This is an intelligent, well-argued piece, nothing less than what one has come to expect from Frank Fukuyama. Yet, something about it left me feeling uncomfortable -- or at least vaguely dissatisfied. I am a product of a (largely) European background and education, though I have lived in the US for over 40 years. The words "Western" or "West" were hardly ever used in those years -- the 1970s and early 80s -- both at the English boarding school I attended and the university where I spent many years as an undergraduate and research (graduate) student.
Both the school and the college (within the collegiate university system) of which I was a member were Anglican foundations. We talked of an European civilization and of a Christian belief and the two were often equated.
Yet, interestingly, the European civilization of which we were heirs was always seen to have "Mediterranean" roots. It was Graeco-Roman and avowedly classical. The Christian identity was without a doubt that which drew from the New Testament. The Old Testament might have been seen a source of inspiration for great Baroque music that we heard in chapel or many of the paintings of the Old Masters from the Renaissance. But the notion of a Judeo-Christian civilization (or heritage) would have been risible. The idea of Christendom, on the other hand, would have sounded archaic but would at least have been recognizable. Somehow, this synthesis of a Graeco-Roman secular culture and a pre-Religious Wars Christian belief system was made coherent and it was called European.
Once again, the background I'm describing is High Anglican without an iota of non-conformism or evangelicalism to it. And therein lies the answer to the rantings of Vance and Rubio. The idea of the "West" is a very American one (notwithstanding Spengler) and that too is about 50 years old. Even a racial and cultural supremacist like Tom Buchanan in the Great Gatsby would talk about the European races and those that did not belong to that group, included Jews, blacks, Mexicans, Asians, and whichever other group came within his range of sight.
Why Marco Rubio had to launch into an encomium to the plundering, rampaging "West" is a mystery. He invented his own background, claiming he was of Spanish and Italian heritage, from Seville and Casale Monferrato, Kingdom of Piedmont. In the show "Finding Your Roots", the host Henry Louis Gates Jr. told Marco Rubio that his mother's side has indigenous ancestry traceable to Cuba going back around 4,000 years, saying "your family on your mother's side has been there a long, long time." (Vance too has lied about his own background, but I won't go into that here.) What is shameless was the conduct of the Europeans (the Ruttes, the Merzs and others, descendants of Mitteleuropa middle class) who were just relieved to hear that Rubio had pointed to enemies that did not include them.
Insightful comment, agree. One cannot remove Christianity from the “recipe” which created Europe and America, it was a central component.
Jefferson’s succinct quote on his own philosophy sums up the cultural and religious influence at the Founding fairly well: “Epictetus and Epicurus give us laws for governing ourselves; Jesus a supplement of the duties we owe to others.”
You are right that modern Western societies are defined by liberal institutions—pluralism, rights, and tolerance. But those institutions did not arise in a vacuum. They emerged within a civilization shaped for centuries by the moral and institutional legacy of Christian faith. Rubio’s reference to that tradition may be politically blunt, but it reflects a historical reality: the liberal order you describe grew out of a particular civilizational context.
You also seem to treat appeals to Western civilizational identity as unnecessary or misleading. Yet we live in a world where many of the West’s adversaries—from jihadist movements to authoritarian powers—frame their opposition in explicitly civilizational terms. In that environment, it is hardly surprising that Western leaders speak about the cultural and religious roots of their own societies.
I get why you felt the need to respond to Rubio, given the dig. This is a thoughtful piece. However, Rubio‘s characterization of western civilization is no more reactionary than those of, say, John Adams. With all the crazy on the right these days, it’s weird that you should attack him on this ground.
I just read the first sentence and could not continue. I kind of wish I could interrogate Francis like ChatGpt. When did the West begin to define itself through Christianity? What is the first recorded instance where any western thinker claimed otherwise? Is there a single historian who disputes that Enlightenment values arouse directly out of Christianity?
Ok, I did. It’s not too bad. Reminiscent of those who want 90s leftism back, while rejecting the inevitable extension of those ideas into wokeness. I know nothing, but it’s plain as day that the post-war effort to eliminate common religious values and heritage is a total failure. A vague notion of shared values, which are no longer taught in schools, is too weak to defeat the alternatives, including Islamism and cultural Marxism. See Return of the Strong Gods, etc. etc.
I don’t disagree with you about the Christian roots. What’s changed for me is that the Enlightenment depended on a metaphysics of the rational subject, and I no longer believe that metaphysics. Liberalism still works, but only as a fragile, managed project. That’s why I’m uneasy — not because I want to restore a lost religious foundation, but because the Enlightenment’s own foundation has dissolved.
It is not true that 'early natural scientists were engaged in a prolonged struggle with the Catholic Church; it was only with the separation of empirical inquiry from religious dogma that modern natural science, and the economic world it made possible, emerged'.
See, for example:
'Whether one adapted a natural philosophy or devised a new one, the aim was now to produce a symbiotic union. This development found its clearest expression in theories of the earth, but the idea that natural philosophy is a means of seeking evidence of God’s activity in nature would become widespread in the 1680s and 1690s, particularly in England, and Newton for example would consider the stability of planetary orbits to be evidence of God’s constant intervention. . . . . But both in effect treated natural philosophy and the interpretation of revelation as being ultimately part of the same enterprise, for better or worse. . . . . At that point, a ‘scientific culture’ developed in the West that was very different from anything that had gone before, as the Enlightenment heralded a wholly new conception of the world and our place in it.'
p 505
Gaukroger, Stephen (2006) The emergence of a scientific culture. Science and the shaping of modernity, 1210-1685, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
This is an intelligent, well-argued piece, nothing less than what one has come to expect from Frank Fukuyama. Yet, something about it left me feeling uncomfortable -- or at least vaguely dissatisfied. I am a product of a (largely) European background and education, though I have lived in the US for over 40 years. The words "Western" or "West" were hardly ever used in those years -- the 1970s and early 80s -- both at the English boarding school I attended and the university where I spent many years as an undergraduate and research (graduate) student.
