Much has been made of the striking divisions in this country since the re-election of George W. Bush.

The blue states curl around the Northeast and the upper Midwest, and stretch along the West Coast, leaving the rest of the country a sea of conservative red. Pundits have been trying to explain the steady march toward Republican rule, which has been developing more or less steadily since about 1968.

If it wasn’t obvious before the election, it should be now: Our country has grown more conservative. The word “liberal” has been an epithet in political campaigns for a generation. Although commentators have suggested many causes for this shift in political identity, I would suggest that this trend may actually reflect an international sea change, rejecting modernity itself.

The concept of modernism dates back to the Renaissance, when humanist thinkers began to turn away from the harsh medieval notion that our time on Earth was full of suffering, but that we could achieve salvation through worship and prayer.

Although the “Renaissance Man” was pious, he believed that there was much satisfaction to our individual lives here on Earth, and that we could attain spiritual fulfillment through art and beauty. This new thinking was really the beginning of our modern age.

This thinking matured through the 18th century Enlightenment as philosophers like John Locke and our own Thomas Jefferson saw the possibilities of individual liberty and a government run by the people. Locke’s “pursuit of property” became Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness.” Although Enlightenment thinkers did not reject religion and saw a role for God, their primary interest was on the deeds of man. The American Constitution goes to great ends to differentiate between the affairs of government and religion.

Capitalism thrived, and the United States and Western Europe reached a pinnacle of prosperity and influence in the years after World War II. In 1920, women finally achieved the right to vote in the United States, and the role of women has been further enhanced by the development, and broad acceptance, of birth control and reproductive freedom. Women in this modern era now enjoy more autonomy and freedom over their lives than any time in human history.

Of course, modernity has come with some concerns. Church attendance has declined while sexual openness, even promiscuity, has increased. The economic engine of modern capitalism has proliferated these values worldwide. American media, with its sordid sex and violence, is sold throughout the world, as young people across the globe seek to emulate the values paraded on MTV.

We may now be at a turning point. It is possible that our move toward modern values has peaked and is now in decline, as traditional cultures around the globe turn inward and seek their cultural roots. Throughout Latin American and Africa, fundamentalist Christian views have changed the Catholic church, rejecting the involvement of women in the priesthood and banishing the use of birth control. Philip Jenkins, writing in the October 2002 Atlantic, has called this evidence of a “second Christian reformation.” The dramatic increase of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian congregations in the United States may be further evidence of this. And this trend toward strict, literal religious doctrine is not limited to Christianity.

We have witnessed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and Jewish fundamentalism in the Israeli settlements. Many people, in the United States and abroad, uncomfortable with the complexity and challenge of our modern global society, are seeking traditional values, and find comfort in fundamentalist religious beliefs.

Those of us who believe in such modernist ideals as religious freedom, women’s rights, sexual openness and freedom of thought and speech must remain vigilant. Although we can understand the desire to turn back to simpler times, we must remember that our constitutional rights, based on the modernist thinking of our Enlightenment Founding Fathers, are not cast in stone and could be reversed.

As we sit on the brink of a Supreme Court that may reverse Roe v. Wade and uphold the alarming erosion of civil liberties under the Patriot Act, we must not take our rights, nor our modernist assumptions for granted. As the world around us becomes more intolerant, and looks toward more righteous and simplistic values, we must fight to preserve what we’ve achieved in the last 500 years. We don’t want to let it slip away and condemn our grandchildren to a new medieval age.

William Frayer is a member of the humanities faculty at Central Maine Community College. He lives in Auburn.

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