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As the late Roman Catholic philosopher of history Christopher Dawson has pointed out, "Western civilization" does not represent the imposition of the West on the rest of the world, but is largely the transformation of Greco-Roman, Hellenistic culture by the gospel, by Christianity. We cannot repudiate Western civilization and dissociate ourselves from it without at the same time moving ourselves away from Christianity, and potentially from Christ himself. The implications of the Stanford undergraduates' chant, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!" are not a universalism in the sense of "making disciples of all nations," but the repudiation of the gospel and of the One of whom it tells.

There is no place in Christianity for racism, ethnocentrism, or illusions of racial, national, or ethnic superiority or inferiority, just as there is no place for individual pride, arrogance, and contempt for others. The second of the two "great commandments" directs us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Implicit in the commandment is the presupposition that we will not hate or have contempt for ourselves. This in no way contradicts the concept that each of us is a sinner who needs to repent.

The very facts that we are made, each one of us, in the image of God, and that God has sent his only Son into the world so that, through faith in him, we might obtain eternal life, demonstrate that we are not to be objects of hatred or contempt-not in the eyes of God, and therefore not in our own. "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought," Paul writes (, NIV). A certain level of self-respect is appropriate. We are not worthless nothings, for, as the late Orthodox scholar Georges Florovsky used to say, "God did not send his Son to die for nothing."

Americans—Christians and non-Christians alike—often look at the rest of the world with a curious mixture of conceit and inferiority feelings. During the years between World War II and the Vietnam War, feelings of conceit tended to predominate; since Vietnam, we have tended to think of ourselves as losers. Europeans are less inclined than North Americans to think of themselves as inferior, but here, too, such "end of an era" feelings are growing, as the recent Tages-Anzeiger article shows.

After 70 years, during which an atheistic, materialistic, totalitarian system sought to crush Christianity and to spread its own power across the world, that awful menace has vanished. In the formerly Communist countries, there is now a call in many quarters for Christian values. How ironic it is that in the land that has, since World War II, been so dynamic in evangelism and world missions, we lose our sense of calling and mission. The poison coursing through the veins of our culture is not Marxism, but a kind of listlessness of the spirit, crippling even convinced Christians and paralyzing those without clear spiritual direction.

Compared to the standards of the New Testament and the principles by which we are called to live, individual Christians as well as the societies and governments that call themselves Christian have much for which to repent and to atone. However, viewed against the background of world history—the melancholy account of fallen humanity—Christianity and the Christian West should not be singled out for censure. The primary means by which the gospel spread was missions, not imperialism.

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July (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51