Transcription
When we met at the first ARC conference, it was only days after the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel. A day after the attack itself, I was in Mike Johnson's office. He was not then the speaker, and he was expecting to be here. And there was the first of the big protests in Washington. What was clear, this was planned.
And of course, since then we've seen the incredible convergence between radical Islamism, long planned by Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem back in 1941, and radical Marxism in its cultural Marxist form, and the product of the 1967 call for a long march through the institutions. And what we've seen since 2023 is that fateful convergence of these two radicalisms. And the point is that they were against the Christian faith and Judaism, but they are also entirely hostile to the West. In other words, the alternatives are within our gates and powerful. And that's what I want to speak about.
What we see about the civilizational moment and its unfolding since October the 7th. But first, a word on the dreaded topic, religion. There's no problem in this country, in this arena, talking about that. But in many parts of the world, the very word religion or faith creates discomfort. But if you think simply, a culture is a way of life lived in common. And a civilization is a culture that rises high enough, spreads far enough, and lasts long enough to merit the term civilization. And of course, many civilizations have elements of geography and climate. Think of the Nile in Egypt. And institutions such as military, think of Pharaoh's chariots or the Roman sword or the English fleet. But every civilization also has its answer to the basic questions of human existence. And of course, you know almost all that is religious. And yet people today are shying away from talking about it in a serious way. But of course, it is central to what we're talking. People have mentioned this morning, Judeo-Christian culture, yes? Judeo-Christian morality, yes? But there's no escaping the challenge of the Jewish and Christian faiths themselves. And I think we can see three things much more clearly since October the 7th and the first ARC conference, and that's what I'd like to share.
First, the intended replacement has proved absolutely inadequate. In other words, the Enlightenment, summed up in one word as reason, was intended to be the emplacement replacement for the Christian faith, leading humanity forward with progress under reason and not under God. But you can see not only from the waves I've mentioned, the red wave of radical Marxism, the rainbow wave of the radical sexual revolution, and the black wave of radical Islamism. But you can also see how secular liberalism itself has failed. Ironically, it started with reason. But now, reason, understood by postmodernists, is European power or masculine power or white power, and not universal reason. They tried to replace God, but they produced a series of quasi religions. Take Marxism. It begins by claiming that all criticism begins with a criticism of religion. And it ends as a religion which stifles all criticism. Or you can see how they've celebrated how they celebrated the triumph of humanity. And now we're aware of what C.S. Lewis long ago called the abolition of man. And the threat to the very replacement of man by our own media like AI. But you can see even since October the 7th, how much of liberalism has demonstrably shifted from liberal to post-liberal and even to highly illiberal. And there's absolutely no question that the intended replacement, the Enlightenment secularism, has failed. It will not do the job for Western civilization.
Second thing equally clear is that while there has only been a relative resurgence of the Christian faith in some circles, significant circles, too. What's been much more clear is that the renewal of faith is now seen to be indispensable. Humans Humans need three things on a personal level. Meaning, belonging, and purpose. And there's no deeper answers than the Christian faith, rooted in Judaism. But what we see now goes far beyond that. Because as we're discussing civilization, you can see that faith is critical. It's often called the three Rs. The roots of civilization, the restraints of civilization, and the renewal of civilization. The roots, we were talking yesterday about all the great things, say human dignity, that the West has brought into the world, not always practiced, but brought into the world. And as many pointed out, where does that come from? Genesis 1:27. And so the West without that is a cut flower civilization. Those of you Americans, we hold these truths to be self-evident, and all that. Those truths considered self-evident to Plato, Aristotle, and most thinkers in history would have been absurd. People aren't created equal. Some are golden, Plato says, some are silver, and some are bronze. Some are born to rule, Aristotle says, some are born to be ruled. And the idea of created equality is absolutely absurd, except for its roots in the Jewish and Christian faiths. And without them, we become a cut flower civilization. Or take the restraints. Lord Acton's great description of Greece and its greatness. They had freedom. They had democracy. Democracy empowered them more than any other nation in the ancient world. And yet it was unrestrained, and it became the tyranny of the majority. And then imperialism, and it collapsed. Bertrand Russell, who was no lover of the Christian faith, admitted his great heroic period, the Renaissance, again was unrestrained and brought itself to license rather than to liberty. We need chains on our appetites. We need a freedom with order and an ordered freedom. And you could go on down the line. Without restraints, civilization is in trouble.
But the third one, renewal. For the secular world, you only have, I was saying this at breakfast, decline and fall. Entropy. There's no other way. You decline, you will fall. And that's part of the running rules of the course of history, but not biblically. For Jews and for Christians, that natural pairing is not decline and fall, but exile and return. Yes, there's exile when people disobey the ways of the Lord and don't live as he called us to live. It produces chaos and displacement and finally exile. But if people return to him, he returns to them and restores their fortunes. And so you have a pairing of exile and return rather than decline and fall. So even in periods of deep decline, which we're experiencing now, we have the hope of return if we return to the Lord properly.
The third thing I think we can see since October the 7th is the alternative to going back to faith. And that in one word is power. Power. Friedrich Nietzsche in his last work published posthumously, the last lines of his book The Will Will to Power, "What is the world? The world is the will to power and nothing else besides." And that's the world to which we are going. Freedom absolutized becomes anarchy. But reason absolutized becomes authoritarianism. The great Christopher Dawson a century ago long before the rise of Nazism pointed out that countries with an autocratic background like Russia or a military background like Prussia would produce what he called harsh totalitarianism. But countries like Britain and countries like the United States and Canada and Australia with a much more liberal background, they would produce what he called soft totalitarianism or democratic totalitarianism. Creeping regulations, an encroaching state the managerial revolution thinking we can figure out the whole of life and control everything. And all the trends that way are towards control and power. And you can see the threat is not only China and Russia and Iran and North Korea, but powerful movements within our own societies against the freedom of self-government.
So this is a challenging moment and we can't rely on cliches and warm ourselves with truisms. We're at the showdown moment in Western civilization. Will the radical revolutions regenerate society as they promised or not? Will the secular enlightenment of liberalism encourage humanity to go forward and progress with reason alone without God or not? But also is the God of Sinai the God of the burning bush, the God of the burning mountain and our Lord with call of Galilee are these things true or not? The Christian faith will not do anything for civilization if it's viewed as useful. It will do nothing for civilization if we turn it into a psychological version of whatever. It will only be true and effective if it's understood to be true. And you have enough people who are citizens who have an ultimate loyalty to what they see as ultimate reality. Arnold Toynbee, whom I met as a boy and a student here in London he always points out that what's critical and Pitirim Sorokin and others say the same thing. What's critical in the rise of civilization is a creative minority. But what's critical in the turning point of a civilizational moment is also a creative minority. Will there be sufficient citizens with sufficient faith and ultimate loyalty to ultimate reality to prevail against the challenges?
I remember hearing a debate on the BBC between Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Lord Sacks, much lamented Lord Sacks and Richard Dawkins. And at one point in the debate, Rabbi Sacks says to him, "Richard you're tone deaf. You just don't hear the music." To which Dawkins replied famously, "You're right. I am tone deaf. But there is no music." I just stand here and find myself maybe one of the oldest here at the Ark Forum, too. It was 60 years ago that I first heard the music. And I hear it daily. And I hear it as I cross the world still. And I hear a growing symphony. And I hear a growing chorus. May all of us who understand these things at Ark be part of that creative minority who at this crucial moment in civilizational in the West will truly make a difference. Thank you.