The future of the West depends on finding a third way. That was the message I heard twice in one week from two historians. Neither was evangelical or American. They weren’t thinking in terms of the U.S. two-party system. Yet both cast the West’s options in terms of a third way that transcends cultural binaries. Their analysis went deeper than politics. Rather, they engaged at the level of mythology: the stories we’re told of our common life that orient us morally and spiritually. These narratives are the true competitors for our affections and a third way emerges when we contend with these stories. Future 1: Post-Christian Progressivism On the TRIGGERnometry podcast, Konstantin Kisin asked Dominion author Tom Holland to put on his “futurist hat.” Kisin asked Holland a version of the question “Which way, Western man?” and Holland answered with three scenarios he foresees for Britain. The first scenario is what Holland described as “post-Christian Paddingtonism.” This view, inspired by the Paddington Bear books, presents Britain at its cuddly best: welcoming the immigrant bear from Peru and celebrating the triumph of kindness. Paddingtonism is a kind of Christian-inflected progressivism divorced from its distinctively Christian origins. Holland likens this kind of progressivism to a spacecraft that has become airborne through the booster rockets of Christianity: It’s like the head of the rocket has gone through the atmosphere. Everything else underneath it has been jettisoned and now it’s got the power to blast through the solar system. And all that . . . “nonsense” about the Bible and Jesus and the church . . . it’s gone. . . . We have now blasted out and we’re going forward. The secular principles—the liberal principles—are sufficiently self-evident and [they] will sustain the future evolution and development of our society for decades and centuries to come. Future 2: Postwoke Backlash The second scenario is a strong reaction against Paddingtonism. Holland explains, Another option which the history of the 20th century suggests is that the default assumption among humans is that strength and might is right. Power does have a glamor and this is what Nietzsche predicted. He said when Christianity goes there will be this great convulsion and . . . terrifying powers will emerge. And of course [Nietzsche] was right because they emerged in the form of fascism. And fascism and Nazism cast such a shadow over us that we’ve lived in their shadow. . . . One of the reasons I think for the decline of institutional Christianity is that Hitler has taken the place of the Devil. A modern liberal, now, rather than ask “What would Jesus do?” as his Victorian forebear would have done, says “What would Hitler do?” and does the opposite. And that’s kind of kept us on our liberal “straight and narrow,” but that is clearly fading as the [lived] experience of fascism in Europe dies out. Here, Holland is being influenced by Alec Ryrie, the second historian I listened to that week. He too plays the part of a futurist. In his recent book, The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It, Ryrie articulates the thesis: “A century ago the most potent moral figure in Western society was Jesus Christ. Now it is Adolf Hitler.” Where once we had a pro-Jesus vision, we’re now getting by on the fumes of an anti-Hitler sentiment. Such sentiment has propped up much of the humanism of the last 80 years. Ryrie calls the modern secular doctrine of human rights a “castle in the air” and a “defiant existential assertion of values . . . without any firm foundation.” Where once we had a pro-Jesus vision, we’re now getting by on the fumes of an anti-Hitler sentiment. Our ability to sustain such a secular vision depends on our shared remembrance of that “shadow.” And memories, like shadows, can prove insubstantial. The youngest veterans of the Second World War are now in their mid-90s. But living memory isn’t the only limit on the power of the antifascist mythos. There’s something intrinsically unsustainable about an anti-Hitler sentiment. The pro-Jesus vision it supplanted was positive in every sense. As “the greatest story ever told,” it could nourish its hearers and inspire true progress. But the postwar liberal order has been founded on a cautionary tale. This could only breed suspicion, insecurity, and an unearned sense of superiority for those “on the right side of history”—unearned because its true foundations were secured by the older, greater story. Future 3: Postsecular Christianity And so we reach a point where the shadows are dissipating. Is this because the dawn is breaking again, or because we’re entering an even bleaker nighttime? Could those who yearn for tradition and those wedded to progress both return to the older, better story? The third-way solution is, in fact, the original way. And so, amid the first two futures, Holland points the way to a third: I suppose a third possibility is that people will return to the source, and say, “Well, actually, maybe I am Christian. Maybe I should take this a bit more