By Daniël Eloff, The Critic
In this post-progressive era the West is entering the calls for a return to “Christian civilisation” has made a Lazarus level comeback into public conversation across Europe, America and the West generally. It is sung most loudly by what is loosely called the “new right” — a coalition of cultural conservatives, online polemicists, and ordinary citizens unnerved by immigration, moral drift, and the sense that their societies are slipping away from them. You hear it in speeches in Hungary, in the Twitter feeds of young American nationalists, five-hour podcasts, and Substack posts advocating this vision which even reach our sunny shores here at the southern tip of Africa.
As a Christian myself, the desire is understandable and, in my view, necessary. Our societies have grown weary and cynical, and the moral vocabulary of justice, charity, restraint and fidelity that Christianity offers could indeed steady the ship. As R.R. Reno notes in Return of the Strong Gods, decades of Western life have been shaped around what he calls the “weak gods” of openness and relativism. The new right’s sudden piety can be seen as a reaction to this emptiness, a longing for something solid, binding, and sacred. The tragedy is that what they invoke in Christianity they often avoid in practice.
I find myself unsettled by the shallowness of much of this talk. Many who champion the “Christian West” seem to imagine that Christianity is something that can be draped like a flag over the public square without much change to their own private lives. They want the cultural glow of Christendom without the cost of discipleship.