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Faith is the only sure foundation for a civilisation in crisis, Os Guinness warned at this year’s ARC conference in London.

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

This question, posed by King David in Psalm 11:3, was also the challenge Os Guinness sought to answer during his main stage address at last week’s ARC 2025.

The 2025 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) Conference, held from February 17–19 at the ExCeL London, brought together world-leading thinkers, policymakers, and cultural influencers passionate about “re-laying the foundations of our civilisation”.

With over 4,000 attendees — a threefold increase on the first ARC conference in 2023 — the event featured a dazzling array of speakers, including Jordan Peterson, Nigel Farage, Douglas Murray, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Konstantin Kisin, Michael Shellenberger, and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Among these voices was renowned British philosopher Os Guinness, who delivered a compelling address on what he described as the “civilisational moment” that has been unfolding across the Western world since Hamas’ barbaric October 7 attack against Israel.

Reflecting on that tragic event and the West’s underwhelming response to it, Guinness warned about the convergence of radical Islamism and cultural Marxism to form a battering ram against the Western world.

“What we’ve witnessed since 2023 is the fateful convergence of these two radicalisms,” he said. “They are against the Christian faith and Judaism, but they are also entirely hostile to the West.”

“The alternatives are within our gates,” he warned.

The Failure of Secularism

In saner times, we might have seen a robust response to these threats, Guinness posits. Instead, the West has been caught flat-footed.

The reason, according to Guinness: secularism, which has “failed to provide a meaningful foundation for society”. He explained:

The Enlightenment, summed up in one word as ‘reason,’ was intended to replace the Christian faith, leading humanity forward with progress under reason, not under God…

Even since October 7th, much of liberalism has demonstrably shifted from liberal to post-liberal, even to highly illiberal. There’s no question that the intended replacement—Enlightenment secularism—has failed. It will not do the job for Western civilization.

Guinness went on to explain that secularism has failed to provide at least three things that humans desperately need: meaning, belonging, and purpose. And he is heartened to witness a renewal of faith across the West in our time.

“There are no deeper answers than those rooted in the Christian faith, itself rooted in Judaism.”

Without Christianity as our compass, our civilisation has lost its moral clarity to the point where even the distinction between good and evil has become blurred.

Faith as the Foundation of Civilisation

In contrast to secularism, Guinness presented faith as the only sure foundation for Western civilisation. He highlighted three critical aspects of faith in shaping societies: roots, restraints, and renewal.

“For you Americans, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’ — those truths weren’t self-evident to Plato, Aristotle, or most thinkers in history,” Guinness instructed, explaining the roots of the West. “They would’ve found them absurd.” He continued:

People aren’t created equal — Plato said some are gold, some silver, some bronze; Aristotle said some are born to rule, others to be ruled. The idea of created equality is absurd except for its roots in the Jewish and Christian faiths. Without them, we become a cut-flower civilization.

Guinness went on to warn that without faith to restrain our human impulses, freedom degenerates into chaos. “We need chains on our appetites, freedom with order, an ordered freedom. Without restraints, civilization is in trouble.”

Moreover, he rejected the secular idea that decline is inevitable, pointing instead to the biblical pattern of exile and return — in a word, renewal:

For the secular world, you only have decline and fall — entropy. There’s no other way; you decline, you fall—it’s the course of history. But not biblically. For Jews and Christians, the natural pairing isn’t decline and fall but exile and return. Yes, there’s exile when people disobey the ways of the Lord and don’t live as He called us to—it produces chaos, displacement, and finally exile. But if people return to Him, He returns to them and restores their fortunes.

The Rising Threat of Power

Guinness warned that as faith declines, society is increasingly driven by the raw pursuit of power. Citing Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, he remarked, “What is the world? The world is the will to power and nothing else besides. That’s the world we’re heading toward. Freedom absolutised becomes anarchy; reason absolutised becomes authoritarianism.”

Guinness cautioned against the creeping encroachment of state control in Western democracies, saying:

Countries like Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia, with a more liberal background, would produce soft totalitarianism—democratic totalitarianism: creeping regulations, an encroaching state, the managerial revolution thinking we can control everything. All trends point toward control and power.

“The threat isn’t just China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea,” Guinness expressed — “but powerful movements within our own societies against the freedom of self-government”.

A Call for a Creative Minority

Concluding his address, Guinness urged Christians to rise as a “creative minority” in this pivotal moment for the Western world.

In a subtle rebuke of the Jungian version of Christianity popularised by Jordan Peterson, Guinness spoke these powerful words:

This is a challenging moment. We can’t rely on clichés or warm ourselves with truisms. We’re at a showdown moment in Western civilization. Will the radical revolutions regenerate society as promised — or not? Will the secular Enlightenment liberalism encourage humanity to 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 won’t do anything for civilization if it’s viewed as merely useful or turned into a psychological version of whatever. It will only be effective if it’s understood to be true, and if enough citizens have an ultimate loyalty to what they see as ultimate reality.

Guinness then called for what he called a “creative minority”.

“What’s critical at a turning point in a civilisational moment is… a creative minority. Will there be sufficient citizens with sufficient faith and ultimate loyalty to ultimate reality to prevail against these challenges?” he asked.

Guinness closed with a personal reflection on faith, recounting an exchange between Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Richard Dawkins:

At one point, Rabbi Sacks said, ‘Richard, you’re tone-deaf. You just don’t hear the music.’ Dawkins replied famously, ‘You’re right, I am tone-deaf, but there is no music.’

I stand here, perhaps one of the oldest at the ARC Forum too. It was 60 years ago that I first heard the music. I hear it daily, I hear it as I cross the world still, and I hear a growing symphony, a growing chorus.

May all of us who understand these things at ARC be part of that creative minority who, at this crucial moment in Western civilization, will truly make a difference.

Watch Os Guinness’ full speech here.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.