A Touchstone Partner Feature

released 2/13/2026

In his poetry and prose, T. S. Eliot evidenced keen insight into the link between Christianity’s fading in the West and cultural dissolution. In this 2023 essay, Ken Myers draws on Eliot, Philip Rieff, Christopher Clausen, and others to argue that Western civilization has broken down, not into a multiplicity of cultures, but into an “anti-“ or “post-culture.” Myers critiques the “myth of neutrality” of secular liberalism, showing that metaphysical assumptions necessarily undergird it. Substantive (and often mistaken) ideas about reality and the good are “smuggled” into its frameworks and policies, while their existence is denied. If Scripture is true, then reality is Christocentric: Christ is the author and sustainer of all that is. Myers concludes with a call for the Church to bear witness to this reality by recovering its identity and purpose as an alternative culture.

This essay is provided courtesy of Touchstone magazine. It was originally published in the July/August 2023 issue and is read by Ken Myers. The essay can be found here. The essay by David Bentley Hart that Ken mentions, “Christ and Nothing,” may be found at the First Things website here, and our recording of it may be found here.

47 minutes

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