The Fall of the West (It's Happening Now)

[Jesse Dornfeld]

It is my understanding that the ideologies that both the Greeks and the Romans adopted led to the demise of these once-global powers from the west.

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

That is exactly what is happening in the west today. A society cannot continue to function when family values (Read: Judeo-Christian values) are eroded from the culture.

In fact, even though we have a global economy which means it is harder for the west to fall, nonetheless, we may be more immoral in the US than in any other culture in history. We have mass shootings, abortion, an LGBTQ+ agenda, a decline of Christianity, and only about 6% of people in the US hold a Biblical worldview (which drops to 2% for Gen Z). While you could make the case that other nations around the world are more unchristian (Japan, for example, where there are only 1% of Christians in the population including cults and anything even resembling Christianity), I say what I say due to such a rapid drop away from Christianity in the US. It is how fast we are declining that I say this. We are entering a state of spiritual blindness in the US.

I believe most of the fault for this falls on Millennials (of which I am a part). I know people close to me who say, "I am thankful for deconstruction," Etc.

It's time for millennials to make the change we need to make as a society. This can only be done by God. The US is in a very sad state. Liberalism is rampant. Philosophers are knowingly trying to change the definition of words (such as questions of gender). If you are a Christian, you must speak out against the secular society, get on your knees and pray for revival. God can change this country, but He's the only one who can.

 

[Desk trauma]

No.

 

[Jonaitis]

America cannot last forever. It will eventually share the fate like the rest, that's destiny.

I do not believe Christians are called to redeem a culture, but the people of the culture, even if the culture continues to decline. Our kingdom is not of this world, and so we should not try to build our kingdom in this world. When Rome fell, it happened after it was Christianized. Obviously, we couldn't stop it, even if our influenced dominated the empire. It seems that we arrived on the scene when Rome was already weakening in its values. Let's hope what comes after will return to the values that they are abandoning from.

 

[Occams Barber]

It is my understanding that the ideologies that both the Greeks and the Romans adopted led to the demise of these once-global powers from the west.

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

That is exactly what is happening in the west today. A society cannot continue to function when family values (Read: Judeo-Christian values) are eroded from the culture.

In fact, even though we have a global economy which means it is harder for the west to fall, nonetheless, we may be more immoral in the US than in any other culture in history. We have mass shootings, abortion, an LGBTQ+ agenda, a decline of Christianity, and only about 6% of people in the US hold a Biblical worldview (which drops to 2% for Gen Z). While you could make the case that other nations around the world are more unchristian (Japan, for example, where there are only 1% of Christians in the population including cults and anything even resembling Christianity), I say what I say due to such a rapid drop away from Christianity in the US. It is how fast we are declining that I say this. We are entering a state of spiritual blindness in the US.

I believe most of the fault for this falls on Millennials (of which I am a part). I know people close to me who say, "I am thankful for deconstruction," Etc.

It's time for millennials to make the change we need to make as a society. This can only be done by God. The US is in a very sad state. Liberalism is rampant. Philosophers are knowingly trying to change the definition of words (such as questions of gender). If you are a Christian, you must speak out against the secular society, get on your knees and pray for revival. God can change this country, but He's the only one who can.

Hi Jesse

I think you need to decide if you're talking about the US, the West or the world in general, because you've effectively muddled them all up in your post. It's also worth noting that the US is not the world and that there are many non-Christian countries.

I also suspect that attributing the Fall of the Roman Empire to "adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values" will come as a surprise to historians.

OB

 

[Belk]

It is my understanding that the ideologies that both the Greeks and the Romans adopted led to the demise of these once-global powers from the west.

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

That is exactly what is happening in the west today. A society cannot continue to function when family values (Read: Judeo-Christian values) are eroded from the culture.

