Paul Kingsnorth’s 2024 Erasmus Lecture, “Against Christian Civilization,” is the best kind of audacious. Delivering his ideas under the banner of First Things—a publication devoted to religion in public life and with a history of defending the Christian faith’s cultural contributions—Kingsnorth takes a contrarian stance, critiquing the concept of “Christian civilization.” As a recent convert to Christianity (he was baptized in the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2021), Kingsnorth in this lecture bears all the passion and provocation of a new believer who wants the world and the church to bear faithful witness to the treasure of the gospel.
I found much to appreciate in Kingsnorth’s lecture—plenty of insight, the mark of an original thinker who has, in recent years, delivered prophetic words against the Machine (his memorable image of humanity’s efforts to bring everything under our dominion so it’s controllable and at our service). But here, his sweeping arguments against Christian civilization are hindered by significant gaps. His warnings are often on point, but his reductive take on the nature of culture and civilization blunts their force.
What Kingsnorth Gets Right
First, there’s a refreshing boldness to Kingsnorth’s critique, something Kierkegaardian in his take—a shot of strong drink intended to wake the bleary-eyed Westerner. It takes courage to question the idea of “Christian civilization” in a setting that has often championed it. Kingsnorth invites us to reconsider what it means to follow Jesus in a way that transcends not only the political but also the civilizational aspirations of people in our day.
Second, Kingsnorth’s warning against instrumentalizing Christianity is timely. He is right to critique the tendency of a growing number of intellectuals on the right who see the Christian faith as primarily useful in the culture wars—a helpful tool in preserving what’s best in our society or a bulwark against dehumanizing ideologies—regardless of its truth.
As examples, he points to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s essay explaining why she jettisoned atheism for Christianity and to Jordan Peterson’s message to Christian churches, the latter of which is notable for the total absence of any reference to Jesus. Kingsnorth will not abide any attempt to skate around the fundamental fact of Christ crucified and raised, as if one could harness Christianity’s symbolic power for an earthly agenda. When the cross gets pushed out of the center of Christianity and replaced by a cause—even a righteous one!—the gospel is robbed of its distinctiveness and power. On the danger of subordinating Christianity as a tool, Kingsnorth summons C. S. Lewis, who wrote,
Religions devised for a social purpose, like Roman emperor-worship or modern attempts to “sell” Christianity as a means of “saving civilisation,” do not come to much. The little knots of Friends who turn their backs on the “World” are those who really transform it.
That brings us to the third strength of this essay—Kingsnorth’s call to personal holiness. In an age where social activism overshadows spiritual formation, his focus on intimacy with God and a sanctified life calls us back to what should remain central for all Christians everywhere. Likewise, in recalling the radical nature of Jesus’s teachings, Kingsnorth pushes back against the tendency of every generation to water down Christ’s demands or bury his startling sayings under layers of commentary and tradition, as if never-ending dialogue and debate over Christ’s words can shield us from the call to obedience.
Where Kingsnorth Misses the Mark
As much as I enjoyed the provocations of Kingsnorth’s lecture, several weaknesses stand out.
First, his biblical framework is incomplete. Kingsnorth rightly draws attention to the garden imagery in Genesis, but he fails to trace Scripture’s trajectory from the garden to the city. He describes a world where every civilization is pervasively and inescapably idolatrous—through and through. But the Bible doesn’t condemn all civilizational efforts; it points to a future where human cultures are redeemed and glorified.
For example, the multiplicity of languages may be a result of God’s judgment at Babel, yet the distinctive beauty of various languages and accents will not disappear on the last day. Civilization is part of God’s plan, and one day, even the sin-stained elements will be redeemed for his glory. The vision of the new Jerusalem in Revelation isn’t a return to a primitive state but the culmination of God’s redemptive work—a city where kings bring to the Lord the cultural tribute of their peoples.
Along these lines, Kingsnorth’s critique of civilization is exclusively negative. He portrays the Western world as irredeemably corrupt, rooted in and driven by the seven deadly sins. And while, yes, we can observe with Kingsnorth the pernicious effects of these vices all around us, can we not also see the leavening effects in our civilization of Christianity’s virtues? Must we ignore the existence of hospitals, the building of schools, the expectation that we’d care for the vulnerable, and a call for justice that continues to reverberate throughout the world?
By looking only at the idolatrous aspects of civilization without the countervailing influence of Christianity, it’s as if Kingsnorth has one eye closed, which affects his depth perception. He notices civilization’s sinfulness but misses many of the ways God’s people have been salt and light in the world.
Likewise, Kingsnorth’s suspicion of power structures is one-sided. While authority can be and often is abused, Scripture also teaches that governing authorities can be instruments of God’s common grace. History is replete with examples of leaders who wielded power, albeit imperfectly, to promote justice and human flourishing. Kingsnorth’s approach to authority is almost Anabaptist at this point—as if any collaboration with or involvement in societal power is inherently and inevitably corrupting—which is odd, considering he’s not Mennonite but Orthodox; he belongs to a tradition where, throughout history, church and nation have gotten entangled in multiple ways to the detriment of the faith.
If civilization is inescapably evil, then to truly embrace Christianity will require us to renounce any attempt at creating a Christian society. Radical obedience will require a radical withdrawal. It’s not surprising, then, that Kingsnorth puts forth a semi-monastic vision for believers, lifting up the contributions of monks and mystics as the truest Christians over the centuries. In making this move, however, Kingsnorth misses all the ways monasticism contributed to and served broader civilization-building efforts. Many monks not only prayed but also supported Christian rulers and warriors. There’s an unspoken dichotomy in Kingsnorth’s lecture between mystics and builders—one that can’t be historically sustained.
One last thing: Kingsnorth is a brilliant writer whose description of his conversion to Christianity has inspired me. That’s why it’s disappointing to see him pick apart the initial reasons Hirsi Ali gave for her conversion. Even though his critique has merit, it comes across as someone who’s entered a castle through one door and is chastising someone else entering the same castle through another.
There’s also a lack of self-awareness in a new convert suggesting the witness of most Christians in public life over the past two millennia has been wrongheaded. Or that Christian pastors and theologians have yet to truly wrestle with Jesus’s radical sayings. Kingsnorth is right to call us to repentance; to a love directed first and foremost to God; to engage in battles from and for love, not out of disdain or hatred of the enemy. But he’s wrong to presume an absence of God-and-neighbor love in the imperfect efforts of Christians who have influenced civilization over the centuries or of those Christians who continue to work for the betterment of the world today.
Better Vision
“Against Christian Civilization” is laudable in many ways, well worth your time and consideration. It’s beneficial to feel the full force of Kingsnorth’s prophetic broadside. And yet we mustn’t respond to modern attempts to instrumentalize Christianity by reducing the faith to a mystical, otherworldly retreat that would rob our neighbors of the goodness of the gospel’s public, transformative implications.
It’s because we love our neighbors that we care about the neighborhood. And that’s what civilization is—a neighborhood of neighborhoods, structured and directed (yes, because of the fall, too often in deformed and distorted ways) toward aims that can be influenced by Christianity, shifted toward a telos intrinsically ennobling, in contrast to the secular humanist, ethnonationalist, expressive individualist, technocratic empire (“the Machine”) Kingsnorth rightly recoils from.
An overly negative view of civilization will not help us resist treating Christianity as a tool for an agenda subordinate to Christ’s Great Commission. What we need is to remember our calling—not to retreat from the world or romanticize a return to the garden but, instead, to make disciples in hope, anticipating the coming of the new Jerusalem. Christianity’s leavening effect on civilization isn’t an idol; it’s a fruit of the gospel’s transformative power.
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