The Curious Career of Cultural Christianity
Among the many abrupt twists and turns in our online-driven, unstable social life, one of the oddest is the recent career of “Cultural Christianity” (hereafter “CC”). CC refers to the merely passive – and precarious – residue of Christianity in many people’s lives, not a fully living faith. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was often denigrated as a sharp decline from the robust religiosity once quite evident in America. Indeed, back then it seemed there was an emerging “Catholic moment” – the title of a 1987 book by our late friend, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, published three years before he converted from Lutheranism. Evangelicals, too, were lamenting “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” the lack of substance among their otherwise committed and politically influential fellows. There seemed to be a mood for Christian renewal.
Renewals occurred, but even greater defections. The “commanding heights” of the culture, as the Soviets used to say – schools, media, popular entertainment – all fell into decadence and outright anti-Christian stances. We’re now living in a sewer of “cultural post-Christianity.” And there seems to be no way back from the abyss.
And yet. . . .In recent months, we’ve seen Richard Dawkins, the great panjandrum of the “New Atheists,” publicly proclaiming (as he sees Britain being overrun by Islam) that he now considers himself a “cultural Christian.” As, for other reasons, does Elon Musk. And, in his own elusive way, perhaps, Jordan Peterson.
And Ayaan Hirsi Ali – ex-Somali Muslim – (and now ex-atheist) has repudiated Western feminist and progressive nostrums destroying the Western heritage. And has formally embraced Christianity.
