A Defense of Christianity

The West was created by Christianity and it remains the most potent myth to organize our civilization.

Written by Bo Winegard.

It was an age of reason; it was an age of superstition. As the supposedly absurd beliefs of traditional Christianity were stripped from intellectual life, many expected a more humane, more enlightened society to follow. At the beginning of the twentieth century, and even as late as the 1990s, such an expectation may have seemed sensible. But today, in a world beset by cultish partisanship and a host of novel superstitions, it no longer does. The Church has been replaced by the omnipresent political tribe, and the miracle of the Resurrection has been replaced by the sorcery of sex change through self-identification.

The slogan “trust the science” remains, but it has been hollowed of content. The militancy of the New Atheists has waned, but no powerful intellectual defense of Christianity, one consistent with the discoveries though not the metaphysics of science, has yet captured the public imagination. Ross Douthat made a laudable effort in his compelling Believe, but his approach leaned too literalist to persuade the skeptical. Treating the dogmas of Christianity as empirical claims is no longer a viable path for an intellectually serious faith. What is needed instead is a mythopoetic Christianity, a faith liberated from narrow empiricism, yet still able to transfigure reality through symbol, story, and ritual.