This is an incredible piece from Ed West at UnHerd about the declining influence of Christianity in the West, both as the vehicle for the Enlightenment and a civilizing influence for young males:
“Unlike the totalitarian quasi-religions of the modern era — including the one currently developing in America — Christianity had no naïve illusions about human nature. We are fallen creatures; young men in particular are barbarians who need to be tamed.”
The continuing rage of Wokeism through establishment institutions goes unconstrained, and West is hardly alone in noticing that “paradoxically, as the sea of faith has retreated, more public intellectuals now take it seriously.”
For those like me who have felt the West has lost faith in itself for some years now, reading this makes me shudder:
“Over the centuries Christianity has become so dominant that we assume lots of things to be human nature when, as Henrich points out, they are very unusual in the greater scheme of human nature. Universal human rights are a western concept and to most societies completely unintelligible.”
My greatest fear is that we are giving up this inheritance, or just letting it slip away, without much of a fight, much less any kind of serious public discussion. While western Europe has been in this mode for some time, the absence of a faith discussion in the public square in the United States for a good couple decades now has been startling:
“America has seen one of the most rapid de-Christianisations in the past two decades and the results so far are not good. What is left is not the rationalist paradise some naïve public philosophers were claiming at the start of the 21st century, but a sort of distilled Christianity, which without the supernatural elements is far less rational: and so what results is endless moral panics, a world seen in stark black and white between good and evil, competitive sanctimony and the sentimental glorification of victimhood in which everyone wants the glory of being on the Cross.”
Andrew Sullivan makes a similar argument this week, even as he’s trying to find his way back to Mass after a year due to COVID-19, and wondering if a more significant withdrawal is afoot:
“When I ask myself what exactly I’ve missed, I realize it sure isn’t a weekly revelation. I don’t expect to feel something profound every time I go to Mass — because most of the time, I don’t, and rarely have. Every now and again, grace appears. But it’s rare. And it isn’t necessary. The one thing Catholicism teaches the bored and distracted church-goer is that your own mood doesn’t really matter. The consecration will happen regardless. Your inspiration is not the point. And what makes this all cohere somehow is physical, communal ritual — and that, I realize, is what I really miss.”
And yet:
“And, beneath all this, only poking above ground every now and again, I miss the weekly reminder of what I deeply believe within the folds of my consciousness: the command of universal love; the fact of life after death; the radical truth of experiential mystery; and the centrality of the Gospels to eternity. Many atheist or agnostic friends sometimes ask me how they too can have a leap of faith. And the truth is I have no idea. I have never leapt anywhere. I have trudged, stumbled, meandered, persisted, and resisted all my life. But to have one part of my existence directed to the timeless and the mysterious just once a week all my life has given me something priceless.”
Sullivan believes the new pseudoreligions—Wokeism foremost among them—are destined to fail:
“They are too worldly, too rooted in contemporary culture wars, too baldly tribal, and too shallow in their understanding of the world to have much staying power. But they can do immense damage to souls and our society in the meantime. They lack the one thing that endures in religious practice: something transcendent that makes the failure in our lives redemptive, and sees politics merely as the necessary art of attending to the imperfect.
“It took centuries for Christianity to begin to model that kind of humility and conviction, and to reject earthly power as a distraction from what really matters, what really lasts. And it would be a terrible shame if America threw that glorious inheritance away.”
But what’s to come after them? Is Christianity ultimately doomed? As I try to find my way back to that faith, I want to leave that as a rhetorical question for the time being.
Rights Of Mind 