Return to Babel

Religion in the Post-Christian West

Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object will exert an equal and opposite force on the first. Although reactions are less exact, there seems to be a corollary in the metaphysical realm. After the U.S. was attacked in 2001 by religious jihadists, we saw a spate of bestsellers by atheists asserting that “God is not great” and “religion poisons everything.” Richard Dawkins, their primary figurehead, called for believers to be ridiculed so reason could lead the way, and there followed a rise of “nones” professing no religion.

Twenty years on, humanity’s religious impulses have resurged, but not in the form of our grandfathers’ ole time religion. Nor are today’s vaunted ideas necessarily reasonable. (For just one example, see “New Age in Wonderland,” p. 50.) As I write, the 2024 Olympics are underway. If it wasn’t clear before, the opening ceremony plastered it all over the internet: Western civilization is devolving into paganism (see p. 7 for a breakdown of the term). Secularism has failed, and old gods are on the rise.

Religion by Other Names

When we understand the biblical worldview categories of creation, fall, and redemption, we can see how certain narratives mimic the divine drama. Transgenderism, for example, is predicated on the notion of a mystical “gender identity.” Utterly untethered to anything physical, it pertains only to the immaterial soul, but the soul has a problem. The way for it to solve its plight is to transition, after which a new creature is “born,” complete with a new name and identity. Earlier this year, the president made the death-and-resurrection motif more explicit when he proclaimed March 31 (Easter Sunday) “Transgender Day of Visibility.”

There are commands, such as rules against “deadnaming,” and language prescriptions. And there are liturgies. The catechized community offers up refrains of affirmation for the new creature, while meting out punitive measures to the unregenerate.

Sexual Reality in the Crosshairs

And no ideological system would be complete without a clearly identified enemy. In preparing this issue, I learned a new word in the sexual identitarians’ vocabulary: allocishet. It breaks down to this: “cis” refers to anyone whose gender identity aligns with his or her given sex, and “het” means anyone whose sexual attractions are hetero. Cishet is simply non-LGBTQ+. Since the lexicon includes entries for the sexually neutered (asexual) and romantically stunted (aromantic), “allo” was added to create a more precise term designating only those cishets who experience sexual-romantic attractions. (“Allo” means “other” or “atypical.”)

In simple terms, then, allocishet is a neologism for what used to be seen as a normal, healthy adult. No doubt, the term originated in the mind of some academic theorist, but I learned of it from a Scholastic resource guide. Yes, the children’s book publisher (see p. 12). The point of this etymological digression is this: while to early sexual revolutionaries, to be queer was to be other and take pride in it, the game has changed. Now, those of us who recognize sexual reality are the other—or, in the flattened universe of critical-theory dichotomies, we are the oppressor. And oppressors are not to be tolerated. 

The newspeak is confusing, but in times of war, confusing the enemy is a strategic objective. There is much to lament about what a return to Babel is doing to upend the sacred order of reality, but we bring you these field reports in hopes of helping you and yours stay informed and prepared to engage in the spiritual conflict we find ourselves navigating. The enemies of all that is good, true, and beautiful are waging a war on reality, but we hope you read on in good courage. In a conflict between falsehood and reality, reality always eventually prevails.