“For if you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.” (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Humanitarianism and Strength, c. 1908)

This telling comment, like so many by G.K. Chesterton, comes from an article invariably dashed off in haste by him for a deadline for London Daily News. In many ways the haste is evident as the essay almost appears unfinished.

Along with what today would be some very culturally incorrect references to South Sea “cannibals” and other peoples, Chesterton digs more deeply to make some prophetic comments about the importance and the fragility of the Christian roots of Western culture and civilisation.

It is well known that Chesterton was aware that the vices of Christians were often the reason that Christianity, the culture of those faithful to Christ, had fallen down because it had “not been tried”.

But here in this early essay he warns of the rising tide of barbarism within the minds of European leaders and strategists. He forecasts a loss of the Christian imagination and ranges over the evidence for this in his time in the rise of racial determinism, utilitarianism, eugenics, materialism, militarism and jingoism and an ethos of “retaliation”.

He remarks that the new scientism of his time, while dressed in the racy costume of “progress”, is really reactionary and slavish: “Scientific determinism is simply the primal twilight of all mankind; and some men seem to be returning to it.”

What is interesting about Chesterton’s perception here is that it is written at a time of his life when he was finding his way to formal Christianity – first Anglicanism and then much later Catholicism. At this time he was a married man, with pressure to churn out copy regularly, and he had already written the remarkable Napolean of Nottinghill (1904) and had begun to debate the New-Age figurehead of his day – George Bernard Shaw.

It seems that Chesterton served as a “watchman on the ramparts” just as in our own time – it is often perceptive and courageous commentators outside the Church looking in – who are most conscious and articulate about the importance of Christ as the form or logos of all that we value in Christian civilisation. So often, we Christians seem to be asleep at the wheel. We often seem unaware of what the French theologian Rémi Brague observes (in Curing Mad Truths) that in our Western societies, we live in the “corrupted capital” of Christian life.

We can see this when our privatised values hang on the fraying threads of an often inverted spiritual capital of Christian morality, thought and aesthetics. In the meantime, because culture is never simply neutral space, our weakened imaginations are colonised by more chaotic and brutal “theologies”.

Today it is someone like the English historian, writer and broadcaster, Tom Holland, who found in his research that for all the technical and aesthetic sophistication of Greek and Roman culture, the pagan civilisation was violent; cruel to the vulnerable; brutal to women; sexually predacious and thrived on the torture and mistreatment of its enemies.

It is Tom Holland – an increasingly church attending, one-time agnostic – who sees with a fresh astonishment (in some respects, reminiscent of Chesterton) the explosive significance for humankind and history of the Paschal Mystery:

"To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth." (Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World)

It is the phenomenally popular and outspoken Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, who has explored the power and depth of Biblical narrative and history, upheld Christian virtues and defended the ethos of Christianity – all while not quite being sure of his own status as a believer.

In a remarkable interview with the Orthodox artist Jonathan Pageau in 2021, Peterson describes an insight that the great Cardinal John Henry Newman and the early fathers of the Church saw as pivotal. This is the conjunction in Christian faith of human longing – common to the narratives of human peoples and the historical figure of Jesus Christ – as the Truth and Word of the Father. Christ “makes myth history”.

It was something that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien also realised.

Peterson admits that “the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived plus a myth, and, in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things”.

Peterson then says through tears: “Because I’ve seen, sometimes, the objective world and the narrative world touch – you know, that’s union synchronicity. And I’ve seen that many times in my own life and so, in some sense, I believe it’s undeniable.”

About four weeks ago, in a dramatic YouTube conversation about the “de-substantiation of God” in Western culture and thought, Bishop Robert Barron and Jordan Peterson tackled the atheistic gravitational pull of modernity. Peterson – obviously reacting to his wife Tammy’s conversion to Catholicism, and falling over his waterfall of words and ideas – is trying to understand from his neuro-scientific perspective as a psychologist the alignment of the Cross, the destruction of sin, suffering, the Kingdom of God, the covenant, the “iterative altruism” of the Sermon on the Mount and the sacrifice of the Mass. He says, “Hell is worse than death”; malevolence is more destructive than tragedy.

The two men jointly dance in a fascinating discussion around Romano Guardini’s idea of the “Mass as a form of sacred play” as the summum bonum, or the highest good.

Bishop Barron then says, “You have just touched upon every major metaphysical issue in theology!”

In recent weeks, another “outsider” has come to the defence of Christian culture and declares himself a “cultural Christian”. This was from the arch-not-so-new atheist, Richard Dawkins. While his comments were deeply contradictory in so many ways, in his comments on the broadcast Dawkins was asked (somewhat bizarrely) to give “an Easter message” to Britain. Dawkins then says how important liturgical feasts, cathedrals, carols and some customs are and the need to defend these things. He goes on to say that he “fears” any other culture replacing the Christian one, while remaining a firm unbeliever.

So, amidst these interesting conversations, the Thomas More Centre aims to re-open the discussion about the foundations of Christian faith and culture. We are not pretentious or remote in our desire to do this. In a sense, we are offering a sort of cultural “first aid” and to outline a Christian “survival kit”.

At the same time, we are not aiming low. If it is a form of first aid, we are asking the best doctors, therapists and nurses to offer this – using the highest quality bandages and medicines. In the process, we are confident; the friendships and relationships formed during our talks and events will form the seeds of a new and “thick” community.

You can book your spot at the forthcoming TMC Autumn School in Albury here.

Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre