This bundle of ideas — nihilism, atheism, the need to create our values, the reduction of everything to power — lies behind much that is deeply problematic in our time.
My cousin and I have an ongoing conversation that could be titled “What’s Next?” Our exchanges normally revolve around the dreadful state of education and the arts, whose jagged shards we break into even smaller bits. It is mostly an exercise for getting grouchiness out, while keeping it away from our wives, children, and in my case, parishioners. In our better moments, we have wildly optimistic ideas about how to put the pieces back together in the form of something holy and beautiful.
Douthat is right in his reminder of the important ways in which liberal Christianity contributes positively to Western culture, but he is wrong in his diagnosis of our decline.