In fact, even though we have a global economy which means it is harder for the west to fall, nonetheless, we may be more immoral in the US than in any other culture in history. We have mass shootings, abortion, an LGBTQ+ agenda, a decline of Christianity, and only about 6% of people in the US hold a Biblical worldview (which drops to 2% for Gen Z). While you could make the case that other nations around the world are more unchristian (Japan, for example, where there are only 1% of Christians in the population including cults and anything even resembling Christianity), I say what I say due to such a rapid drop away from Christianity in the US. It is how fast we are declining that I say this. We are entering a state of spiritual blindness in the US.

I believe most of the fault for this falls on Millennials (of which I am a part). I know people close to me who say, "I am thankful for deconstruction," Etc.

It's time for millennials to make the change we need to make as a society. This can only be done by God. The US is in a very sad state. Liberalism is rampant. Philosophers are knowingly trying to change the definition of words (such as questions of gender). If you are a Christian, you must speak out against the secular society, get on your knees and pray for revival. God can change this country, but He's the only one who can.

Neither Rome nor Greece were global powers, only regional.

The rest of your post seems to simply equate things you disagree with as the cause of the downfall without any sort of analysis or evidence on how or why they are causing issues.

Your claim that society cannot continue to function without "Judeo-Christian values" (Why Christians keep trying to drag the Jewish people into this I will never understand) is not in line with the many failed states that have these values and the many states that do not but continue to be fine.

 

[timothyu]

It is my understanding that the ideologies that both the Greeks and the Romans adopted led to the demise of these once-global powers from the west.

Those two didn't do Christianity any favours either.

 

[Nithavela]

It is my understanding that the ideologies that both the Greeks and the Romans adopted led to the demise of these once-global powers from the west.

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

That is exactly what is happening in the west today. A society cannot continue to function when family values (Read: Judeo-Christian values) are eroded from the culture.

I'm pretty sure the roman empire fell AFTER adopting christianity.

 

[timothyu]

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

That is exactly what is happening in the west today. A

Yes that is happening but certainly won't be the downfall of the economy, the military industrial complex or elitism, the backbone of the nation. The age old struggle of man'swill (I was going to fix that but it seems appropriate) struggling with man's will instead of all following the will of God, will be the downfall as it has always been and always will be.

 

[public hermit]

It is my understanding that the ideologies that both the Greeks and the Romans adopted led to the demise of these once-global powers from the west.

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

That is exactly what is happening in the west today. A society cannot continue to function when family values (Read: Judeo-Christian values) are eroded from the culture.

In fact, even though we have a global economy which means it is harder for the west to fall, nonetheless, we may be more immoral in the US than in any other culture in history. We have mass shootings, abortion, an LGBTQ+ agenda, a decline of Christianity, and only about 6% of people in the US hold a Biblical worldview (which drops to 2% for Gen Z). While you could make the case that other nations around the world are more unchristian (Japan, for example, where there are only 1% of Christians in the population including cults and anything even resembling Christianity), I say what I say due to such a rapid drop away from Christianity in the US. It is how fast we are declining that I say this. We are entering a state of spiritual blindness in the US.

I believe most of the fault for this falls on Millennials (of which I am a part). I know people close to me who say, "I am thankful for deconstruction," Etc.

It's time for millennials to make the change we need to make as a society. This can only be done by God. The US is in a very sad state. Liberalism is rampant. Philosophers are knowingly trying to change the definition of words (such as questions of gender). If you are a Christian, you must speak out against the secular society, get on your knees and pray for revival. God can change this country, but He's the only one who can.

I agree, Christian Nationalism cannot persist unless secularism is destroyed. And so, although I am a Christian, I thank God for secularism. I mean, think about it, Christians would probably still be killing each other if it hadn't been for the Enlightenment.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I'm pretty sure the roman empire fell AFTER adopting christianity.

Why did those Christians destroy Western Civilization?

 

[Nithavela]

Why did those Christians destroy Western Civilization?

Better ask the OP, he seems to have a firm grip on the reasons civilisations fall.

 

[Whyayeman]

Did the Romans not have gays? Or the Greeks? You learn something every day!

Things like adopting Homosexuality, a loss of national identity, and generally an attack on family values led to the demise of these once powerful entities.

