God and Family in the West

The fracturing of the family combined with the sexual revolution has put a great many people in the West on a collision course with certain fundamental teachings of the Christian faith,” Mary Eberstadt writes in her new book, How the West Really Lost God. “Church officials often wring their hands about getting out the ‘positive’ side of those teachings, and one can understand why. But what is less clear is how many understand the deeper reason for their difficulty: that the unprecedented proliferation of weakened natural families and nontraditional quasi-families has left a great many individuals resistant as they never were before to fundamental features of the Christian moral code.” Eberstadt, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, talks with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about the reality and the future of God and family in the West.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Has the West really lost God? We prayed after the Boston Marathon bombings, after all. Is this “tsunami of secularism” stuff overblown?

MARY EBERSTADT: It’s hard to survey Western societies today and not see that many people have turned their backs on the Judeo-Christian God — including in places that were once Christian strongholds.

Across Western Europe, church attendance has gone over a cliff. Just last week, a report made headline news across Britain, because it showed that self-professed Christians will be a minority of the population there even sooner than supposed — in fact, within the decade.