A Pilgrimage to the Altar of Humanism

I picked up Timothy Egan's A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of Faith, because I have enjoyed such travel books in the past. Years ago I read many of HV Morton's travel works, particularly those in the 1930's and enjoyed the narrative, historical information, and the style of writing. Morton was not a Christian (that I could see) but was clearly interested in Christianity and its place in history.

Egan's journey was published in 2019 and as I have been absent from Europe for many years I was keen to learn something of just how things stand. Instead it was an exercise in frustration. Egan is a lapsed Catholic trying to rediscover his faith and apparently (by some skewed metrics) it was 'rekindled' by the end of the work - but I never got there. I gave up on the work about half-way through which itself is revealing because I rarely abandon a book. In this case I grew tired of his twisting of Scripture and history and his modernist musings and mockings of all things Christian. I reached a point in which I no longer cared about anything he had to say or whether he lived or died for that matter.

I have no issue with criticism of either Catholicism or even a great deal of Magisterial Protestantism. They deserve it and their histories are dark and a testimony of unfaithfulness. But that's not really the point with Egan. His issue is really with Scripture and historic Christianity broadly speaking. I join in his critiques of Church History but his real argument is with the God of Scripture. It's a telling exercise in what happens when a lost person (without the Holy Spirit) tries to navigate the sacred writings - it's a disaster.

Frequently leaning on the foolish discourse of Christopher Hitchens and others like him, the book seems more an attack on Christianity than anything else. If anything of the faith is to be recovered, it will be recast through the lens of secular humanism - the religion reduced to a nebulous self-help (and often blasphemous) spirituality in which man is the measure of all things. Egan's Christ is not the Incarnate second person of the Trinity or the Messiah of the Transfiguration, or the Lord revealed in the Apocalypse, he is self-help guru, a Gandhi-type social reformer at best.

There's no doubt the Church of history has largely abandoned His teachings - especially after Constantine. And the Reformation for all its self-praise did little to correct this. And so what is Egan interacting with? I suppose he is (as a modern secularist) interacting with the Church of Christendom and he has problems with it and with the way it has been politicised (and even hijacked) in the United States. So do I, but for entirely different reasons. In many respects he simply is the face of much of modern Catholicism - a secular materialist outlook interwoven with an agnostic ideology and traces of selective superstition. I too find the American Christian-Right to be a vile misrepresentation of Scripture - but this does not mean I resonate in any way with Egan and his approach.

In keeping with the decadence of our time, he obsesses on issues of sex and makes proclamations concerning what the Scriptures teach - and yet is obviously unfamiliar with the New Testament and unable to grasp the spiritual struggles of historical figures such as Augustine. Basically it's a Jeffersonian/Liberal critique of Scripture but with a very 21st century face - a Liberalism in a state of decadence. Likewise he assails God over issues like the Holocaust and yet is so unfamiliar with the New Testament or historical examples of theodicy that one is struck far more by his ignorance. The end result is that I find myself unwilling to hear him out because he couldn't even bothered to seriously look into the issues. He might discover that many of his lame and superficial attempts at argument have been answered and there are in fact answers to these questions - even if he doesn't like them. Needless to say the book is filled with errors in terms of Scripture, historical fact, and historical interpretation. This too became wearisome and eventually proved beyond the pale. I gave up.

I found the book to be of little value and it seemed to be getting worse by the page and chapter. I don't mind being challenged and provoked to think but Egan utterly fails in this respect. His arguments came across as lame, poorly framed, and lacking substance. I'm sure it will remain a popular book with many and I can easily imagine people in Mainline churches being inspired and edified by it. I was appalled to discover many positive reviews in Roman Catholic publications - an indicator as to just where 'faith' is at in the modern Catholic Church. I found it a waste of time and as the book progressed it reached a point in which I was no longer even remotely interested in anything he had to say. I want my money back.