What difference does it make to society if a people are Christian or not? Surely what a person believes is a purely personal matter which has no impact on others?

As Nietzsche pointed out, when God dies so does morality. When individuals and then a people turn from Christianity, something is going to take its place, and it is never good.

Luxury Beliefs

Rob Henderson, an American scholar, has coined the term ‘luxury beliefs’ to describe those values promoted by Western elites which act as status symbols. In the past, the privileged classes showed their wealth and status by displaying their luxury goods. However, today even hoi polloi have access to items such as cars, telephones and foreign holidays, so the upper echelons now display their status by developing a set of ‘luxury beliefs’.

the upper echelons now display their status by developing a set of ‘luxury beliefs’.

Western elites have replaced biblical Christianity with progressivism. Politicians, media, big business, academia, all sing from the same hymn sheet. Via deliberate social engineering, their beliefs have filtered down through all social levels and have become accepted as the new normal, with a consequent impact on the whole of society.

Whilst proclaiming their virtue through their luxury beliefs, the elites don’t actually practise them; it is those lower on the social scale who pay the price. For all their progressive politics, the elites are conservative in their behaviour.

Marriage

In the 1960s the elites began to view monogamy as outdated, yet they continue to marry while those who are poorer, less well educated and who have fewer connections to ease their way through life are giving up on marriage.

Via deliberate social engineering, their beliefs have filtered down through all social levels and have become accepted as the new normal, with a consequent impact on the whole of society.

In Britain today we speak of seven social classes. Someone from the top social class (CEOs, lawyers, doctors etc) is 48 per cent more likely to be married than someone in the bottom social class (labourers, cleaners, supermarket cashiers). At the turn of this century, the difference was 22 per cent.

Children

From the Victorian era to the 1960s, the proportion of children born outside marriage seldom rose above 5 per cent. Then things started to change and by 1981 the figure was 13 per cent. Since then, it has almost quadrupled with the majority of children now being born outside marriage.

The Marriage Foundation finds that today 87 per cent of mothers from higher income groups are married, compared with just 24 per cent of those at the other end of the social scale. According to The Poverty Site, teenage motherhood is eight times as common amongst those from manual social backgrounds as for those from managerial and professional backgrounds.

affluent educated people brought up by two married parents are more likely than others to believe monogamy is outdated and that all family structures are equal.

To those who think marriage is obsolete, such figures don’t matter. But to children brought up in broken homes with drastically reduced educational and employment outcomes it matters a great deal.

All the evidence is that families with two married parents are best for young children. However, affluent educated people brought up by two married parents are more likely than others to believe monogamy is outdated and that all family structures are equal.

Racial Diversity

A typical luxury belief is ‘diversity is our strength’, something few outside our education factories or the elite-dominated media actually believe. Diversity is a core value for progressives and as researcher Zach Goldberg shows, they are the only group to feel more positive about another racial group than their own. Claiming that diversity is the basis of what we are as a community is the same as saying that we have no identity of our own.

white liberals may vote for diversity with their ballots, but their feet tell a different story.

The political scientist Eric Kaufmann points out that despite what white liberals say about desiring ethnically diverse neighbourhoods, they are more likely to desert diverse neighbourhoods for uniformly white ones than are conservatives. He concludes that ‘white liberals may vote for diversity with their ballots, but their feet tell a different story’.

Sexual Diversity

In a 2021 executive order, President Biden tasked all US government agencies to make a priority of promoting LGBTQ+ rights around the world. This includes considering implementing sanctions to coerce nations which don’t follow America’s continuously evolving view of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also believes diversity is our strength. In a recent tweet he said that ‘Nato’s mission extends beyond protecting territories to safeguarding our diverse populations.’ He was not talking of religious or political diversity. What he means, first, is sexual diversity, and then racial diversity. For the first time in history we have a military alliance which has characterised its main function as safeguarding sexual deviants.

Until recently, if someone had said that a defining Western value was queerness they would have been ridiculed.

Why did Stoltenberg say this? Surely defending our territory implies defending everyone within that territory, which would inevitably include sexual minorities? Stoltenberg clearly proposes that sexual diversity is a core value of the West. Until recently, if someone had said that a defining Western value was queerness they would have been ridiculed. By this statement Nato has confirmed everything Putin says about the degenerate West.

Progressivism’s Outcome

In 2017 the sexual radical Camille Paglia warned that the “movement towards heterogony” is something which is seen only in the late stages of a civilisation. She argues that transgenderism is historically a sign of a civilisation’s final phase as it ceases to believe in itself and unravels before eventual dissolution.

Paglia, who is a lapsed Catholic, transgender lesbian, and brilliantly acerbic cultural commentator, warns that gays had better be very careful about destroying the pillars of a complex culture, such as the Christian based West, because only in advanced cultures can the sexually transgressive thrive. The brutality that follows civilisational collapse will not be so tolerant.

When we abandon Christ we abandon more than Christ.

The Rev. Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister; now a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Check out his many incisive articles on his blog, A Grain of Sand.