The Great Return

The decline in Secular Western morality can only be halted and reversed by a full return to Christianity. Many people have a sense that the Western World is in decline and that our society is fragmenting around us. Many people have an ominous sense that we are living at the end of a civilised age and are moving into something far less pleasant and humane. But fewer people understand why this is happening. In this new book, Jamie Franklin argues that the reason for this decline is because we have jettisoned the underlying belief system that gave birth to the Western world - and the Western mind - in the first place: Christianity. He argues that there is a logical and inevitable link between the decline of Christianity and the decline of the West. As our metaphysical commitment to Christianity declines, so does our commitment to the benefits that came to us from Christianity. Through captivating argument, he demonstrates how this plays out in the scientific realm, which has abandoned objectivity for dogmatism; in the ethical realm, which is eliminating humanity from its own formulations; and in the political scene, as it moves away from the democratic principle towards a neo-marxist influenced, nihilistic technocracy that threatens to eliminate human culture, distinctiveness and agency in the pursuit of a globalist utopia. In so doing, Franklin touches on contemporary political conversations that are exercising the public imagination such as abortion, euthanasia, transhumanism, and the rebirth of the totalitarian impulse in Western democracies. Only a revival of Christianity can reverse these trends. This book urges the Church to take seriously its own commitment to the metaphysical and ethical presuppositions of its own faith. But also acknowledges the great challenge that Christianity faces as it threatens to be overwhelmed by the rising tide of secular nihilism that may yet engulf the Western World. Franklin shows that a return to Christianity would have the potential to reverse the damaging trends he observes,whether that is transhumanism/the rise of AI or other ethical decisions about contemporary morality. He insists, first and foremost, the Church must take seriously its own commitment to belief in order for us to have a chance of seeing progress. But in doing so, he seeks to argue that a great return would have a positive impact intellectually, societally, politically and ethically - his hope for the book is that readers may at least see this great return as something desirable for the reasons he sets out.