I didn't know that you could adopt homosexuality either. The Romans had absolutely no sense of national identity, ever. Where I was born, just inside the furthest limit of the Roman Empire the forts were garrisoned by Syrian troops for many years and the Ancient Britons south of Hadrian's Wall became Roman citizens. After 25 years of service the Syrian soldiers became Roman too and were allotted pieces of land to farm. They would marry local girls and raise their families in harmony with their neighbours.

It is probably unwise to make assumptions about something you clearly know so little about, Jesse. Maybe your antipathy to ways of life different from your own have led you into these misunderstandings.

 

[dzheremi]

Oh boy, another "the sky is falling" thread. These are never based on completely bonkers ideas...

First off, when I read things like "Only 6% hold to a Biblical worldview", I immediately get suspicious that whoever is claiming that has in mind only their own very narrow idea of what that means that probably only includes whatever Protestant sect they're a part of, to the exclusion of the vast numbers of other Christians around the Western world who might not be Biblical literalists or believers in Biblical inerrancy, but in all other ways (e.g., adherence to the Nicean Creed, which is this very website's statement of faith) are just as Christian as the 6% who apparently meet the OP's definition of holding a "Biblical worldview".

Secondly, there seems to be a mix-up of sorts going on here as a result of trying too hard to map the conditions of Ancient Rome onto our modern geopolitical world. To say that Rome or Greece or wherever fell due to this or that kind of political decadence and cultural ennui is one thing; to say that this was due to a lack of "national identity" is really anachronistic and weird. As any amount of forethought on this matter would remind a person, the Greco-Roman empire (Rome in the West, Byzantium in the East) was just that: an empire. As such, the formation of distinct national identities was itself more of a sign of the empire's decline than the absence of them ever could be. Again, think about it: The Ottoman Empire ruled over a very large and diverse population, just as the later Russian and British empires would likewise rule. And how did each of these end? With the rise of modern nationalism: the liberation of the Greeks, the Balkans, the Armenians, and so on in the case of the Ottoman Empire; the formation of the Russian republic in the case of the Russian Empire (soon to be transformed into the largest constituent nation of the USSR), and the formation of any number of national entities out of former British colonial possessions in the case of the British Empire (India, Iraq, Sudan, etc.). The modern concept of nationalism or the nation-state is strikingly new. When my own grandfather was born in 1911, there was arguably only one independent state in all of Africa (Ethiopia), the Austro-Hungarian Empire was still a thing, Iceland was still a dependency of Denmark, the USA still ruled the Philippines (as they would until 1946), etc. The world looked pretty different than how it does now, and that was just over a century ago. I would be willing to grant that people still had what we could think of as "national identities" a long time ago, but these were not expressed via a kind of 'supra-tribal' mentality like they would be in a modern country like the USA, where what binds people together is being 'American'. Rather, it seems obvious that the Jews of the past just like the Jews of today knew that they were Jews, as is usually also the case with regard to other groups like Armenians or Assyrians (and here I only write 'usually' because there are perhaps a great number who are Arabized/Turkified/Kurdified, and hence disconnected from their true origins), but lacking as they did during most times a suitably unoccupied homeland to call their own, these were ethnolinguistic and/or ethnoreligious designations, not modern 'nationalisms'. In other words, you were a Jew if you were raised in the religion of Judaism, had some familiarity with a distinctly Jewish language or dialect (e.g., Hebrew, Judaeo-Aramaic, Ladino/Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Persian, etc.), and most importantly, if your mother was a Jew (as that is how Jewish identity is conferred as a matter of law). This is all very different than the modern western conception of "national identity". No one says "sorry, but you only get to be Australian or Polish (or whatever) if you're an English or Polish-speaking Christian".

The argument presented in the OP seems to rest upon very weak grounds. I'm not even going to touch any of the stuff about homosexuality (another strikingly modern idea, depending on how exactly it is understood) or which generation is to blame for whatever (here's a hint, though: mainline Protestant Christianity had stopped being the dominant flavor of Christianity in the USA by the mid-1980s, when even the oldest Millennials like me were still in single digits; now tell me, please: has the state of public acceptance or profession of Christianity in the USA gotten better or worse in the years since then? Hmmm...). That's all ridiculous 'culture war' nonsense that I have absolutely no time for.

