From Christian Today.
Theologian Carl Trueman was at ARC 2026 to share his thoughts on why things have gone wrong in the West and what can be done to turn things around. He speaks to Christian Today about the challenges and why neither cultural Christianity nor nationalism are the answer.
We heard a lot about the “deconstruction” of Western civilization during the conference and a lot of speakers gave various explanations as to how and why it happened. What would you personally pinpoint as the source of the deconstruction?
I think the crumbling of Western society is really predicated on the idea of human beings as self-creating and autonomous, and I would argue that we’re actually obliged and dependent. If we try to live as if we are independent, free, self-creating autonomous beings, then the traditional structures of society that developed in the pre-modern age will be challenged and eventually disintegrate. The autonomous self has been around for a long time; the difference now is that we have the technology to act on it – autonomy has become plausible because technology enables it.
Do you think AI is only going to make the challenges greater in this respect?
Yes and I think AI in some ways brings new challenges. For example, it’s going to challenge the very notion of human agency. What is it that makes us human? It’s the fact that we have agency. If AI takes away all the things that require human agency, then it will dehumanise us in a way we haven’t witnessed before.
Is there anything you heard from other speakers during the conference that challenged your thinking?
What Melanie Phillips said about the death of Western culture didn’t so much challenge my thinking as make me realise that the self-loathing developing among certain Western societies is greater than I imagined – and very significant in terms of what’s going on.
Do you think the Church has been part of the problem?
Yes. Taking the point I made in my own address about no-fault divorce, the Protestant Church was supine in the face of that. It didn’t make a noise about it or resist it, and it hasn’t addressed it in its own ranks. If the redefinition of marriage is primarily located with no-fault divorce, as I think it is, then one would have to say that many churches are being completely complicit in that redefinition.
Do you see any hope for Britain to turn things around or has the decline gone too far?
I’m here in the same week that Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister and my take on it is that the problems within the British economy and British culture run very deep. A mere change of personality at the top is not going to address those things. It has me wondering if the only way the issues will ever be properly addressed is if there is a major crisis of some kind. It may well be the same in the US, but the problem at this point in time is much greater and more immediate in the UK.