seriously than I have been.” And there are, I think, tentative signs that that might be happening. The signs are tentative, and contested, but promising. In April, the Bible Society in the United Kingdom released “The Quiet Revival,” revealing that self-reported churchgoing has risen in England and Wales from 8 percent (2018) to 12 percent (2024), and among men younger than 34 it’s risen to 16 percent. The cultural churn seems a large part of the reason. Within a month of this episode airing, Kisin revealed he’s been going to church. This is a far cry from what he said to me two years ago when he came on the Speak Life podcast: “You’re going to struggle to get a lot of us, and particularly younger people, to go to church.” He was right about one thing. Men in their 40s are still difficult to get to church, that’s true. But, according to “The Quiet Revival,” 21 percent of those aged 18 to 24 self-report as attending church at least monthly. We’re not yet seeing them follow through on such good intentions—at least not at that extraordinary level—but there is something even greater than social permission going on here. There is, among a significant minority, a sense of almost social obligation to identify as churchgoing. And many are starting to show up, including agnostics like Kisin. This is the lay of the land in post-Christian Britain, and the picture holds true in much of the West. How should Christians move forward into this fractured mission field? It’ll be painful but also fruitful. Our Painful Future Holland wore a wry smile when he called these times “interesting.” But at another point in the interview, he said, “We are living through a great choke point in the history of this country, and of this continent,” agreeing when Kisin added “and Western civilization.” As we move through these convulsions, we’ll find these futures—even those including genuine revival—incredibly costly, bewildering, and anything but straightforward. Now’s not the time for Christians to dish out high fives and declare, “We are so back.” Both genuine revival and genuine persecution lie ahead of us. But the former isn’t, and was never meant to be, a defense against the latter. The pathway to spiritual renewal doesn’t avoid but runs right through the painful valley ahead. Why? A large part has to do with the fracture. This isn’t just a rebirth of Christian faith—there are many rebirths right now, and they’re all crying for our attention. On the left side of this table, I list three of the seven foundational values for the West that I discuss in The Air We Breathe. Equality, compassion, and consent are recognizably the fruits of Christian civilization. They’re the morals to a story that centers on Christ and him crucified. Post-Christian progressive values (the middle column) derive from Christian principles and would be unthinkable without them, but there’s been a decisive shift. On equality, Christian thinkers developed rights language as a shield to protect the inalienable dignity of each individual created in God’s image. Now, post-Christian rights-speak tends toward entitlements divorced from responsibilities and wielded less like shields and more like swords. Compassion takes on immense significance in post-Christianity that’s, again, unthinkable without its Christian heritage, but talk of social justice—like all purported virtues—can become more signaling than substance. That’s the contention of Musa al-Gharbi in his excellent book We Have Never Been Woke. Talk of social justice can easily slide from a commitment to help victims into a competition to claim victim status. Consent, which the Christian sexual revolution brought into the heart of sexual ethics, is still required. But in post-Christianity, consent has become virtually the only consideration left in a disenchanted, commodified, and atomized sexual landscape. Now our choices in the realm of sex, gender, and sexuality are everything. The fruits of Christ’s kingdom were originally considered as virtues, but the virtues have become severed from their source and from one another, they now roam free as abstract values, the values have become slogans, and the slogans have become cudgels––which we now use against our opponents. At this point, we’re not simply living “after virtue,” as Alasdair MacIntyre called his 1981 book. We’re living after virtue signaling. And many are thoroughly sick of it. Enter the antiwoke (the third column). On equality, they too use rights-speak (more often foregrounding classical liberal rights—life, liberty, property, free speech, free markets, and the like). What sets them apart from classical liberals or conservatives is a more thoroughgoing individualism. Take the issue of “What is a woman?” Because progressives have given disastrous answers in the culture war, the antiwoke settle for “adult human female.” They settle here because any definition of woman that speaks of society, norms, or roles––anything that casts the question in a communal or personalist light—smacks of “gender ideology.” And so the antiwoke will often settle