Although the dust has settled since I attended the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London in the middle of February, I’m still discombobulated, struggling to know what to make of the experience.
How do you judge something where you heard things that made you gasp “Wow!” (in a good way) and “Wow!” (in a less good way)? As a conservative evangelical theologian and someone interested in cultural apologetics and evangelism, I wonder how many (if any) cheers we should give ARC and the cultural trend it represents.
What Is the ARC?
In the United Kingdom, ARC had some mainstream media coverage, with reactions falling predictably depending on where the commentator lands on the political spectrum. For those unfamiliar with this conference, let’s call ARC the conservative (rather than “alt-right” or “far right”) alternative to DAVOS and the World Economic Forum. If this doesn’t orient you, then some of the organizers and speakers might: Jordan Peterson, Mike Johnson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Barron, Douglas Murray, Os Guinness, Konstantin Kisin, Niall Ferguson, and Peter Thiel.
The first ARC conference in 2023, also in London, had 1,500 invited guests. This year, 4,000 delegates from 96 countries mingled and listened to TED-style talks, interviews, panels, and debates, as well as songs and spoken-word performances, covering five “streams” (The Civilisational Moment; Responsible Citizenship and Social Fabric; Free Enterprise and Good Governance; Energy, Resources, and Our Environment; Identity in the Digital Age). The conference’s three days were themed around past, present, and future (The Best of Our Inheritance, The Choices We Face; Bring Out the Builders).
That the guests were invited meant there was a “preaching to the choir” feel, a vibe of determined solidarity and yet positive conviviality. A bracing live performance of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” ushered in the start of each day. To summarize a little of Philippa Stroud’s opening letter to the delegates, she asserted that while there’s a sense of demoralization and “permacrisis” among our nations, declinism isn’t inevitable:
The time has come for a better story; one that reconnects us with the original inspiration of our civilisation. ARC is an embodiment of that inspiration: a movement of people creating and building a hope-filled, pro-human optimistic vision. . . . Our story, our inheritance, is a vision grounded in human dignity, freedom, the call to responsibility and pioneering adventure. Our story is founded on the extraordinary principles that each person’s life is of infinite value, that life offers both meaning and purpose and that we all have something to contribute.
On paper, what’s not to like here? In reality, this “better story” is unpacked with both speakers and delegates having their own version of the story, its heroes and villains, and the constructive ways forward. Libertarianism, free speech, free market, the family, technological progress, and artistic endeavor were prominent and championed while obvious “enemies” were in the crosshairs (e.g., hedonism, cultural Marxism, and net–carbon zero policies). So far, so political.
However, undergirding some political positioning and posturing (Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, leaders of the Conservative and Reform parties respectively, both contributed), there was a fairly consistent call for us to reclaim our spiritual foundations and cultural heritage. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a bland, wishy-washy “spirituality”; it had shape and specificity.
The phrase “Judeo-Christian” was uttered repeatedly, and the doctrine of the image of God was mentioned more than once. It seems many speakers and delegates have affiliations with some Jewish or Christian tradition: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and, yes, evangelical Protestant. Our Judeo-Christian cultural heritage appears to be both what we need to recover and what we’ll need as a secure foundation for meaning, identity, dignity, truth, and sacrifice.
Amen? Well, yes and no.
What ARC Gets Right
Let’s start with the positives. First, whether intentionally or not, ARC has created a space where serious talk about big ideas, worldview, and culture is welcomed. These spaces are needed for a civil society.
Second, ARC has created a space where the Christian faith is seen positively, fostering openness for apologetic and evangelistic conversations. If you look at the ARC speeches through the lens of the “magnetic points” that I’ve written about, they touch at a surprising rate on the evangelistic entry points of connection, norm, deliverance, destiny, and higher power.
ARC has created a space where the Christian faith is seen positively, fostering openness for apologetic and evangelistic conversations.
Third, there were brilliant talks with great apologetic import. Even among some vocal pro-Trump opposition in the auditorium, David Brooks’s address was brilliant, and in both style and substance was very Kelleresque. Quoting Paul Tillich, Brooks noted that we (Western civilization) are broken, yet this means we can be broken open:
Suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you’re not the person you thought you were. It carves through the floor of what you thought was the basement of your soul and it reveals a cavity. Then it carves through that and reveals a cavity. And then carves through that floor and reveals a cavity below.
Brooks notes that moments of suffering reveal a person’s depth the way nothing else does, but the discerning realize that the only thing that can fuel that depth is a spiritual food and not a material one. You may not agree with everything Brooks says (I welcomed the tension and friction he provided), but if you want to witness great oratory that can disarm but still pack a punch, watch his talk.
Finally, there was the 83-year-old Os Guinness, whose address titled “This Civilizational Moment” was, for me, the highlight of the three days. It was a masterclass in cultural apologetics from one of our greatest Christian public intellectuals, showing the bankruptcy of the current alternatives and pointing to the indispensability of Christianity in the roots, restraints, and renewal of our civilization. His clarion call near the end of his talk was powerful:
We’re at the showdown moment in Western Civilization. Will the radical revolutions regenerate the societies they promised or not? Will the secular enlightenment of liberalism encourage humanity to go forward and progress with reason alone without God, or not? But also, is the God of Sinai, the God of the burning bush, the God of the burning mountain, and our Lord with the call of Galilee, are these things true, or not? The Christian faith will not do anything for civilization if it’s viewed as useful. It will do nothing for civilization if we turn it into a psychological version of whatever. It will only be true and effective if it’s understood to be true and you have enough people who are citizens who have an ultimate loyalty to what they see as ultimate reality.
