In a comment to my post yesterday criticizing the self-promotion of Glenn Beck as a leader for conservative Christians, a reader asks, “exactly where is the charismatic Christian leader who would be preferable in your eyes to Mr. Beck?”
That’s a fair question. My personal preference would be a for a coalition of cobelligerent leaders rather than a singular charismatic figure. And on the Catholic side, one of the key figures would be Archbishop Charles Chaput. While Beck is busy sharing the latest insights he picked up while reading a history textbook, Chaput is dispensing actual wisdom .
In his prolific speeches and writings, the Archbishop of Denver continuously proves that he is an astute diagnostician of the maladies that afflict the West. Consider, for example, a recent address that he delivered in Slovakia:
Two of the biggest lies in the world today are these: first, that Christianity was of relatively minor importance in the development of the West; and second, that Western values and institutions can be sustained without a grounding in Christian moral principles. [ . . . ]Downplaying the West’s Christian past is sometimes done with the best intentions, from a desire to promote peaceful co-existence in a pluralistic society. But more frequently it’s done to marginalize Christians and to neutralize the Church’s public witness.
The Church needs to name and fight this lie. To be a European or an American is to be heir to a profound Christian synthesis of Greek philosophy and art, Roman law, and biblical truth. This synthesis gave rise to the Christian humanism that undergirds all of Western civilization.
On this point, we might remember the German Lutheran scholar and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote these words in the months leading up to his arrest by the Gestapo in 1943: “The unity of the West is not an idea but a historical reality, of which the sole foundation is Christ.”
Our societies in the West are Christian by birth, and their survival depends on the endurance of Christian values. Our core principles and political institutions are based, in large measure, on the morality of the Gospel and the Christian vision of man and government. We are talking here not only about Christian theology or religious ideas. We are talking about the moorings of our societies – representative government and the separation of powers; freedom of religion and conscience; and most importantly, the dignity of the human person.
This truth about the essential unity of the West has a corollary, as Bonhoeffer also observed: Take away Christ and you remove the only reliable foundation for our values, institutions and way of life.
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(Via: Insight Scoop )
