There seems to be a lot of talk these days about reversing the decline of the West as a formerly Christian civilisation. Here’s an example that I happened to come across. The aim of the UK-based Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is “to draw on our moral, cultural, economic, and spiritual foundations to develop a more hope-filled vision for the future and, ultimately, to re-lay the foundations of our civilisation.”

The spiritual aspect is not marginal. Os Guinness argues that the “deterioration is happening because the faiths that gave vitality and unity to Western civilisation have become enervated and are contested or rejected entirely today.” But if the Western crisis is at core a spiritual crisis, “the solution needs to include a spiritual dimension.”

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