T.S. Eliot:

“The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide.”

As much as Rod Dreher and others are contemplating a more formal Benedict Option for Christian interaction and, sometimes, strategic withdrawal from mainstream culture, it’s important to note that the shift from Christian to secular mainstream culture is a process that’s been underway for roughly a century.

In other words, we’re probably coming close to the “end of the beginning” of the shift to a non-Christian set of cultural defaults. The shift to gender fluidity, increasing hostility toward Christian institutions existing in the public square with their own cultural defaults, and other changes are probably the start of the next phase of this change, which could last decades or centuries in the extreme.

The shift in cultural attitudes is a process that will likely continue for centuries. The next dark age of our culture will feel different—this time characterized by material abundance rather than privation, for instance—but its essence will be the same of every dark age, which is alienation from knowledge about who we are, why we are, and what we were born for.

There’s no reason to panic about any of this, or even necessarily to bemoan this shift. It is, as they say, what it is. Sobriety is the context for “redeeming the time.”