Our civilizational moment?

Four threats

In October 2024, Os Guiness published a book titled, “Our civilizational moment: The waning of the west and the war of the worlds”. An earlier essay is also available here.

Civilizations rise, flourish, and then decline and fall. Guiness asks, is the West facing its own civilizational moment today?

A civilizational moment is a critical transition phase in the rise, course, and decline of a civilization when a civilization loses its decisive connection with the dynamic that inspired it. Such a moment must then issue in one of three broad options: a renewal of the dynamic that inspired the civilization in the first place, or a successful replacement of the original dynamic by another, or the decline of the civilization. In sum, the issue for a civilization in a civilizational moment is its vision of ultimate reality: Is the civilization in living touch with the ideas, ideals, and inspiration that created it in the first place and that it needs to continue to flourish? Or, with its roots severed, is it destined to decline and die?

It was the Christian faith that made the west. It was based on Christian views of human dignity, truth, words, conscience, covenant, freedom, justice, and peace. But most of the west has rejected the Christian faith. And enlightenment secularism has failed to be a replacement – it has failed to give us meaning, belonging and purpose.

Some examples of civilizational moments are the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC when the Jews went into exile and the decline of pagan Rome in the fifth century AD. The Jews had a return from exile that was a renewal of their civilization, but the western part of the Roman empire died.

The four waves

Guiness identified four ideologies and trends that are forming the forces that are attacking the western world, largely from within.

The red wave – Radical Marxism (classical or cultural). Classical Marxism replaces capitalism with socialism by force. After the Russian revolution in 1917 they decided to enter the cultural institutions in order to change them from within because western culture repelled socialism. So they tried to go inside and change the culture to make it socialist. It was called “western Marxism”. So like a virus adapting to the conditions it changed to try to infect a new host. The aim is to destroy western civilization from within. Woke is Marxism adapted to attack the west through a cultural revolution. This includes critical theory (see Appendix A). The goal is to make us into “global citizens” as part of a sustainable and inclusive future (see Agenda 2030). This is being coordinated by the World Economic Forum (see Appendix B) and the United Nations.

Marxist revolutions never succeed, their oppressions never end. And their promises are never fulfilled. But people are attracted by the idea of liberation and a view of the future. The radical left use colonialism in Europe and race and slavery in America in their attack.

The rainbow wave – The sexual revolution

The black wave – Radical Islamism

The gold wave – Corrupt Elitism – corporatism and mega-wealth.

A green wave is also attacking the westerm world (see Appendix C).

When asked if this was God’s judgment of the west, Guiness said, “The biblical view of judgment is God leaving (or driving) us to the logic of our own choices (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). If we reject and abandon Him, at some point we’ve got to face the logic of the alternatives we’re choosing (Dt. 30:19; 1 Ki. 18:21; 2 Ki. 18:32).”

“The first step of recovery is to ask will the west launch and sustain a free and open forum for thinking and debate that prizes reason, exploration, civility, a hearing of voices from all sides, and argument for the sake of truth and not power?”

Appendix A: Critical theory

Under Critical Theory the world is divided into two groups: those who are oppressed (the powerless) and those who are oppressors (the powerful). Those who are in the identity groups considered to be oppressed—for example, women, people of color, and the LGBT community—are victims of the social structure that has empowered the oppressors. The ultimate oppressor is someone whose identity doesn’t fall into any of the oppressed groups: the straight, white male.

In this worldview, all relationships between people are understood to be functions of power dynamics. Those in power want to keep their power, so they will want to maintain societal structures that have always been in place because that is supposedly what gave them their power to begin with (and sustains their power still today). Because the historical structure of society is presumed to be the ultimate reason why anyone is currently marginalized, nothing less than a societal revolution is needed to fix the problems we see—a complete overturning of everything considered to be “normal”. For example. They attack the nuclear family. The sexual revolution helps to breakdown the nuclear family.

Critical Theory, has given rise to Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Theory, Postcolonial Theory and much else.

An effective Freudian technique is projection, when a party projects their actions and feelings onto their opponents. Thus hatred of traditional society is projected onto that society. How many times a week do you hear about something being misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, antisemitic or otherwise hateful?

Christians need to realise that in Scripture we have a far more penetrating analysis of both the problem and the solution than any critical theory could ever provide. In the gospel, we have a divine diagnosis of the fundamental human sickness – universal slavery to sin – and God-given knowledge of the remedy – the Lord Jesus Christ. We better understand both the underlying cause and its ultimate cure, and so have an infinitely better hope to proclaim.

Appendix B: The great reset

The Great Reset was announced by the World Economic Forum in June 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and is described as a proposal to rethink and reshape the global economy and society to address issues such as inequality, sustainability, and economic recovery in a post-pandemic world.

It involves reforming economic systems (prioritizing environmental and social goals), promoting sustainability, and using technology (such as artificial intelligence) to improve social and economic systems.

It uses inequality and the green wave (climate change agenda) to promote global socialism.

And it also uses the gold wave to concentrate power among global elites and undermine individual freedoms and national sovereignty.

Appendix C: A green wave?

At present the economy and energy systems of the western world are being weakened by the climate change agenda, including the objective of net-zero carbon emissions. This ideology could be considered to be a fifth wave – the green wave. But as this is being driven by the United Nations and would end up in tightly-controlled socialist societies like China, it is really part of the red wave (cultural Marxism).

Acknowledgement

This post is largely based on the book by Os Guiness, an English author, theologian and social critic who lives in USA and an article by Louis March.

Posted, January 2025