Reclaiming Christendom Declaration

Christendom is over.

Today in the West we no longer live in a society based on Christian morality, identity, and the Truth of Christianity. A society that, as St. Pope John Paul II said, “measured itself explicitly on Gospel values,” is now gone. As Christianity fades from public life, Western civilization will disintegrate.

This does not mean that Westerners will lose their belief in the supernatural, and that all will become atheists. On the contrary, humans yearn for spiritual sustenance and connection to the supernatural. They will seek it somewhere. For it must be clearly acknowledged that the spiritual world is real. It impinges upon our physical world and infuses it with meaning and power. Spiritual beings, good and evil, contend for the fate of humankind in an ancient, cosmic war that continues to be waged in our day.

If the West is not going to be Christian, it will satisfy its inevitable yearning for spiritual reality with other religions or some form of neopaganism. Already we can see this unfolding. The consequences of this, whatever comes after Christendom, will be disastrous for the West.

This is because the laws and customs of a society are not really based on supposed universal or abstract ideals, but on claims about humans, God, and the cosmos that are particular to the dominant religion. This was true about Catholic Europe and it is also true of the United States, despite the popular misconception that the American founding was an “Enlightenment project.”

The West, like all societies, is based on these religious claims. Other religious or pagan societies have been and are today based on very different claims. Notably, whether an individual practices the dominant religion of the society or accepts the theological claims on which its governance is based is irrelevant. The nature of the religion itself will determine what kind of society a person lives in.

Of the dominant religious systems, only Christianity contains within it the doctrine of Imago Dei, that humans are made in the image of God. This is why Christian civilization has produced extensive rights for the individual, conquering the world with the principles derived from Christian dogma. And this is why Christian civilization has produced some of the most beautiful and profound music, literature, paintings, and architecture the world has ever seen.

A singular way exists to save the West, and that is to embrace the faith that built it. We must reclaim Christendom and then restore it. Only an energized and confident Christianity that embraces Christendom—a society in which the basis of public life is the Christian religion—can do this. Progressive versions of Christianity have failed to preserve the faith in the public square. They have failed to pass the faith on to future generations, and their denominations are in terminal decline.

We have been living for centuries on the capital of Christendom, drawing down on the deposit of faith. Now that capital is gone. If it is not replenished, the West will markedly change. Whatever it becomes, it will cease to be Christian, and so it will be cease to be the West we cherish.

To the reclamation of Christendom, then, we pledge our efforts, our honor, and our very lives. May Saint Michael the Archangel defend us in battle, and may God grant us victory.