Gen Z’s View of Western Civilization from the Kingdom of Dumbledort
Jun 14, 2023 by David Fowler
Last week, Fox News reported that a Gen Z activist said, "We are witnessing the collapse of the Paris of the West and potentially the decline of Western civilization, with San Francisco being the first domino." I would call him an inattentive and uneducated dolt, but that’s not nice. I may have even said something similar about the decline of Western Civilization six or seven years ago. If you would like to avoid living in the Kingdom of Dumbledort as this activist does and I have, please read on.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that Archibald MacLeish, an early 20th century poet, playwright, lawyer, and statesman, wrote a poem containing this line, “A world ends when its metaphor has died.”
If this Gen Z member knew history, and if I had come to know it much sooner, we would have known that the metaphor on which Western Civilization was built—that provided the big picture understanding of the nature of things—has long been dead and gone.
We are not witnessing a potential decline of that civilization, but the result of its death. What I was sensing a few years earlier than this activist was not the approach of death, but the smell of decomposition. A practical metaphor for that is the smelly decomposition is the excrement deposited on San Francisco’s sidewalks every day.
When Did the Western World End?
Alluding to the Paris that this Gen Z activist held up as the pinnacle of Western Civilization and San Francisco its American counterpart, Ernst Troeltsch wrote that “the deadly assault” of “state absolutism (Hobbes), enlightened despotism (Pufendorf), liberal democracy (Locke), or totalitarian democracy (Rousseau)” was not “clearly visible until 1789,” which happens to be the year the French Revolution began.1
Now substitute Paris as a synecdoche for the French Revolution and consider Troeltsch’s next observation: “[T]he French Revolution . . . marks a break with the Church and the whole of the past.”
What About the Past Brought the World to an End?
Prior to the French Revolution, the prevailing metaphor for understanding the nature of the cosmos and how we should live in it—from Athens to Rome to Jerusalem to Golgotha, and then from there to London and Philadelphia (read Russell Kirk, Roots of American Order)—had been that of an ordered universe designed for harmony. The centuries-long conversation about beauty, truth, and goodness in relation to God (or the gods) was replaced by Voltaire’s mad cry, “No God, No Master.”
Leading American Ministers Were Forewarned of the Change
It should have been no surprise that the death of America’s adaptation of Western Civilization would follow in the wake of its death in France and then the rest of Europe–at least to the Presbyterian ministers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Why call out the Presbyterians (who had their big annual General Assembly this week)?
Because in 1898, Abraham Kuyper, perhaps one of the greatest reformed theologians in the last 150 years, said the following to the seminarians at Princeton (a Presbyterian seminary highly esteemed in those days):
He knew the San Francisco that the Gen Z activist described was coming if the Presbyterians, then still influential in America, didn’t pay attention.
They apparently didn’t, and from what I see as a Presbyterian, few thereafter have paid attention either.
Why might that be? Based on what I’ve read and seen, whatever public theology Presbyterian ministers may have once had has been replaced with an atomized, individualistic gospel of piety. The majority of Presbyterian ministers I personally know, though not all, have forgotten their theological heritage.
The History of Christianity I Didn’t Learn
For those ministers, Presbyterian or not, who have not considered and judged the flow of history theologically since the last letter written by an Apostle or their denomination was founded, perhaps this will stir the pot in a helpful way:
What is he saying? Even then, more than 100 years ago, churches (at least the Presbyterian ones Kuyper was concerned about) were focused on process and procedures and their energy for dogmatics (do churches teach a full-orbed creation-sized dogma anymore?) was being exhausted on the piety of individuals.
They have forgotten what theologian Albert Wolters wrote in Creation Regained: God’s law pertains to all aspects of creation. So, there are laws that pertain to how a Christian should understand and engage with art, education, science, and civil government. He wrote:
Seems that most churches leave everything but the internal ordering of the church and individual piety to the world to operate according to a law contrived by mankind, rather than God.
No wonder the things conservative Bible-believing evangelical preachers preach against are so prevalent. What did they expect if they had no public theology? What did they expect if they believed or, by their silence, let their congregations believe, none of these other things were normed by a law of God?
When an ordered, harmonious creation by God ceased to be the metaphor by which even the cross is to be understood, the world as it was known in the development of Western Civilization died.
A Suggestion for Those Who Want Something More and Better
If you want to get a better metaphor in your head and if you want to recover the one that led to progress, not the feces and crime riddled streets of San Francisco and other major American cities, you might want to listen to this podcast from a Knox Unplugged Live event we hosted in May.
About halfway through the program, a friend who was raised in conservative Bible-believing churches said, “I feel like I need another conversion.” He is not alone. My recognition of that same need just came a few years earlier than his.
1 Quoted in James Maclellan, Joseph Story and the American Constitution
2 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (1931; reprinted, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), ___.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that Archibald MacLeish, an early 20th century poet, playwright, lawyer, and statesman, wrote a poem containing this line, “A world ends when its metaphor has died.”
If this Gen Z member knew history, and if I had come to know it much sooner, we would have known that the metaphor on which Western Civilization was built—that provided the big picture understanding of the nature of things—has long been dead and gone.
We are not witnessing a potential decline of that civilization, but the result of its death. What I was sensing a few years earlier than this activist was not the approach of death, but the smell of decomposition. A practical metaphor for that is the smelly decomposition is the excrement deposited on San Francisco’s sidewalks every day.
