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Critical Theology & Integral Humanism
Marc Lalonde, Charles Davis, & the Postmodern Conservative Challenge
Introduction
The recent passing of my former professor, Marc Lalonde, compels a necessary revisiting of his profound scholarship and the intellectual legacy of Charles Davis. This essay is driven by that loss, pushing me to pursue the critical arguments we had planned to collaborate on. The intellectual partnership between Davis and Lalonde offers an essential counter-strategy in the contemporary battle for Catholicism in the Anglosphere against postmodern conservatism—a challenge that manifests as a reductive, reactionary movement akin to a neo-integralism. This movement politically reifies a debased cultural identity, thereby prioritizing tribal coherence over the pursuit of integral human development. This essay seeks to re-examine the combined legacies of Davis and Lalonde to provide a theological resource for authentic Catholicism against the ideological capture of the Church and its reduction to a political commodity. Their work, grounded in critical reason and philosophical depth, offers a vital resource for a genuine faith that is neither secularized nor fundamentalist, but rather dynamically engaged with the truth of divine revelation.
Charles Davis: The Dynamic Nature of Revelation and the Primacy of Conscience
Charles Davis was a distinguished scholar and Professor Emeritus of Religion at Concordia University, though he is perhaps most known for his controversial decision in 1965 to leave the Catholic Church during the height of the Second Vatican Council. At the time, Davis was the most important theologian in Great Britain, and his departure came as a huge shock.
Davis’s argument was framed as a defense of genuine divine revelation and the primacy of conscience against a hierarchical and stagnant institutional structure that had become rigid and closed, its bureaucracy obstructing the vitality of the spirit. He contended that the Church’s rigid social structure conflicted with the dynamic drive and openness of true faith, the kind of faith that compels critical inquiry and the development of new perspectives. For Davis, revelation was not about accepting a fixed dogma; it was a continuous process of critical engagement.
This commitment to critical reason and inquiry is a defense of the modern turn in theology, a move that the contemporary postmodern conservative often rejects. Davis sought to separate the transcendent truth of faith from the stifling human ideology of the institution. His later intellectual trajectory was an effort to ground this dynamic faith in a robust sociological critique while finding its philosophical moorings in traditions like integral humanism, which I began exploring through Lalonde’s recommendation of Jacques Maritain.
Marc Lalonde’s Legacy: Critical Theology in Canada
Marc Lalonde’s scholarship advanced the study of Davis’s work by highlighting his engagement with critical theory. Lalonde emphasized Davis’s later intellectual journey at Concordia, which included exploring the work of the Frankfurt School and notably Jürgen Habermas. Lalonde argued that Davis produced his most challenging and erudite books during this period, crafting “one of the most sophisticated appropriations of critical theory within contemporary religious thought.”
Lalonde’s commitment to this work is clearly demonstrated by his role as the editor of The Promise of Critical Theology: Essays in Honour of Charles Davis. In the introduction to that volume, Lalonde characterized critical theology as a discourse in constructive dialogue with the Marxist tradition of social criticism and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Lalonde stressed that the core aim of critical theology is to expose and redress the pathologies of modernity and religion in relation to the emancipation of human beings. Lalonde’s efforts rooted the critical theology movement within Canadian scholarship, positioning Davis’s contribution as one that “demands a more extensive analysis and application.”
The work of Lalonde, particularly his monograph From Critical Theology to a Critical Theory of Religious Insight, offers a methodology to unmask the inherent ideologies within the postmodern conservative movement—a movement of reactionary identitarianism that attempts to politically leverage a debased religious and cultural identity, echoing the totalizing claims of neo-integralism. Through Habermas and the critical tradition, Lalonde provided a path for theology to sustain its emancipatory potential and commitment to integral human development without losing its grounding in transcendent truth.
The Postmodern Conservative Challenge
The contributions of Davis have recently been challenged by figures like Larry Chapp and Tracey Rowland, who argue that Davis’s seminal engagement with critical theory itself effectively secularized Catholic theology. They contend this philosophical move led to viewing faith as a “human construct” rather than being based on divine revelation.
I am not persuaded by this interpretation, as it mistakes intellectual development for theological abandonment. The postmodern condition often leaves people feeling lost and searching for roots and identity; however, the development of a religious identity cannot come at the expense of true freedom and the experience of divine revelation. The postmodern conservative critique often focuses on the perceived loss of external certitude caused by Davis’s inquiry. This defensiveness is characteristic of a regressive, reactionary identity politics that appeals to many Catholics who are being misled due to the lack of a genuine integral path forward amid our current state of cultural fragmentation. This movement prizes the political and social coherence of a fixed cultural identity, effectively subordinating the transcendent demands of divine revelation to a temporal, defensive cultural project, rather than upholding the challenging spirit of faith seeking deeper understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). However, the rigor of Davis’s later thought, refined through Lalonde’s lens, successfully retained the primacy of divine revelation and the primacy of conscience. This foundation allows me to extend their work: demonstrating how thinkers like Jürgen Habermas and perspectives like those of Ken Wilber could be leveraged to fully integrate a developmental framework, thereby advancing religious insight to a higher stage of critical consciousness and separating the truth of revelation from its historically contingent, ideological, and institutional forms.
The critics fail to acknowledge the philosophical and theological foundation that anchors Davis’s critique: a commitment to the truth of a transcendent reality and the human dignity inherent in faith. This is a commitment which thinkers like Maritain, introduced to me by Lalonde, articulate through the concept of integral humanism. It is this foundational commitment that requires the ongoing critical and developmental learning for faith to be authentic and for the realization of integral human development.
Prior to his passing, I had contacted Lalonde regarding a potential podcast collaboration to discuss his research and provide a comprehensive rebuttal to these critiques. My intention was to explore how Lalonde’s distinctive perspective on critical theory was the key to effectively challenging the assumptions of the postmodern conservative position—a missed opportunity I deeply lament.
Conclusion
Revisiting the works of Charles Davis and Marc Lalonde is more than an academic exercise; it is a necessary engagement with ideas that continue to define contemporary theological discourse. Their intellectual rigor and open-mindedness offer a vital counter-narrative to the postmodern conservative tendency to equate authentic faith with rigid dogmatic forms and the reified cultural remnants of tradition.
The critics of Davis and Lalonde ultimately fear that critical theology leads to the secularization of the Church, reducing its divine life to a mere “human construct” or a social NGO—the very reduction they accuse the “postmodern left” of embracing. Yet, the legacy of Davis and Lalonde demonstrates the opposite: their work is an effort to emancipate faith’s transcendent core from ideological capture. In reality, it is the postmodern conservative critique itself that executes this theological reduction: by prioritizing the rhetoric of the ‘new right’ and framing the discussion as an existential cultural war, it subordinates divine revelation to the maintenance of a reified political and cultural identity. Davis and Lalonde insist that authentic divine revelation cannot be confined to or exhausted by its historical, ideological, or institutional forms.
Their combined project—Davis’s exploration of revelation as a dynamic process, and Lalonde’s use of critical theory to connect it to the philosophical depth of developmental integral humanism—presents a complex landscape that challenges us to think critically about faith, society, and the role of religion in the modern world. It is a legacy that remains essential for anyone seeking an authentic, critical, and engaged faith today.