The Decline of Western Civilization

Prominent scholars, among them the late Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, have been saying for some time that Western Civilization is foundering. Its foundation is cracking and it may be in decline. An inexorable decline? Only God knows. But there is much evidence to suggest this thesis is coming to pass. Western Civilization has rejected its Judeo-Christian moral consensus, the sacred canopy as it were, under with it was founded, functioned, and flourished since at least the Renaissance and Reformation. Add to this an parallel embrace of false beliefs and values that have produced what now could be called a culture of death - seen in abortion, population decline, sexualization of children, sexual libertinism among adults seeking personal significance, global debt, mass immigration, and more. No civilization has ever lasted forever. The future of the West is in God's hands, and ours if we choose to rebuild based upon a Christian understanding of the world and life. For more Christian commentary, check my website at https://www.rexmrogers.com and for more podcasts and videos see my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
#WesternCivilization #Truth #WesternCulture #JudeoChristianConsensus #moralrelativism

Transcript

When you’ve marveled at the Ancient Egyptians, the Pyramids, the incredible architecture, still here thousands of years later—have you thought, if their civilization can disappear, what will become of my civilization?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #174 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

Civilizations come and go. It’s a historically demonstrable fact.

“Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse, population decline or overshoot, mass migration, incompetent leaders, and sabotage by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear. Virtually all civilizations have suffered such a fate, regardless of their size or complexity. Most never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Maya civilization, and the Easter Island civilization. However, some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, Greece, and Egypt.”

It’s interesting that none of this list of dire reasons civilizations can collapse mentions religion or worldview or values, but this is the problem we now face.

“For many years now, prominent voices have claimed that Western civilization is foundering.” By Western Civilization, they mean Western Europe and North America where “commonly held beliefs such as individualism, democracy, and rationalism,” were embraced as the foundation stones of culture. While Western Civilization borrows from Ancient Greece and Rome, it also drew on the Renaissance, (14th-17th Century), and Enlightenment (17th-19th Century), which opened the doors to critical thinking. Much of its growth and vibrancy must also be attributed to the Reformation (16th-17th Century) and Christianity, which liberated the natural world from control of the church and empowered human reason, science, enterprise, and what became known as the Protestant Work Ethic.

For all it historical and current problems, Western Civilization built the most bountiful, free, economically successful, and future-oriented cultures in history. With all that going for it, why would it be declining?

Short answer, religion. 

Long answer, a gradual rejection of the Christian worldview that has undergirded Western culture, including belief in God to whom we are accountable, and belief in absolute truth and then also a parallel embrace of moral relativism, rejection of the biblical teaching that mankind is created in the image of God yet a sinner in need of grace, and a consequent loss of aspiration or belief in progress.

In his masterful, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, the late Francis A. Schaeffer said, “The flow of history is determined by the world-view people hold.”

Schaeffer noted that “in the south, the Reformation was giving an opposite answer in the north: man could not begin with himself, he must start with the Bible. There, man could find ‘true things about God’ and ‘many true things about nature.’ It is Schaeffer’s thesis that this base led to a broad Christian consensus which produced the finest fruits of western civilization: the art of Rembrandt and Bach, the political freedoms consequent to the English and American Revolutions, and the rise of modern science.” 

“The breakdown of this Christian consensus has brought western culture to its present crisis.”

Beginning in the late 20th Century, “all the signs, (Schaeffer) warns, are pointing in the direction of totalitarian rule, either by one man or an elite of savants.”

What in the 20th Century scholars thought to be an inexorable march toward secularization in modernity became a period of worldwide resurgence of ideological religion, particularly Islam, mixed with postmodernity’s religious apathy in the West. This new mix has yielded polarization, hate, extremism, nihilism.

This nihilism, this belief that life is meaningless has produced cynicism, pessimism, distrust, alienation, social disintegration, anxiety, anger, hopelessness, and most recently, violence.

It has also produced what might be called a “culture of death.”

We see this in the celebration of abortion—killing one’s children and thus one’s future—as “reproductive health,” when ironically it is neither reproductive nor healthy.

We see this culture of death in sexual libertinism qua deviancy, the pursuit of personal significance in perverted sexuality, which yields disaffection, disease, destruction, and in more cases than may be realized, death.

We see a culture of death in the sexualization of children. Why by all that’s common sense, do Kindergarten children need to be given sex toys, read to by drag queens, encouraged to question their sex, and pushed toward made-up hybrid genders? 

Why by all that’s common sense can’t our culture provide a definition of woman?

We see this culture of death in population decline. Some have observed, “population collapse is the biggest threat to civilization.” “The U.S.’ fertility rate for 2022 sits well below the level needed for the current generation to replace itself. Birth rates have consistently fallen beneath that threshold, termed the replacement rate, since 2007, the CDC said, and have generally been below it since 1971…2.1. That’s the replacement rate, meaning each woman would, on average, need to have 2.1 children for a generation to exactly replace itself. In 2022, the U.S.’ fertility rate (the average number of children a woman would have during her lifetime) was around 1.7 children per woman.”

“Europe is the continent with the oldest population. This is creating problems for healthcare and pensions.”

Not having children is not simply a biological phenomenon. People are choosing not to have children. In other words, they are making value choices.

Why? 

·      they consider children a cost, not a benefit,

·      they have decided to focus on their own lives without the perceived “burden” of children, 

·      and many decide not to have children because of their fear of climate change.

We also see civilizational decline in massive global debt, rejection of democracy and capitalism, and promotion of unsubstantiated climate alarmism by globalist, socialist, totalitarians like those at the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. This includes Americans like Bill Gates, John Kerry, Al Gore, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, and many more.

These same people promote de-population of the earth in the name of climate alarmism. I am serious. Climate alarmists or global elitists like gorilla-lady Jane Goodall say the earth can best support maybe 1 billion people. According to them, this is the goal we should attain. 

But wait, aren’t there 8 billion people in the world today? Yes? Then they are suggesting about 7 billion people need to be eradicated? Yes. Why? Well, to save the earth. For whom? People. So, we save the earth for people by killing off people?  

And who and how are we going to accomplish this? Which of the climate change radicals will volunteer to be the first to get eliminated?

It’s an irrational culture of death, exactly what one would predict, Satan, the father of lies, to develop. People are willingly deluded. They celebrate lies – just like people in the streets and on university campuses who chant support for Hamas.

Even LGBTQ people do this? Really, do they not realize that Islam rejects homosexuality and related sexual perversion? Do they not realize that if they identified as queer in an Islamic society they would be killed? Are these people willingly deluded? Yes. They celebrate a culture of death.

We see civilizational decline in the irrational, hysterical promotion of “race absolutism,” identity politics, and mass immigration. Seeing the world through racial or gender or class lens is Marxism, and there is plenty of this on the Left today. They promote victimhood, chaos, and division because these conditions seem to beg for more government, which the Left worships.

Western Civilization still stands, but there are serious cracks in its foundation, particularly with respect to dismissing the Judeo-Christian moral consensus upon which it was founded and flourished.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

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