By Justin Roy, Juicy Ecumenism.
As bombs fell on London in 1940, the fate of the United Kingdom and Western Civilization balanced on a knife-edge. On the eve of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill spoke to the House of Commons and declared, “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.” In a Europe increasingly divided between the genocidal and totalitarian governments of Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom held out as a bastion of Western civilization.
While the United Kingdom and the West survived the fascist and communist onslaught, questions regarding the health of Western Civilization remained. C.S. Lewis wrote extensively on this subject during this time, and his insights are particularly valuable to modern Christians concerned about growing social and political upheaval within the West.
There is a growing belief that the West is in decline and that the root of this decline is spiritual. This assumption can be found among non-Christians and Christians alike. This includes a growing tide of “Cultural Christians,” non-believers who attach their allegiance selectively to ethics and values they find in Christianity. Agnostics and atheists such as Richard Dawkins are finding value in Cultural Christianity as a means of organizing and potentially saving Western Civilization, but are not believers themselves.
A similar conviction is rising inside the church itself. A growing number of believers argue that the moral and cultural renewal of the nation, and of the broader West, depends on a return to Christian ethics and a shared cultural identity shaped by those ethics. Figures such as Stephen Wolfe, have called for their unique version of Christianity to restore Western Civilization. While their theological commitments and strategies differ, together they signal the emergence of what might be described as a new form of Post-Modern Integralism, an attempt to reimagine the integration of religious values and public life in an age of cultural fragmentation.