis is also part of the crisis of knowledge. We can call the crisis of knowledge the crisis of ideology. If there is not the church, if there is not Christianity, what is European modernity? Well indeed it is science, it is reason, it is Kant, it is Hegel, it is Marx. Yes, yes, yes. That is social, political theory. 

But the church. And this is why the Vatican and the pope and all of that are so prestigious. Because they are seen as the reservoir, the container of modern European civilization. Yes you can have science. But the church represents civilization. That’s the way I see it. That detente between science, or reason, and the church, only consolidated after World War II.

The church essentially did not reconcile itself to modern reason and science until after World War II. Even today, reconciling itself to atheism. “For the sake of Western Civilization we must have a detente, a peaceful coexistence, with reason, with secularization, with secular society.” I think it took World War II finally to establish pretty much that the liberal bourgeoisie did not have to apologize to or swear allegiance to religion. 

And that the church, especially as the United States becomes a center of European empire. The values of the United States, where the state separates itself from the church without apology. A nation which never had anything other, at least in its constitutional thinking, political thinking—never had anything other than a separation of church and state. Which made the American people in many ways more “free” in the political sense than the European people. Even though it appears sometimes that with the rise of communism and radicalism that European working people were more advanced than the Americans. Yes and no. 

What does it mean when the American ruling elite are weak, confused, anxious. Where they question their own capacity to govern, to rule. What does it mean when nihilism becomes such an important part of the ideology or the philosophy of the ruling elite, where what we are looking at in many respects is social and ideological disintegration. 

There’s much to learn from the previous histories of Europe. And this struggle—it looks, though not the same, there are similarities. An ideological crisis which weakens the old ruling elite. In the case of the 400-year struggle that I talked about, the church eventually had to come to a rapprochement with secular society and with the liberal state. And the church is not seen as a hegemonic center of the ruling class, at least of its ideology and civilization. But the church is just another, like in the United States, the Catholic Church is just another denomination. Isn’t that interesting. From the Holy Roman Empire, to just another denomination.

It is a step down. And even with all of its beautiful cathedrals and churches, it is now a weak and confused institution. And in the United States, the predominance of energy coming out of religion was in the Protestant churches. And of course the Civil Rights Movement and especially King and other theologians opened the possibility that Christianity could be revived. As King said, connected to Hinduism and Gandhism, but more than anything to the liberation struggles from colonialism.

So liberation theology, whether it was called that or not, was at the center of this radical reform of Christianity. And then if you go back to that time—that’s why I say, the people at Zion, I don’t know what the hell they be talking about—the church, and Zion itself was this great church that you could barely get in; thousands of people every week, you know, attending service. Because it was connected to the Freedom Movement. Not connected to a great cause, it becomes what it is: a bunch of old people waiting to die. And a bunch of young people who are waiting for them to die. You know, isn’t that interesting. And I think history is on the side of the young people, one, because they’re young and they’re going to live longer, and you old asses are going to die, you know. 

In the wake of this for instance you know, Cornel West, who for most of his public career has been associated with the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party. And to see him in any but that way is to misunderstand him. His politics have always been connected to the Democratic Party and elites within the Democratic Party, albeit the more left-wing, the more social democratic wing. But always Democrats. He always voted for Democrats. Although he always advocated for everyone having freedom of speech, that no dissent should be illegal, or blasé, blasé, blasé. 

But he’s a Democrat. And one might say that he is a Democrat politically, but his theology is more radical, closer to the King. I am not convinced that his theology understands King. I think while being a registered, ordained minister—Baptist I think—he’s still a secular thinker in philosophy. And therefore his secular philosophical positions align him with the lesser of evils. 

What he saw with the election of Trump and this political realignment is a “catastrophe.” The word catastrophe in Cornel’s lexicon is close to the philosophy of nihilism. And Cornel, in this eclectic mix—that’s why it’s so hard to understand; you say one thing one day, and another thing another day. And you can’t get an anchorage, a grounding in philosophy. What I have found is that he’s closer to a form of European existentialism which is also connected to nihilism, and to what he calls catastrophe. Therefore he concludes that the individual must live his or her life of standing up for certain things, whether or not the world hears him or her. Or whether or not the world is prepared to follow them. I think the assumption is that most people will go in the opposite direction from their views. 

It is a view that says that the current crisis has no resolution. That the current ruling elite might collapse, but that would only further the catastrophe. That Trump’s election is an indication of the undoing of society and civilization. Cornel would argue we should vote for Harris or Biden  because—this is Angela’s argument—“They give us time.” Well, you said that about Hillary Clinton. You said that about [John] Kerry. You keep talking about “give us more time” but then even when we get more time, you guys have no strategy for struggle. 

I’ll just end by saying this. We’re looking at a very weakened ruling class. All calculations for the future of struggle, of the people, has to take into account a ruling class that does not rule, cannot rule. A ruling class that rules while trampling under foot the majority of people; we saw it most recently here in Philadelphia, with a Black majority City Council voting for an arena for a basketball team in the face of one of the worst crises that Black people in Philadelphia have ever experienced. 

Which means you rule on behalf of rich people, not on behalf of the people that elected you; and the people that elected you know that. That’s the same thing with national politics. I think we have to take into account a weakened ruling class, which questions its own capacity.