The Death and Restoration of Christian Culture

Dr. John Senior was a professor at the University of Kansas who had an immense personal influence on the founding monks at the Abbey.

In The Death of Christian Culture,

John Senior, focusing on the modernist movement in literature, shows how Western intellectuals came to reject the Christian idea of an orderly, intelligible universe created by God. Today, their revolt bears its bitter fruit: moral chaos… cynicism despair. Modern man has lost his faith-and now he is losing his mind.… Tragically, the disease has spread. All areas of society are infected. Our universities are paralyzed by self-doubt. The courts have stood the law on its head. Even the Church is faltering… Does all this mean that the glory of Christian culture is gone forever? Not necessarily, answers Dr. Senior. … He believes that a new Dark Age is upon us. But there is still time to act. As individuals, where can we start? By immersing ourselves in the great books of our Christian and classical heritage. Christians must find their own roots before they can hope to bring sanity back to the world.

Is a restoration to be hoped for?

Dr. Senior answers with a genuinely realistic, but no less resounding yes in The Restoration of Christian Culture. This book continues to warn of the ongoing extinction of the cultural patrimony of ancient Greece & Rome, medieval Christian Europe, and the early-modern West, owing to the secularization, bureaucratization, and mechanization of life today. But Senior also offers challenging and provocative ideas for recapturing and living the cultural traditions of classical and Christian history. Bringing the true wisdom of giants such as Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, and St. Thomas Aquinas in touch with the social, political & personal life of “modern man,” Senior shows how we can once again become fellow citizens of a common Western, Christian culture through work, prayer and sacrifice.