Apparently New Atheism is out, cultural Christianity is in – but where’s Jesus?

New Atheism is out, cultural Christianity is in – it would appear. At the least, it’s undeniable that a significant number of public intellectuals are discovering an interest in the Christian faith. This interest has led some to a wholehearted conversion (for example, in the cases of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Niall Ferguson, or Tammy Peterson). For others (Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray and Konstantin Kisin, to name a few), their beliefs remains more elusive; Christianity is more to be gestured towards than fully embraced.

Nowhere was this clearer than at the ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) conference which took place in London from 17 -19 February. An impressive gathering of over four thousand people from around the world, the conference was centred around ARC’s vision of renewal, based on the conviction that Western civilisation is in decline, but animated by the hope that we can “re-lay the foundations of our civilisation”. A mission that’s nothing if not ambitious.

In his first speech, Jordan Peterson encouraged attendees to foster a “genuine and mutually appreciative union of traditional conservatism and classic liberalism” against hedonism. That seems reasonable for a conference with the goal of responsible citizenship at its heart. But how do we achieve that in practice? “Sacrifice,” uttered Peterson with his customary tone of earnestness, is the only way.

What followed was a perfect example of both the strengths and limitations of cultural Christianity. Peterson punctured the rest of his speech with near admissions of the truth of the Christian faith, yet time and time again he was careful to just miss the mark. “The biblical library,” as Peterson referred to it, is one of the “foundational texts” of “free western societies” which acts as “extended studies” on the necessity of self-sacrifice for the sake of future generations.

For Peterson, Christianity is not true myth, as C. S. Lewis famously put it, but a “uniting meta-narrative”. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that while the “Christian drama” of sacrifice was invoked many times, Christ himself was never mentioned.

The rhetoric of “narrative”, though doubtlessly appealing to non-Christians, runs the risk of obscuring Christian truths. “The sacrifice most pleasing to God,” Peterson concluded, “is the sacrifice that tends towards the ultimate.” But what about the fact that the greatest sacrifice was in fact God’s own sacrifice to redeem humanity through Christ’s incarnation?

Peterson wants to reassure us that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, transcend our egotistic selves, and reach up towards “the divine”. The Christian faith teaches us that it’s God who, in his mercy, reaches down to us from heaven. We can’t rebuild a civilisation through sheer force of will. We need otium as well as negotium; prayer as well as hard work.

To be fair to Peterson, he doesn’t profess to be a Christian, but as his brand of cultural Christianity gains momentum, it’s starting to rub off on those who do profess the faith. For example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali agreed with Peterson that the West’s decline is linked to the fading of Christianity. “My message to you today,” she clarified on the second day of the conference, “is to stress that responsible citizenship in the West is inseparable from Christian morality.”

I have a lot of respect for Hirsi Ali, whom I believe to be sincere in her conversion to Christianity. Yet her statement begs the question, how can we embrace “Christian morality” without believing the truth of the Christian story?

But, I can hear the likes of Rod Dreher argue, ARC is a conference about responsible citizenship, not a spiritual retreat. Why can’t we work to save Western civilisation while knowing that it’s “not the same thing as salvation”? Why can’t we make Christianity palatable to a wider audience for the sake of collaboration? From that perspective, there’s nothing wrong with Peterson referring to Christ’s life as a “meta-narrative” or Hirsi Ali encouraging a return to “Christian morality”.

I take the point. Yet the problem remains that the path from cultural Christianity to the instrumentality of the Christian faith is temptingly short and insidiously smooth. We should remain cautious. “The nation states,” continued Hirsi Ali in the same speech, “need Christian morality” to survive. What does this mean? Should states encourage church attendance or make Bible study compulsory in school? Do we even need to believe in Christ or is it sufficient to find his story compelling? And more importantly, if a day should come when we no longer “need” Christianity to thrive, are we meant to toss it aside?

Peterson, Hirsi Ali and many more speakers at ARC are right, of course, to point out that the West has been defined by the Christian faith. I applaud them for saying it loud and clear, and their success is an encouraging sign that Christianity is being taken more seriously in the secular world. I’m certainly not proposing a Christian retreat from society, nor am I advocating against working with secular sympathisers of the Christian faith towards common goals.

We should not lose sight of the goal of the Christian life, the ultimate end for which we were created. Christians built the first hospitals, the first universities, the most beautiful cathedrals. As Paul Kingsnorth recently argued, “The monks built the West, just as surely as the soldiers did, and they built the more enduring part.”

As Christians, we believe that we were made to love and be loved by God. That is our telos, our end: God. We build for Him. If we have lost something, it is still for Him that we restore and renew it. Any other good that results from orienting our lives towards Christ, even if it is as noble as reviving Western civilisation – should be incidental. We simply can’t save a crumbling castle without feeding the souls of those who toil to repair it.

Ultimately the question is, what are we citizens of? If we truly believe that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20), then we must make it clear that the Christian faith is not merely useful, but also true. For Christians, responsible citizenship means declaring the truth of the faith even as we work with non-Christians for better societies whilst here on earth.

It also means remembering the importance of prayer and surrendering to God’s will. One of the most arresting moments in the ARC conference was when Archbishop Angaelos, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of London, spurred the audience not to underestimate the power of prayer. He’s right. We can’t do everything alone. We don’t just need Christian morality to rebuild. We need Christ himself: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain” (Psalm 127:1).

Photo: Jordan Peterson addressing the audience at the inaugural 2023 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference (screenshot from video at arcforum.com).

The post Apparently New Atheism is out, cultural Christianity is in – but where’s Jesus? first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Apparently New Atheism is out, cultural Christianity is in – but where’s Jesus? appeared first on Catholic Herald.