on a completely materialist conception, satisfying themselves that at least they’re “believers in biology.” They may arrive at something like the scriptural gender binary (which is good as far as it goes), but they’ve taken a different route. On compassion, the antiwoke mistrust the “competitive victimhood” they see on the left and instead value competence over compassion. They have a nose for hypocrisy when it comes to deploying the “compassion” slogan and they’re pretty sure that Karen from HR is using social justice as a cloak for a power trip. All this has a ring of truth. Empathy can be toxic. But in an all-out war against virtue signaling, the danger is that we despair of virtue itself. Competence is a worthy goal, but when elevated at the expense of compassion, it soon becomes a law of the jungle. On consent, the antiwoke agree with Scripture about the evil of coerced sex and are rightly angered by the sexualization of children in the name of LGBT+ education. Often, this moral outrage is expressed as the desire of fathers to stand up for vulnerable children. Alongside this, the accusation is leveled that progressives have allowed these evils because of a hyperfeminized faux-empathy. If the “woke” have adopted a caricature feminine disposition, the antiwoke take up the other side. Bubbling away under the surface, it’s hard to shake the sense that we’re seeing in columns two and three a clash between those ancient theological categories “grace” and “nature.” But “grace” and “nature” have been divorced from one another and from the Christ in whom they’re meant to cohere. Think again of the trans debates that have formed, in many ways, the chief fault line in the culture wars. One side speaks the language of biological reality. The other thinks personal choice is all-important. In column three, nature rules and facts don’t care about your feelings. In column two, it’s vitally important that the phrase “I identify as” transcends whatever I was “assigned at birth.” A kind of super-nature triumphs. But as confused as column two is on the subject, the common-sense solution of column three is necessary but insufficient. The definition “adult human female” might be enough to win a battle in the culture war, it’s not a vision that can win a lasting peace. These battles will continue for many years. This is why I say that whatever rebirth we’re witnessing will be painful. Post-Christian progressivism is dying, but it’s not dead. And any non-Christian antiprogressive backlash isn’t safe—not if it tears down both virtue signaling and virtue. A resurgence of the church at this moment will incur even more opposition from column two and call for much greater discernment regarding column three. Our Hopeful Future These are dangerous times, but they’re also hopeful. When the storm hits, the foundations are revealed and many, on left and right, are recognizing the sinking sand beneath. It’s true that multitudes on the progressive left will ensconce themselves further in their “castles in the air.” They’ll claim that anyone questioning their foundations must be a Nazi, and as that epithet carries less and less weight, some will compensate by shrieking it all the louder. Post-Christian progressivism is dying, but it’s not dead. And any non-Christian antiprogressive backlash isn’t safe—not if it tears down both virtue signaling and virtue. Others are beginning to see that, underneath, nature really is red in tooth and claw. From that perspective, human rights is a castle in the air. In a materialist universe, it’s obviously nonsense to consider humanity as some universal and benevolent force that can judge some human acts just and others unjust. But a universal and benevolent humanity does stand above us—the God-man, Jesus Christ. There is therefore, to use Dan Strange’s term, a “subversive fulfillment” of the progressive belief in human dignity. In the journey from column two to column one such a person can discover that, No, the secular isn’t a foundation for their humanism. But they will also find that, Yes, Jesus is. It turns out we find equality and compassion—love—at the heart of the universe. But it’s not ours. We must turn to Christ. That’s the subversion and the fulfillment of their concerns. A gospel of “repent and believe” needs to make both moves. In Britain, there are certainly those from column two making a journey—sometimes via column three, sometimes directly—to church. I think of prominent spiritual journeys that began in column two: Holland himself, Louise Perry, Mary Harrington, Paul Kingsnorth, Martin Shaw, and many others. When the Tom Hollands of the world remind us that the foundations really have been Christian—particularly, thoroughly, enduringly Christian—it’s not surprising when people conclude they need to be in church. It’s a storm after all, and we need a shelter. Others, like Konstantin Kisin, are making the journey from column three to column one. Alongside him is a new traveler down this path: Joe Rogan, the world’s most popular podcaster and something of a bellwether for “barstool normies” everywhere. He’s been going to church for much of 2025 and both he and Kisin have been influenced greatly by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Following Peterson, they have become suspicious of progressive narratives (for instance about gender), and like Peterson they have begun to explore the significance of the Bible. The path is now well worn. It’s not just public intellectuals and influencers making these moves. I’m seeing it in my church and in basically all the churches I visit, in the United Kingdom and in Australia. My neighbor told me recently why he was taking his family to church: “The Bible’s built this country, and I haven’t got the first clue what it says.” I said, “Oh, the Tom Holland thing?” He replied, “What’s Spider-Man got to do with it?” I was encouraged for all kinds of reasons, but one of them was the fact that the Tom Holland effect is being felt by people who have never heard of the historian (and assume I’m talking about the actor). I was encouraged as well when another neighbor, part of the conversation, blurted out, “Yeah, I should go.” That “should” feels significant. There’s a sense of “should” about church among my secular friends and neighbors that has never been there in my lifetime. To be clear, the journey is not complete once these seekers arrive in church. They will come for all kinds of reasons and need to disentangle their Christian curiosity from the other stories they’ve inhabited. Those coming from column three also need to experience a “subversive fulfillment” of their desires. The Christian-curious antiwoke might come to church expecting a message of tradition, responsibility, competence, and gender roles. There’s plenty of that in the Bible. But at some point, they need to hear, No, you’re not primarily a competent individual striving for traditional values; you’re a sinner needing radical compassion—in other words: salvation. But then, Yes, you’re saved into a community and set on your feet to pass on the compassion revolution to those around you, and you’ll need every ounce of resolve and competence as you lean into your identity in Christ as men and women. In church, then, we find the integration of what’s so divided in the culture: rights and responsibilities, compassion and competence, grace and nature. These combine in the gospel of Christ, the Word who became flesh. Post-Post-Christianity? We could draw many implications from these converging futures. Let me highlight two. First, as we discuss the future of the West, we’re really asking what comes after what the “successor ideology.” This phrase, coined by Wesley Yang, describes whatever it is that took over from the “pro-Jesus” vision of Christendom. “Successor ideology” is another phrase for “post-Christian progressivism,” or what Holland calls “Paddingtonism,” or what Ryrie has described as an antifascist “castle in the air,” or what Kisin less charitably calls “woke idiots.” When the Tom Hollands of the world remind us that the foundations really have been Christian, it’s not surprising when people conclude they need to be in church. But since the successor ideology isn’t succeeding, the pressing question becomes, what will succeed it? What is post-post-Christianity? It seems that the answer of faith is also an answer that makes the best historical sense. What else could be a fitting “successor ideology” other than the “source ideology”––that is, the gospel of Jesus Christ? How could anything ultimately eclipse Jesus Christ? What could possibly fill the void left by him? Perhaps not in our lifetime, but as certainly as sunrise, the gospel of Jesus Christ will be victorious, and eternally so. Let all Christians take heart: What we share is unimprovably good news. Second, let’s return to this question of third-way Christianity. Many, especially in the United States, are decrying third-way approaches to the culture wars as a kind of squishy centrism—the sort of column two nonsense that cloaks itself as column one. Yet if we forget for a minute about “left” and “right” (and certainly if we look beyond America’s two-party system), and deal at the level of mythos—the level Ryrie and Holland are working at—we’ll see not only how fruitful but also how inevitable a third way is. It’s true, of course, that Christianity is the “first way” (as all third-way advocates gladly own). It’s the original path from which other ways have diverged. But given that other ways have presented themselves not most fundamentally as political programs but as mythoi—as narratives, as gospels––then to renarrate the secular person’s world to them will, of necessity, involve distinguishing the true story of the world from the competing gospels that have captured their allegiance. It’s unsurprising if political theologians are exasperated by third-wayism, since it takes the posture of a missionary rather than a political scientist. It was never meant to be a political theory (though sometimes it traded in shorthands like “left” and “right”). Ultimately, though, it’s about the mythology.