End of the Christian World

Throughout the West, Christianity appears to have collapsed. Never in modern history have Christian ideas about human dignity and personhood, about the permanency of morals and the necessity of familial society, been pushed so far from law and public life. This ‘secularizing’ trend shows no sign of abating.

What, however, is the significance of this ‘secularizing’ trend? In rejecting permanent morals, does it represent a turn toward relativism, even nihilism? Or does the ‘secularizing’ trend indicate not a complete rupture from theological concepts, but the persistence of these theological concepts in public debate even if their use has changed? Or does secularization point toward the intensification of Christian theses—for example, a kind of ultra-Christianity that entrenches a politics of victimhood?

These debates on the meaning of secularization reflect the positions taken by, among others, Augusto del Noce, Carl Schmitt, and René Girard. Yet Chantal Delsol has argued for a different thesis. The late modern, ‘secularizing’ trend should not be understood as the triumph of relativism or nihilism, except in the short term. In the medium and long term, late modernity represents the substitution of one set of morals by another. This is not a Christian, ultra-Christian, or even post-Christian set of morals. For Delsol, Christianity in the process has been left behind and discarded in moral, legal, and political thought. The West is transforming into something resembling a pre-Christian civilization, a pagan civilization. In this context, how should Christians transmit their faith and what is left of their civilization? In these changing circumstances, is the idea of a Christian culture still desirable, let alone possible?

— Chantal Delsol and the End of the Christian World: A Symposium, July 2022