At the height of the Second World War, D. Elton Trueblood, the Quaker intellectual, offered prescient insights about the decline of Western civilization. He argued that the stability through the rule of law to which America and Europe had become accustomed was a direct cultural product of Christianity. Noting that the Nazis repudiated the Christian worldview as their first order of business, Trueblood prophetically warned that the moral convictions of the West are not accidental; they are specifically derived from Christian distinctives.1 As the European Union has recently debated whether to acknowledge its cultural debt to the Church, Trueblood’s admonition remains a timely word.

If Western man, who has long been the dominant man on the planet, should now lose those ultimate convictions which have been partly regulative for at least fifteen centuries, the change would be enormous. Temporarily, at least, the change has already occurred, and this change has been more crucial than any battle or other external event. It is the chief event that has occurred. A change in the meaning of truth or of justice is far more important than a change in the government of any given territory. “The Axis powers2 would not have initiated the crisis in civilization or forced this war on the world if they had not repudiated these values in advance.”3

The greatness of the possible change becomes clear when we realize the degree to which the civilization of the West has been the civilization of Christendom. It is far more Christian than Greek or Roman, since classic culture contributed to modern culture, not directly, but only as assimilated by Christianity. . . Greece and Rome did not survive as cultural entities; instead, they contributed to that which did survive; and that which did survive is Christianity.

. . . The West has turned against its own genius. We have seen it break down before our eyes in the huge and terrifying object lesson that Central Europe provides. What frightens all reasonable people is the fact that we see about us, in our own neighborhoods, some of the same factors which, existing in a greater degree, made that object lesson actual. How can we keep the evil from spreading? Certainly the defeat of the Axis Powers will not be sufficient to prevent this. Our greatest menace is not from Germany, great as this has been, but rather from the same mood that gripped Germany so powerfully and so destructively.

We are superficially safe in the Western democracy so long as the war lasts, but the danger will be enormous when the fighting ends. A host of new problems will arise, bringing new temptations. We must remember that, after the First World War, the epidemic broke out first in Italy and then in Germany because these patients were weaker. The germs are everywhere, and we shall be weaker later. Epidemics, like empires, often move West.4

Footnotes:
1
See Kairos Journal Booklet: “Legatees of a Great Inheritance: How the Judeo-Christian Tradition Has Shaped the West”.

2
In World War II, the Allies (U.S., U.K., Soviet Union, etc.) fought the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.).

3
Trueblood is quoting from H. G. Wood, Christianity and Civilization, 11.

4
D. Elton Trueblood, The Predicament of Modern Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1944), 22-25.
article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located across from the Principio Health Center on Rt. 40.