Read the full transcript of author and social critic Os Guinness’s talk at The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) 2025 on Feb 18, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Convergence of Radical Ideologies
OS GUINNESS: When we met at the first art conference, it was only days after the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel. A day after the attack itself, I was in Mike Johnson’s office. He was not then the speaker, and he was expecting to be here.
There was the first of the big protests in Washington. What was clear, this was planned. And of course, since then we’ve seen the incredible convergence between radical Islamism, long planned by Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem back in 1941, and radical Marxism in its cultural Marxist form, and the product of the 1967 call for a long march through the institutions.
And what we’ve seen since 2023 is that fateful convergence of these two radicalisms, and the point is that they were against the Christian faith and Judaism, but they are also entirely hostile to the West. In other words, the alternatives are within our gates and powerful.
And that’s what I want to speak about, what we see about the civilizational moment and its unfolding since October 7th.
The Role of Religion in Civilization
But first, a word on the dreaded topic, religion. There’s no problem in this country, in this arena, talking about that, but in many parts of the world, the very word religion or faith creates discomfort.
But if you think simply, a culture is a way of life lived in common. And a civilization is a culture that rises high enough, spreads far enough, and lasts long enough to merit the term civilization. And of course, many civilizations have elements of geography and climate. Think of the Nile in Egypt. And institutions such as military, think of Pharaoh’s chariots, or the Roman sword, or the English fleet.
But every civilization also has its answer to the basic questions of human existence. And of course, in almost all, that is religious. And yet people today are shying away from talking about it in a serious way.
But of course, it is central to what we’re talking. People have mentioned this morning, Judeo-Christian culture, yes. Judeo-Christian morality, yes.
But there’s no escaping the challenge of the Jewish and Christian faiths themselves. And I think we can see three things much more clearly since October the 7th and the first art conference, and that’s what I’d like to share.
The Failure of Enlightenment Secularism
First, the intended replacement has proved absolutely inadequate. In other words, the Enlightenment, summed up in one word as reason, was intended to be the replacement for the Christian faith, leading humanity forward with progress under reason and not under God.
But you can see not only from the waves I’ve mentioned, the red wave of radical Marxism, the rainbow wave of the radical sexual revolution, and the black wave of radical Islamism, but you can also see how secular liberalism itself has failed. Ironically, it started with reason.
But now, reason, understood by postmodernists, is European power, or masculine power, or white power, and not universal reason. They tried to replace God, but they produced a series of quasi-religions. Take Marxism. It begins by claiming that all criticism begins with the criticism of religion, and it ends as a religion which stifles all criticism. Or you can see how they’ve celebrated the triumph of humanity.
And now we’re aware of what C.S. Lewis long ago called the abolition of man, and the threat to the very replacement of man by our own media like AI.
But you can see, even since October the 7th, how much of liberalism has demonstrably shifted from liberal to post-liberal and even to highly illiberal. And there’s absolutely no question that the intended replacement, the Enlightenment secularism, has failed. It will not do the job for Western civilization.
The Indispensable Renewal of Faith
Second thing, equally clear, is that while there has only been a relative resurgence of the Christian faith in some circles, significant circles too, what’s been much more clear is that the renewal of faith is now seen to be indispensable. Humans need three things on a personal level. Meaning, belonging, and purpose.
And there’s no deeper answers than the Christian faith rooted in Judaism.
But what we see now goes far beyond that. Because as we’re discussing civilization, you can see that faith is critical. It’s often called the three R’s. The roots of civilization, the restraints of civilization, and the renewal of civilization.
The roots. We were talking yesterday about all the great things, say, human dignity, that the West has brought into the world. Not always practiced, but brought into the world.
And as many pointed out, where does that come from? Genesis 1.27. And so the West, without that, is a cut flower civilization. Those of you Americans, we hold these truths to be self-evident, and all that. Those truths considered self-evident to Plato, Aristotle, and most thinkers in history, would have been absurd.
People aren’t created equal. Some are golden, Plato says. Some are silver and some are bronze. Some are born to rule, Aristotle says. Some are born to be ruled.
And the idea of created equality is absolutely absurd, except for its roots in the Jewish and Christian faiths. And without them, we become a cut flower civilization. Or take the restraints. Lord Acton’s great description of Greece and its greatness.
They had freedom. They had democracy. Democracy empowered them more than any other nation in the ancient world. And yet it was unrestrained, and it became the tyranny of the majority, and then imperialism, and it collapsed. Bertrand Russell, who was no lover of the Christian faith, admitted his great heroic period, the Renaissance, again was unrestrained, and brought itself to license rather than to liberty.
We need chains on our appetites. We need a freedom with order, and an ordered freedom. And you could go on down the line.