Things are bad indeed, but there is a way forward:
For decades now I have been writing and speaking about the various wars we are in, be they the culture wars, or the various other assaults on faith, family and freedom. In public talks (usually done with a PowerPoint slide show), I will share plenty of examples of the battles we are now in, and how our side is often losing.
I recall one such talk that I did perhaps 20 years ago – or more. Chatting with folks after my presentation, a Catholic priest came up to me and thanked me for my talk. He then said it would be good to offer the people some hope and not just leave them discouraged and overwhelmed. He said that concluding on a more positive note might be advisable.
I thanked him for those wise words, and I did indeed take them to heart. If we share just all the bad news about what is happening in the world – and in the church – without something for listeners to latch on to and run with, we may not be as effective as we can be.
So I try now to have a conclusion to my talks which can offer people some reason to keep on keeping on. Things are very dark indeed out there, so we need all the help and encouragement we can get to hang in there. With all this in mind, let me refer to a new book that I have been writing about of late.
Some volumes are worth discussing more than once. One such book is by Os Guinness. Titled Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds (Kildare, 2024), it looks at the main threats the West is now experiencing.
I have already looked at his chapters on Islam, Marxism and the sexual revolution. But in keeping with the sage advice of my Catholic friend, I want to highlight the closing chapter, which is a call to arms and a reminder that we all can make a difference.
His Conclusion is called “Choose Freedom” and early in it he says this:
The next generation or two, and the choice they make, will be decisive for the future of the West, but only within the broad contours that the nature of humanity and the character of the West make possible. The civilizational moment we are in grows clearer by the day, and the contest, the conflicts, and the choices that it represents are unmistakeable. (pp. 169-170)
He says it comes down to three main worldviews or families of faith:
The first family is the eastern (including Hinduism, Buddhism, and the New Age movement). The second is the secularist (including atheism, agnosticism, naturalism, and materialism). The third is the Abrahamic (including Judaism, the Christian faith, and Islam). But in light of Western history, the choice is more likely to be between a form of secularist materialism that has descended from the Enlightenment and a partnership between the Jewish and Christian faiths that have been the central inspiration of the West. (pp. 170-171)
And the way ahead is to look back and see what it was that made the West great in the first place:
Just as it is vain for Americans to try to make America great again without knowing what made America in the first place, so too it is futile for the West to talk of renewing and restoring the West without taking seriously what made the West at the start. Yet clearly, what will be decisive for the West is the choice we Westerners make, and why. In essence, the choice, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks underscored repeatedly, is the choice between “the idea of power and the power of ideas.” (p. 172)
Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worldsby Guinness, Os (Author)
Guinness says that ten questions must be answered by the West if we are to get through our civilisational moment more or less unscathed.
First, will the West launch and sustain a free and open forum for thinking and debate, that prizes reason, exploration, civility, a hearing with voices from all sides, and argument for the sake of truth, not power?
Second, will the West see a revival and restoration of the vitality of the faiths that created their ultimate allegiances and set out their view of ultimate reality – the faiths that inspired the vision of the West at its best, strengthened its ethics, enabled its art and its science, empowered its endeavours, and rebuked and reformed its evils and excuses?
Third, will the West articulate and justify a noble view of humanity and human worth, which can ground the highest aspirations and claims for humanity, including human rights, which can ground the notion of freedom in the face of the powerful forces of determinism, which can address the human capacity for evil and the abuse of power, and which can counterbalance and guide the Super-Intelligence of human creations in the world of tomorrow.
Fourth, will the West clarify the foundational truths that are both valid and indispensable for building and sustaining free and just societies?
Fifth, will the West refresh the core institutions that are the soul of its civil society?
Sixth, will the West establish and protect the freedom of the responsible sovereignty of the citizen at the individual and personal level, at the local level, and the national level?
Seventh, will the West teach and sustain the robust personal and communal virtues and values without which freedom itself and the element of self-government required by democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is utterly impossible?
Eighth, will the West build and maintain a “civil public square” (in which people of all faiths and none are free to enter and engaged public life openly from the perspective of what they believe)?
