Christendom and Western Civilization

Christendom and the Church
by Ryan Setliff

M. Stanton Evans observes that "[t]he conservative believes ours is a God-centered, and therefore an ordered, universe [and] that man's purpose is to shape his life to the patterns of order proceeding from the Divine center of life." ¹ Conservative luminary Russell Kirk explains the conservative's acknowledgment of an immutable, transcendent Deity:

Christians know that there exists a supernatural power, which we can perceive only dimly with our imperfect senses: a Supreme Being, the creator of heaven and earth, all-powerful. And that Supreme Being, God, made mankind, as He made everything else; but for the human person. He has a special regard and a special mission. God created man in His own image. From time to time in history, God has revealed to man His power and His love. Slowly and painfully, an obscure desert people, the tribes of Israel, came to be aware of the nature of God; and through them, an understanding of God's majesty and intentions—so far as these things can be understood at all by mankind—was transmitted to the Christian world. To Moses on Mount Sinai, to prophets and saints, through miracles—and most important of all to the Christian, through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Redeemer—God made himself and his commandments known to mankind. In orthodox Christian doctrine, God became flesh in the person of Jesus, and suffered on the cross so that mankind might understand His nature and follow in His steps. ²

Does Christianity need the West? More aptly, the West needs Christianity! Christianity remains integral to the Western tradition. Whatever grandeur and greatness may be perceived in the uniquely Western tradition can only be fathomed by reflecting upon the underlying Christian foundation. As Pat Buchanan observed,

The Old and New Testaments are not only infallible guides to personal salvation; they contain the prescriptions for just laws and the good society—for building a city set upon a hill. Religion is at the root of morality; and morality is the basis of law. Many decades ago, America's intellectual elite privately uttered its non serviam to the God of Christianity. America, meanwhile, continued to live off the inherited capital of the old faith. Now, the dissent from, and disbelief in, traditional Hebrew and Christian values and proscriptions is widespread. The routine deference once accorded the traditional churches is no longer profered. ³

As the Holy Bible instructs us about sin and man's depravity, it reminds us of the limits of political activism, and not to expect an idyllic utopia or Heaven on Earth:

Christianity teaches resignation: not to expect perfection in this world. But it also teaches hope: aspiration to attain immortality and perfection, in another realm, through following the path God has pointed out. And it reminds men and women that their duty is always to work for their own salvation and for the sake of thers, even though no one even will be perfectly happy in this world of ours. ⁴

Russell Kirk further reminds us of the integral nature of religious moorings to Western civilization. Religious teaching has served as the guidepost and lamp to light our paths, and preserve order in society.

Civilization grows out of religion, the morals, the politics, the economics, the literature, and the arts of any people all have a religious origin. Every people no matter how savage or how civilized, have some form of religion: that is, some form of belief in a great supernatural power that influences human destinies. There had be no in the whole history of the world that did not recognize the existence of God, or gods, until the Communists of Soviet Russia, and their satellite states disavowed all religion and made atheism the official belief of the nation. But even the Soviets did not succeed in stamping out religious faith in their own territories; indeed, the influence of Christianity was increasing prior to the fall of the Soviet Empire. And even the Communists recognized that a people cannot exist without a body of moral principles. ⁵

The health of civil society and the preservation and continuity of traditional structures such as the family needs the sustenance of the church. Christopher Dawson, an independent English scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom opined:

Without Christianity, there would no doubt have been some kind of civilization in the West, but it would have been quite a different civilization from that which we knew; for it was only as Christendom—the society of Christian people—that the tribes and people and nations of the West acquired a common consciousness and sense of cultural and spiritual unity... ⁶

Accordingly, the West owes its core to Christianity. The sense of cultural and religious solidarity and feelings of commonality allowed bickering nations to put aside their differences periodically. In so doing, they built a thriving civilization and erected a Fortress Europe to thwart Islamic encroachment. These tendencies manifest that the West in every meaningful sense is a product of Christianity. To understand the West, one must understand Christianity. Christianity may be arguably an oriental idea, but Christianity is the lifeblood of the West.