Christian culture is under fresh attack. Those striving to preserve old Christian institutions, to maintain the Bible and Church traditions as a common cultural reference point, or to use scriptural ideas to influence society’s laws and ethics, regardless of whether society still possesses an underlying faith, are facing censure.
This new assault has not come from the usual suspects: Islamists, secularists, decolonisers or the woke left. Instead, the latest cries against Christian culture are coming from Christians themselves.
The faith of Christ’s apostles was active. Its ethic was constructive
The charge has been led by Paul Kingsnorth, the writer, environmentalist and former journalist, who was baptised into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2021. In a recent lecture given in New York, he berated the concept of Christian culture, and indeed Christian civilisation.
For Kingsnorth, Christianity and civilisation are a contradiction. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘is spiritually beneficial about this “Western civilisation” – or any civilisation?’ God, he observes, made man ‘to inhabit a garden, in communion with all life’.
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