Ninth, will the West teach and form its citizens’ capacity to say No, without which the excesses of liberty descending into licence and the complacency and enervation of superabundance will ensure that freedom once again undermines itself and becomes its own worst enemy?
Tenth, will the West keep on handing on its ideas and ideals from generation to generation, and from established citizens to new immigrants, so that the identity, unity and continuity of free nations may be sustained unbroken over the years? (pp. 172-175)
He looks at each one in more detail, and then says there can be no sitting on the fence here:
What is clear is that the West cannot have it both ways much longer. Sitting on the fence is neither comfortable nor a long-term option. Choices must be made. Either God is there, real, ultimate, and decisive, or he is not. Either secularism is correct that unaided human reason is all-sufficient for directing human life, or it is not. Either the revolutions of the left will bring about their much-vaunted complete and total transformations and the regeneration of humanity, or they won’t. To be sure, the full outcome of our choices will not be ours to decide, So we must be humble. The best and wisest choices will always carry unforeseen consequences and unknown aftermaths. And there are forces at work that transcend ideas and actions of individuals, hurrying humans to ends of which they are not aware. (p. 176)
Guinness closes the chapter and the book with these words:
It is now time for the West, and indeed for the entire world, to choose life, to choose human worth, to choose freedom, to choose justice, to choose peace, and to choose the faiths that alone can stand across the slide down to authoritarianism and make life, dignity, freedom, justice, and peace both real and achievable for humanity yet again. Let us choose wisely and well. Let us choose as human dignity deserves, as human freedom requires, as human hearts truly desire, and only faith can inspire and empower, and in this way let us strive for the renewal and restoration of civilization and a better human future. So may it be. (p. 177)
It is said that the prophet afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. He must warn, but he must also point the way ahead. Guinness nicely fulfils the role of the prophet in this important book.
Now it is not possible to clone the Guinness of and such an experiment is of course not desirable either.
But – seriously – imagine if there was a “Guinness Society” in all civilized countries. Not just a think tank in an academic environment but at a Christian grassroots level.
That would be the beginning of the end for the woke talk, pride garment waving and other things…!!
RÖ/Sweden
Thanks Rolf.
Why does he write of faiths and not the faith? There seems to be an alliance between Islam and the death-dealing secularist Left against the West. Our hope is in the triune God. The unitarian faiths lead to death in the end.
Thanks John. As I said in my article above, I already looked at other chapters in his book, including his hard-hitting critique of Islam:
So by ‘faiths’ he mainly means the biblical ones as found in both Testaments.
I was told recently that it costs about “$10,000” to publish a book in Australia. If, as an author, you write about the things you mention above in terms that question their political correctness based on identity politics, which seems to go over the heads of most people, then you are not even worthy of a reply. Some regional libraries, whose local council once employed a reference librarian have cut the position. Some former independent publishers have been bought out by multi-nationals, but in most cases they were already a closed-shop to manuscripts like those described above. I think of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ in seventeenth century England, where to publish required the King’s imprimatur, but somehow, he flew under the radar and a brave soul introduced the world-wide classic. Postmodern cinema continues without an existential plot. Culturally, we are in a dire and dark situation and few either notice or give a fig.
Thanks Russell.
Further to my comments on books above, the $10k includes an editor’s fee, which seems excessive, so some horse-trading in required, but I was also told that the major supermarkets et al who sell books do so as ‘loss leader’ trading, i.e., they mark books down below a bookshop RRP and balance their profit through other items in the store, such as clothing on which there is a much bigger mark-up. What this suggests is that authors are not value and that books are commodities, rather than repositories of story. I don’t know how the government feels about this, but its Arts Minister should at least get involved for the future of our national cultural freedoms, of which Os Guinness is a watchman.
Thanks again Russell. A much cheaper option is self-publishing, which I have done for most of my books.