Where ARC Fell Short
Despite these positives, I came away from ARC confused and frustrated, with more questions than answers. Amid all the talk of Judeo-Christian foundations, values, and virtues, largely absent were the name of Jesus Christ, the gospel of grace, and the centrality of the church—except for a few notable moments, like Amy Orr-Ewing pointing to Jesus the Great Samaritan.
This might seem like a pietistic theologian’s nitpicking. What more could we expect in such a mixed gathering? However, the absence of Jesus Christ of the Gospels—historical, particular, peculiar, material, and personal—is significant both for penultimate and ultimate ends.
I must tread with caution. Stroud, cofounder and CEO of ARC, is an evangelical and a sister in Christ. I’ve never met her and I’m not privy to the theological presuppositions, rationale, strategy, and tactics for her involvement in ARC. I don’t know whether she draws on the doctrine of common grace, how she constructs an argument for cobelligerence, or her expectations for cultural transformation. I don’t know whether the plan for ARC is a brilliant missional contextualization strategy that creates spaces and conversations that in time will increasingly lead to saying more and more about Christ.
Largely absent were the name of Jesus Christ, the gospel of grace, and the centrality of the church.
All I have is what I witnessed at the conference: that each time as we seemed to edge closer and closer to the gospel, I edged farther and farther forward in my seat—only to slump back in disappointment when Jesus wasn’t mentioned.
Am I seeing the glass as half empty? I don’t think so. Without Jesus Christ and the gospel of grace, we don’t have Christianity, and we don’t have the gospel but an anti-gospel.
I’m not the first to notice this. In January, Tara Isabella Burton critiqued what she labels as “memetic” Christianity: “In this view, Christianity is good, useful, and desirable both because its fundamental metaphorical message says something true about human nature, and also because a society in which people broadly hold to that metaphorical message is preferable to the nihilistic carnival of postliberal modernity.”
Burton argues that memetic Christianity (of which she gives Jordan Peterson as an example) focuses on its “political and ideological potential at the expense, of well, Christ.” She’s concerned that the metaphorical and memetic become more real and prior to the particular and literally true:
Jesus Christ becomes, in this rendering, merely a paradigmatic rendering of the God-man: the human being who, through knowledge, through will, through innovation, through the creative power of the (so-called) Western intellectual tradition, succeeds in transhumanist self-divinization. If Christianity is not literally true, in other words, it becomes instead a kind of Hermetic magical transhumanism, in which Jesus is a mere metaphor for the divine in all of us. Storytelling, command of language through logos, becomes in this vision the ultimate human prerogative: the creation of reality through the judicious dissemination of memes. Man is a divine reality-creator because he is a self-determining storyteller.
Peterson delivered a mesmerizing memetic message at ARC. He remains the draw for many delegates (receiving a standing ovation from several hundred on his first appearance at the conference). In God’s providence, he may well be a “gateway drug” for people to be introduced to genuine Christianity. But his talk, where he advocated for a society based not on hedonism but on reciprocal voluntary self-sacrifice, while in one sense laudable, was both Christless and graceless. My aforementioned negative “Wow!” was the irony of the climax of Peterson’s talk in which it’s “reciprocal voluntary self-sacrifice” that’s the “cornerstone rejected by the builder.” So near and yet so far.
Need for a Peculiar Christianity
I mentioned Burton’s analysis, but we can go back a long way to find a similar argument. In 1797, William Wilberforce wrote his bestseller with the catchy title A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. He wrote,
The fatal habit, of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines, insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight; and, as might naturally have been expected, the moral system also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment.
You cannot have the fruit of Christianity without the root. And what’s the root? It’s those peculiar doctrines Wilberforce earlier defined as the corruption of human nature, the atonement of the Savior, and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit. Wilberforce urged cultural Christianity not to turn “[its] eyes from the grand peculiarities of Christianity, [but] to keep these ever in view, as the pregnant principles whence all the rest must derive their origin, and receive their best support.”
Similar to Wilberforce’s illustration, it was stated more than once at ARC that we’re a “cut-flower culture,” having forgotten our heritage. However, what I witnessed at the conference was a cut-cut-flower culture: There was a lot of good fruit displayed but not much root (although Guinness came close).
You cannot have the fruit of Christianity without the root.
However, without the root, we don’t only end up with a gospel of works rather than of grace. We cut off the power to societal and cultural transformation. Jesus Christ and those peculiar doctrines cannot be implicitly assumed in case they cause embarrassment and disunity; they must be proclaimed for the sake of ultimate eternal ends and temporary penultimate ends.
Pietism and cultural engagement aren’t mutually exclusive. The “problem” is that with the Jesus of the Bible—born, crucified, raised, and ascended as Lord and King—there’s scandal and peculiarity all around. There’s historical, particular, material, and personal scandal and peculiarity to those who believe Jesus as a potent symbol of some higher end. There’s scandal and peculiarity for Jews who seek wisdom and Greeks who seek power. And, as evangelical Protestants engaging with Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and others, there’s scandal and peculiarity in the “solas” of Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, to God’s glory alone.
Are we willing to proclaim these things? Is ARC—and are we—willing to put Jesus Christ and the peculiar doctrine of the faith front and center?
The Gospel Coalition