Esteemed theologian Os Guinness closed out the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London last night with a call to the West to return to its biblical foundations.
Guinness said the challenge of the day was to build “a global, human-friendly future, not just for England or America or Europe, but for people all around the world longing for a world with a high view of the sanctity of life, of the dignity of the individual person, of equality and dignity for all, and liberty and justice for all”.
That will not happen if society only turns to “the easy, the convenient, the fashionable and the comfortable”. Nor will it happen without faith.
“There's no way around the fact that at the core of every discussion [about the renewal of civilization] is the place of religion, faith,” he said.
“In every great civilization there are profound answers to the basic meaning of human existence … We owe a lot to the Greeks and much to the Romans, but our Western civilization is essentially a Christian civilization rooted in Judaism. That's an inescapable fact and we must never forget it in the discussions, however uncomfortable.”
Liberty, a hallmark of the modern Western world, comes straight “from the Bible”, he noted, as does the uniquely Judeo-Christian idea that all humans are made in the image of God.
It was a point made earlier on the final day by conservative Christian commentator Eric Metaxas who said that liberty and the principle that all men are created equal are “inescapably biblical ideas” and that it is wrong to think “these things just happen”.
“Anyone who has ever thought, in the history of the world, that you can achieve liberty and genuine self-government without virtue and faith in the God of the Bible has been proven to be mistaken in that,” he said.
Guinness reinforced this point later in his closing address when he said that “faith is unique” and the “key to renewal”.
He praised the contribution of Judaism to Western civilization, describing God’s words to Moses from the burning bush - “I am who I am” - as “the most revolutionary words in all human history” and “the binding factor of Western civilization”.
Picking up on the Hebrew word for ‘repentance’ - ‘teshuva’ - he said it went much deeper than simply turning back and meant “coming home, coming back to truth, back to reality, and back to the Author of existence itself”.
“Our cultures in the West need to come home. They are alienated cultures, they are prodigal cultures, and they need nothing more than coming home,” he said.
Condemning the “evil” and “profoundly stupid” spread of antisemitism across the West, he said: “Our greatest debt is to the Jewish people.”
Drawing the conference to a close, ARC CEO and committed Christian Baroness Philippa Stroud, too, reflected on spiritual themes as she called for a mindset shift “from cynicism to confidence once again in our stories”.
“We’ve started to look at some of the building blocks if we are to build again - the great work of reconstruction that must begin in the home, in our schools, in our universities, in our businesses, in our institutions,” she said.
“But in all of this, if I were to return to one idea, it would simply be this: that it is our civilizational story - and its moral and spiritual foundations - that are needed now more than ever.”
ARC 2026 took place over three days in London, bringing together around 4,000 conservatives from around the world - many of them Christian - to deliberate the "deconstruction" of the West over the last few decades and how it can be "reconstructed".
Back at the start of the conference, Konstantin Kisin, host of the Triggernometry podcast, warned that the path back to civilisation would be long - “decades”, perhaps even beyond our lifetimes, for the simple fact that “generations of Westerners have been taught to hate their own civilisation”.
The antidote? “Courage,” he said - not only among the grown-ups in the room who are challenging the deconstruction, but the children growing up in the chaos who must one day carry on the baton of reconstruction.
In her final remarks, Baroness Stroud returned to this theme of “courage” - a word heard many times over the last three days. Calling on men and women of the West to stand firm, she gave the last word to Tolkien and received a standing ovation as she declared that even though the day may come when the courage of men fails “it is not this day”.
“This day we fight, we build, we create and we speak truth,” she said.