I am an American living in the UK for the past 30 years. What we are presently experiencing in the UK is a multi pronged attack on British Identity. Presently we now have an Islamic party of 5 MP’s who only represent areas within the UK their Muslim Community. We also have 1st cousin marriage which is very prominent in the Kashmiri Pakistan community which has a significant proportion of birth defects among their children. No one will speak on this issue over cultural sensitivity.
Every daily we have boats arriving from France full of young single Muslim men from Albania and other Muslim countries. They pay the French handlers $5000.00 each to cross the channel. The present UK govt is spending £5 Billion pounds a year to house, feed, provide phones and free health care to these individuals who have no skills, we have no idea who they are and the UK is crumbling with total permission and invitation of the UK govt.
Some people are saying the UK is close to civil war, not the army in the streets, more like the IRA activities from the early days in Northern Ireland.
Look at Europe and how it has changed with Islam migrants.
The reality is MATH. Muslim are very good at having children, this is a good thing. While the indigenous population is not reproducing. In the end, Math wins, Islam, in time will dominate Europe.
Now it is not possible to clone the Guinness of and such an experiment is of course not desirable either.
But – seriously – imagine if there was a “Guinness Society” in all civilized countries. Not just a think tank in an academic environment but at a Christian grassroots level.
That would be the beginning of the end for the woke talk, pride garment waving and other things…!!
RÖ/Sweden
Thanks Rolf.
Why does he write of faiths and not the faith? There seems to be an alliance between Islam and the death-dealing secularist Left against the West. Our hope is in the triune God. The unitarian faiths lead to death in the end.
Thanks John. As I said in my article above, I already looked at other chapters in his book, including his hard-hitting critique of Islam:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/08/10/os-guinness-on-israel-the-west-and-islamism/
So by ‘faiths’ he mainly means the biblical ones as found in both Testaments.
I was told recently that it costs about “$10,000” to publish a book in Australia. If, as an author, you write about the things you mention above in terms that question their political correctness based on identity politics, which seems to go over the heads of most people, then you are not even worthy of a reply. Some regional libraries, whose local council once employed a reference librarian have cut the position. Some former independent publishers have been bought out by multi-nationals, but in most cases they were already a closed-shop to manuscripts like those described above. I think of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ in seventeenth century England, where to publish required the King’s imprimatur, but somehow, he flew under the radar and a brave soul introduced the world-wide classic. Postmodern cinema continues without an existential plot. Culturally, we are in a dire and dark situation and few either notice or give a fig.
Thanks Russell.
Further to my comments on books above, the $10k includes an editor’s fee, which seems excessive, so some horse-trading in required, but I was also told that the major supermarkets et al who sell books do so as ‘loss leader’ trading, i.e., they mark books down below a bookshop RRP and balance their profit through other items in the store, such as clothing on which there is a much bigger mark-up. What this suggests is that authors are not value and that books are commodities, rather than repositories of story. I don’t know how the government feels about this, but its Arts Minister should at least get involved for the future of our national cultural freedoms, of which Os Guinness is a watchman.
Thanks again Russell. A much cheaper option is self-publishing, which I have done for most of my books.
I am an American living in the UK for the past 30 years. What we are presently experiencing in the UK is a multi pronged attack on British Identity. Presently we now have an Islamic party of 5 MP’s who only represent areas within the UK their Muslim Community. We also have 1st cousin marriage which is very prominent in the Kashmiri Pakistan community which has a significant proportion of birth defects among their children. No one will speak on this issue over cultural sensitivity.
Every daily we have boats arriving from France full of young single Muslim men from Albania and other Muslim countries. They pay the French handlers $5000.00 each to cross the channel. The present UK govt is spending £5 Billion pounds a year to house, feed, provide phones and free health care to these individuals who have no skills, we have no idea who they are and the UK is crumbling with total permission and invitation of the UK govt.
Some people are saying the UK is close to civil war, not the army in the streets, more like the IRA activities from the early days in Northern Ireland.
Look at Europe and how it has changed with Islam migrants.
The reality is MATH. Muslim are very good at having children, this is a good thing. While the indigenous population is not reproducing. In the end, Math wins, Islam, in time will dominate Europe.
Many thanks Timothy.