When Did the Western World End?
Alluding to the Paris that this Gen Z activist held up as the pinnacle of Western Civilization and San Francisco its American counterpart, Ernst Troeltsch wrote that “the deadly assault” of “state absolutism (Hobbes), enlightened despotism (Pufendorf), liberal democracy (Locke), or totalitarian democracy (Rousseau)” was not “clearly visible until 1789,” which happens to be the year the French Revolution began.1
Now substitute Paris as a synecdoche for the French Revolution and consider Troeltsch’s next observation: “[T]he French Revolution . . . marks a break with the Church and the whole of the past.”
What About the Past Brought the World to an End?
Prior to the French Revolution, the prevailing metaphor for understanding the nature of the cosmos and how we should live in it—from Athens to Rome to Jerusalem to Golgotha, and then from there to London and Philadelphia (read Russell Kirk, Roots of American Order)—had been that of an ordered universe designed for harmony. The centuries-long conversation about beauty, truth, and goodness in relation to God (or the gods) was replaced by Voltaire’s mad cry, “No God, No Master.”
Leading American Ministers Were Forewarned of the Change
It should have been no surprise that the death of America’s adaptation of Western Civilization would follow in the wake of its death in France and then the rest of Europe–at least to the Presbyterian ministers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Why call out the Presbyterians (who had their big annual General Assembly this week)?
Because in 1898, Abraham Kuyper, perhaps one of the greatest reformed theologians in the last 150 years, said the following to the seminarians at Princeton (a Presbyterian seminary highly esteemed in those days):
[A]lthough on the American continent, in a younger world, a relatively healthier tone of life prevails than in senescent Europe, yet this will not for a moment mislead the thinking mind. It is impossible for you to shut yourselves off hermetically from the old world, as you form no humanity apart, but are a member of the great body of the race. And the poison having once entered the system at a single point, in due time must necessarily pervade the whole organism.2
He knew the San Francisco that the Gen Z activist described was coming if the Presbyterians, then still influential in America, didn’t pay attention.
They apparently didn’t, and from what I see as a Presbyterian, few thereafter have paid attention either.
Why might that be? Based on what I’ve read and seen, whatever public theology Presbyterian ministers may have once had has been replaced with an atomized, individualistic gospel of piety. The majority of Presbyterian ministers I personally know, though not all, have forgotten their theological heritage.
The History of Christianity I Didn’t Learn
For those ministers, Presbyterian or not, who have not considered and judged the flow of history theologically since the last letter written by an Apostle or their denomination was founded, perhaps this will stir the pot in a helpful way:
Calvinism did not stop at a church-order, but expanded in a life system, and did not exhaust its energy in a dogmatical construction, but created a life- and world-view. and such a one as was, and still is, able to fit itself to the needs of every stage of human development, in every department of life. It raised our Christian religion to its highest spiritual splendor: it created a church order, which became the preformation of state confederation it proved to be the guardian angel of science; it emancipated art: it propagated a political scheme, which gave birth to constitutional government, both in Europe and America; it fostered agriculture and industry, commerce and navigation; it put a thorough Christian stamp upon home-life and family-ties; it promoted through its high moral standard purity in our social circles and to this manifold effect it placed beneath Church and State, beneath society and home-circle a fundamental philosophic conception strictly derived from its dominating principle, and therefore all its own.
What is he saying? Even then, more than 100 years ago, churches (at least the Presbyterian ones Kuyper was concerned about) were focused on process and procedures and their energy for dogmatics (do churches teach a full-orbed creation-sized dogma anymore?) was being exhausted on the piety of individuals.
They have forgotten what theologian Albert Wolters wrote in Creation Regained: God’s law pertains to all aspects of creation. So, there are laws that pertain to how a Christian should understand and engage with art, education, science, and civil government. He wrote:
Persons in positions of societal authority (or “office”) are called to positivise God’s ordinances directly in their own specific sphere. Their authority is delegated to them by God, not by any human authority. Consequently, they are also directly responsible to God. Church, marriage, family, corporation, state, and school all stand alongside each other before the face of God. . . . Christians should actively engage in efforts to make every societal institution assume its own responsibility, warding off the interference of others. That, too, is participation in the restoration of creation and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Seems that most churches leave everything but the internal ordering of the church and individual piety to the world to operate according to a law contrived by mankind, rather than God.
No wonder the things conservative Bible-believing evangelical preachers preach against are so prevalent. What did they expect if they had no public theology? What did they expect if they believed or, by their silence, let their congregations believe, none of these other things were normed by a law of God?
When an ordered, harmonious creation by God ceased to be the metaphor by which even the cross is to be understood, the world as it was known in the development of Western Civilization died.
A Suggestion for Those Who Want Something More and Better
If you want to get a better metaphor in your head and if you want to recover the one that led to progress, not the feces and crime riddled streets of San Francisco and other major American cities, you might want to listen to this podcast from a Knox Unplugged Live event we hosted in May.
About halfway through the program, a friend who was raised in conservative Bible-believing churches said, “I feel like I need another conversion.” He is not alone. My recognition of that same need just came a few years earlier than his.
1 Quoted in James Maclellan, Joseph Story and the American Constitution
2 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (1931; reprinted, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), ___.
