Paul Kingsnorth’s 2024 Erasmus Lecture, “Against Christian Civilization,” was less a lecture than an exhortation. His target was partly “civilizational Christianity,” represented by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Jordan Peterson, who, Kingsnorth claims, turn the faith into a weapon in the battle to save Western civilization. Preserving Western civilization may, Kingsnorth acknowledges, be a good, but it’s not the same as following and obeying the Lord Jesus.
But his argument cut deeper. Kingsnorth proposed that the teachings of Jesus are incompatible with Christian civilization, perhaps with civilization as such. There’s something untamed and untameable about Jesus, with his Herculean fasts and all-night mountain vigils. Kingsnorth approvingly quoted the words of Charles Alexander Eastman, a converted American Indian, who called Jesus “an Indian” and charged that Christians “are anxious to pass on their religion to all other races, but keep little of it for themselves.”
Kingsnorth’s sermon has a contemporary application. In “this disintegrating age,” Christians need to focus their energies on personal repentance and holiness, drawing wisdom from “the mystics, the ascetics, the hermits of the caves, and the wild saints of the forest and the desert,” who retreated from their decaying civilization rather than fighting to preserve it. They “fought for Christ . . . with prayer and with active love for their neighbors and enemies.” Hermits and desert saints ended up transforming the world because their aim wasn’t Christian civilization but “something much harder: Christian love.”
Kingsnorth’s message resonates. At the Theopolis Institute, which I lead, we’re convinced we’re in the death throes of a civilization: “Worlds die,” we often say, adding, “Let the dead bury their dead.” The church’s task today isn’t to plug holes in a sinking world, but to worship and teach and sacrifice for the future. Besides, I have a soft spot for the church’s savage visionaries. These shocking Elijahs are gifts of the Spirit, who warn us not to blunt the sharp edge of the gospel’s demands.
Still, Kingsnorth’s exhortation had major flaws, most especially in his reading of the Bible. He claims man was created as a vegetarian in a garden. Only after the fall did he begin to erect civilizations, till the land, and raise and eat animal flesh. That is, Kingsnorth starts the Bible’s story in Genesis 2, and so misses the force of the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26–28: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” To be sure, the dominion command doesn’t authorize us to despoil God’s earth. Adam and Eve were called to stewardship, but stewardship isn’t just leaving things be. Labor and thus technology, building, and transformation of nature into culture express our nature as the image of the world-framing Creator. Man wasn’t supposed to remain forever in his garden enclave. Large sections of the Old Testament are devoted to descriptions of the artificial gardens Israel constructs—the tabernacle (Exod. 25–40) and the temple (1 Kings 6–8; and much of 1 Chron.). Taking the whole sweep of biblical history into account, the human vocation is the edification of earth, the erection and curation of garden-lands and garden-cities.
Kingsnorth’s message is radical. When challenged during the Q&A that followed his lecture, he often reverted to a “fundamentalist” stance: “I’m just quoting Jesus; maybe he wants us to do exactly what he says.” I agree, but Kingsnorth’s reading of Jesus’s teaching is misleading. His reservations about Christian civilization are partly reservations about Christian uses of political power—“saints with swords.” On his reading, coercion of any kind is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.
But this implies that the realm of power is impervious to the reign of Jesus, precisely the premise of modern liberal politics. Scripture, I think, encourages us to expect the opposite. Early in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount, the most extensive and famous summary of his ethical instruction. At the end of the same Gospel, he sends the Twelve to disciple the nations by teaching those very commandments (Matt. 28:18–20), and he assures the success of the mission by promising his perpetual presence. The fruit of the Great Commission, in short, is nations obedient to the commands of Christ, “the obedience of faith among the Gentiles” that Paul names as the goal of his apostleship (Rom. 1:5). Jesus’s disciples don’t avoid confronting kings with the truth of the Resurrection and the threat of coming judgment. Paul specifically is a chosen vessel to bear the name of Jesus before Gentiles and kings, and he turns his trials before Jews, Herods, and Roman officials into evangelistic opportunities. The apostolic mission fulfills the promise of Psalm 2, where the Lord summons judges and kings to do homage to his royal Son: “Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction . . .” (10–12).
“Saints with swords” aren’t an unfortunate deviation from the church’s mission. Transforming nations and calling rulers to repentance is the mission. Which is, in fact, exactly what has happened for the past two thousand years. In agreement with Kingsnorth, Rusty Reno says Jesus didn’t die for Western civilization. But he did die, and rise, and ascend to be King of kings and to fulfill the geopolitical promise to Abraham: “In your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 28:14).
Kingsnorth is right about how the world is transformed. It doesn’t happen when Christians claw for power but when we preach the gospel, serve, heal, raise up the poor, love enemies. But those actions are transformative, by divine intention. Through her witness and service, the church shapes civilizations that more resemble Jerusalem than Babel. As the Last Adam, Jesus restores humanity to our original Adamic task, which means Christian civilization can’t be stripped from Christian faith as easily as Kingsnorth suggests.
Peter J. Leithart is president of Theopolis Institute.
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