Keeping the Faith

 Yesterday I accompanied Mrs N – who is rather keener on this sort of thing than I am – to an event in the cathedral titled 'Keeping the Faith: Can Christianity Save the West?' Three good guest speakers were lined up – Jamie Franklin, author of The Great Return: Why Only a Restoration of Christianity Can Save Western Civilisation; Bijan Omrani, author of God Is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England; and Nick Spencer, author of Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity – and each gave a good account of their particular perspective. It was all very well-mannered and good-humoured, but there was not much talk about saving the West, or what it needed saving from, and indeed the question was not explicitly asked by the chair until near the end, so there was not a great deal of time to explore it.
  One of the themes throughout was how deeply imbued our values, institutions and ways of thinking are with ideas that are clearly derived from Christianity, and it seems to me – without getting too Nietzschean about it – that it is precisely those ideas, as embodied in secular liberalism, that have sunk western civilisation and brought it to its present crisis. Love of neighbour, tolerance, openness, hospitality to strangers, compassion, empathy ('suicidal empathy', in Gad Saad's phrase) – all of these basically Christian values have been weaponised against us, and might in the end finish off our particular civilisation.
  Ah well, it was very pleasant to sit in the cathedral's lady chapel for an hour, admiring the intricate stone vaulting and those marvellous stained-glass windows, lit by mellow autumn sunshine. It will all last a while yet...