Breakpoint: What’s a Christian to do with Culture?

By John Stonestreet

Published April 10, 2025

We’re certainly in a moment, and the faithful should be the guiding lights.

The thing about culture is that it is always changing. That’s because culture is, in a very real sense, created by humans. It’s the result of what we think, what we imagine, what we change, what we legislate, what we invent, what we relate to, and all kinds of other human experiences.

There are some moments, however, in which the changes are deeper and wider, the shifts in culture more fundamental. Many sense we’re living in such a time where the changes that have taken place over the last several decades have been substantial, to say the least. My friend Os Guinness calls this a “civilizational moment,” where society isn’t just at a critical crossroads in twenty-first century America. It’s instead at a critical crossroads for Western civilization itself.

Of course, history tells the story about civilizations, how they rise and fall. There are rules to civilizations, and if those rules are broken, then those civilizations no longer have a future. What Os means when he calls this a civilizational moment is that we’re at a time when our future is unclear. Will Western civilization be renewed? Will it enter a time of revolution? Or will we continue in irreversible decline?

It’s important as Christians to always remember that the decline of Western civilization is not the decline of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God both predates and will long outlast the history of Western civilization. However, its decline will be significant indeed because so many of the ideals of the Western world were shaped and formed by Christian beliefs—specifically those beliefs about morality and about human dignity. Such ideals aren’t found in other civilizations that have long since been swept into the dustbin of history.

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