What's Wrong with the West?

Is the West in decline because it has lost touch with its Christian roots?

The following is a chapter by Robert P. George and William L. Saunders from Exiting a Dead End Road: a GPS for Christians in Public Discourse, a new book published by Kairos Publications in Vienna, and edited by Gudrun and Martin Kugler. The book can be ordered here.  

The West has faced many challenges in the past, many turning points, from the Asiatic invasions of the Dark Ages to the dark ages of Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin. And it faces one now -- the eclipse of its historical Christian identity.

In the past, when armies of aggression threatened our society, those threats were met with nerve and with steel. We pray God that steel will never be necessary again, but certainly it will require nerves of steel -- steely determination -- to meet what may be the greatest threat Christianity has faced in its history.

The threat is this: at just the moment when many Christians have lost self-confidence, ideologically doctrinaire secularists have launched a determined attack on all public vestiges of Christianity. They have chosen their moment well, but their attack need not succeed. If Christians will regain the confidence that comes from their Creed, they can arrest the assault being waged in the cause of secularist ideology. Courage was required in the past; it is required again.

Christians are well-equipped for this battle. Christianity enables man to use twin tools in engaging the world and its problems -- reason and faith. Other than the specially revealed truths of faith, all truths are accessible to unaided reason, and, thus, to all people of good will. When Christian citizens contend over issues of importance in the public square, they should be confident that they bring not a narrow sectarianism but an understanding based upon principles of reason -- natural justice, natural law -- in the interest of the common good. 

 

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