Both the school and the college (within the collegiate university system) of which I was a member were Anglican foundations. We talked of an European civilization and of a Christian belief and the two were often equated.
Yet, interestingly, the European civilization of which we were heirs was always seen to have "Mediterranean" roots. It was Graeco-Roman and avowedly classical. The Christian identity was without a doubt that which drew from the New Testament. The Old Testament might have been seen a source of inspiration for great Baroque music that we heard in chapel or many of the paintings of the Old Masters from the Renaissance. But the notion of a Judeo-Christian civilization (or heritage) would have been risible. The idea of Christendom, on the other hand, would have sounded archaic but would at least have been recognizable. Somehow, this synthesis of a Graeco-Roman secular culture and a pre-Religious Wars Christian belief system was made coherent and it was called European.
Once again, the background I'm describing is High Anglican without an iota of non-conformism or evangelicalism to it. And therein lies the answer to the rantings of Vance and Rubio. The idea of the "West" is a very American one (notwithstanding Spengler) and that too is about 50 years old. Even a racial and cultural supremacist like Tom Buchanan in the Great Gatsby would talk about the European races and those that did not belong to that group, included Jews, blacks, Mexicans, Asians, and whichever other group came within his range of sight.
Why Marco Rubio had to launch into an encomium to the plundering, rampaging "West" is a mystery. He invented his own background, claiming he was of Spanish and Italian heritage, from Seville and Casale Monferrato, Kingdom of Piedmont. In the show "Finding Your Roots", the host Henry Louis Gates Jr. told Marco Rubio that his mother's side has indigenous ancestry traceable to Cuba going back around 4,000 years, saying "your family on your mother's side has been there a long, long time." (Vance too has lied about his own background, but I won't go into that here.) What is shameless was the conduct of the Europeans (the Ruttes, the Merzs and others, descendants of Mitteleuropa middle class) who were just relieved to hear that Rubio had pointed to enemies that did not include them.
Insightful comment, agree. One cannot remove Christianity from the “recipe” which created Europe and America, it was a central component.
Jefferson’s succinct quote on his own philosophy sums up the cultural and religious influence at the Founding fairly well: “Epictetus and Epicurus give us laws for governing ourselves; Jesus a supplement of the duties we owe to others.”
You are right that modern Western societies are defined by liberal institutions—pluralism, rights, and tolerance. But those institutions did not arise in a vacuum. They emerged within a civilization shaped for centuries by the moral and institutional legacy of Christian faith. Rubio’s reference to that tradition may be politically blunt, but it reflects a historical reality: the liberal order you describe grew out of a particular civilizational context.
You also seem to treat appeals to Western civilizational identity as unnecessary or misleading. Yet we live in a world where many of the West’s adversaries—from jihadist movements to authoritarian powers—frame their opposition in explicitly civilizational terms. In that environment, it is hardly surprising that Western leaders speak about the cultural and religious roots of their own societies.
I get why you felt the need to respond to Rubio, given the dig. This is a thoughtful piece. However, Rubio‘s characterization of western civilization is no more reactionary than those of, say, John Adams. With all the crazy on the right these days, it’s weird that you should attack him on this ground.
I just read the first sentence and could not continue. I kind of wish I could interrogate Francis like ChatGpt. When did the West begin to define itself through Christianity? What is the first recorded instance where any western thinker claimed otherwise? Is there a single historian who disputes that Enlightenment values arouse directly out of Christianity?
Keep reading. He gets you.
Ok, I did. It’s not too bad. Reminiscent of those who want 90s leftism back, while rejecting the inevitable extension of those ideas into wokeness. I know nothing, but it’s plain as day that the post-war effort to eliminate common religious values and heritage is a total failure. A vague notion of shared values, which are no longer taught in schools, is too weak to defeat the alternatives, including Islamism and cultural Marxism. See Return of the Strong Gods, etc. etc.
I don’t disagree with you about the Christian roots. What’s changed for me is that the Enlightenment depended on a metaphysics of the rational subject, and I no longer believe that metaphysics. Liberalism still works, but only as a fragile, managed project. That’s why I’m uneasy — not because I want to restore a lost religious foundation, but because the Enlightenment’s own foundation has dissolved.
I guess he wasn’t really ready to fill those shoes
It is not true that 'early natural scientists were engaged in a prolonged struggle with the Catholic Church; it was only with the separation of empirical inquiry from religious dogma that modern natural science, and the economic world it made possible, emerged'.
See, for example:
'Whether one adapted a natural philosophy or devised a new one, the aim was now to produce a symbiotic union. This development found its clearest expression in theories of the earth, but the idea that natural philosophy is a means of seeking evidence of God’s activity in nature would become widespread in the 1680s and 1690s, particularly in England, and Newton for example would consider the stability of planetary orbits to be evidence of God’s constant intervention. . . . . But both in effect treated natural philosophy and the interpretation of revelation as being ultimately part of the same enterprise, for better or worse. . . . . At that point, a ‘scientific culture’ developed in the West that was very different from anything that had gone before, as the Enlightenment heralded a wholly new conception of the world and our place in it.'
p 505
Gaukroger, Stephen (2006) The emergence of a scientific culture. Science and the shaping of modernity, 1210-1685, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
sorry u actually r treating him as a thinking human? i thought he was at best an actor and at worst a robot.
Agree 100%. Thank you for this.