 

[Occams Barber]

Wolseley
I quite agree. Personally, I think we have gone beyond the tipping point, but that's me. I think the snowball is rapidly approaching peak mass and velocity, and nothing with stop it now until it slams into the trunk of the huge tree at the bottom of the hill.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Yesterday at 10:59 AM
*************************************************************************

Why does Gloria Mundi get blamed for everything?

OB

 

[Tuur]

Why did those Christians destroy Western Civilization?

Gibbon's argument was that Christianity made the Roman Empire weak. Trying to remember why, if it was Christian principles such as compassion, or something else. Gibbon didn't seem to think too highly of Christians.

 

[Tuur]

Why does Gloria Mundi get blamed for everything?

Because everyone hates Mundi's?

 

[Whyayeman]

Gibbon's argument was that Christianity made the Roman Empire weak. Trying to remember why, if it was Christian principles such as compassion, or something else. Gibbon didn't seem to think too highly of Christians.

I don't think people take Gibbon too seriously these days. I doubt very much that there was one over-arching reason. And much was left of the Roman Empire for many centuries after the Caesars. Its influence is felt even now. Just as Rome continues as part of Western culture - in legal systems as well as literature and art and in just about every corner of our lives.

What is the Upper Chamber in France and America called? The Senate. And the letters SPQR found everywhere in the old Empire were the equivalent of USA. Senatus Publiusque Romanus - the Roman Senate and People.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

If one takes Spengler seriously (and I do), we have more time than just the immediate generation of the millennials to consider the decline and fall of the West. (The complete decline of the West could be as much as two hundred years from now).

As Christians in particular we can look on the decline of civilizations and nations and understand that the faith can persevere regardless and inform the national character of future nations. We can't ever go back, we must always move forward and plant trees we might never see the fruit of.

 

[timothyu]

Good and evil have always been on a teeter totter. Neither can jump off.

 

[kdm1984]

So you first say the United States may be more immoral than any other culture in history (based on what -- do you think those immoral behaviors/views you list are not rampant in other Western countries now, or at any other point in history, except perhaps the mass shootings, which we have here because of the ease of access to firearms?), and that the Millennials are to blame for abandoning the faith (do you think the Boomers with their 1960s sexual revolution, Roe vs. Wade, celebration of Hugh Hefner, "don't trust anyone over 30," were much more moral/religious in their youths? Who do you think taught the Millennials? Generational tendencies don't occur in context-independent vacuums).

Yet you then say these same American Millennials need to save the culture, and it needs to be done by God.

This is a non-sequitur.

There are still plenty of people speaking out against secular society, especially here in the United States, which STILL remains the most religious of the countries in the West (that, by the way, brings up the question -- if you think we're the most immoral, then why are the European countries -- which are CONSIDERABLY less religiously affiliated than us -- more "moral"? Why would MORE unChristian countries be MORE moral than a much more Christian one?). Why do you think the political left doesn't even use the word "tolerance" anymore? I've spoken with many atheists, leftists, and agnostics online over the years, and they don't just drop all their world views because Christians "spoke out" to them. Actually, that tends to make their views even MORE entrenched. And it's only gotten worse -- go to Reddit, or any discussion forum even about your favorite sports teams, and try to argue with/speak out against those people about faith/religion. Tell me how it goes.

I believe you have a very naive and faulty understanding of human nature, haven't really debated much with people of differing views, don't have much of an understanding of how people construct their views, and -- like many Christians in the United States -- need to look more at the New Testament and what Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John taught. Jesus said His kingdom is not of this world, Paul taught early Christians to respect governing authorities even though Nero and others were putting Christians to death (a much worse fate than an atheist making fun of us online), and not ONE of them gave any instructions to believers to make a national theocracy.

It's not our job to save/redeem the culture; regardless of the nation we live in, or the time point in history. All we can do is practice our faith, whether or not it's "popular" in our nations and cultures.