A Christless Right Cannot Save a Christian Civilisation

When symptoms are mistaken for causes, every political victory becomes temporary.

Conservatism is dead. It wore itself out for two simple reasons.

First, it chose compromise over conviction; second, it failed to diagnose the disease.

In the first instance, conservatism exhausted itself in a perpetual attempt to appease its opponents. In the naïve hope of winning over the other team, it largely abandoned its own base. It failed, of course—not only to win over the other side, but even to retain the support it once had.

In the second instance, conservatism wore itself out treating symptoms while ignoring the cause. Conservative leaders had no difficulty identifying and mocking the absurdities embraced by their opponents, but they failed to recognise that these absurdities did not arise in an ideological vacuum. Rather, they were the result of something deeper—something many conservatives were too timid to identify.

Hence, conservatives have conserved nothing.

In Australia, Liberal and Liberal–National governments—often seen as the centre-right or “conservative” option—have been responsible for passing major “progressive” reforms, including the introduction of one of the world’s strictest gun control regimes, same-sex marriage, expansions of anti-discrimination laws, the decriminalisation of abortion, and the introduction of voluntary assisted suicide, to name but a few.

Similarly, in the United Kingdom, Conservative-led governments oversaw the legalisation of same-sex marriage, the consolidation of equality legislation, incremental developments in anti-discrimination protections, major restructuring of immigration policy following Brexit, and limited changes in abortion access through the expansion of telemedical provision during the COVID-19 period.

And what did they get for it? Today, these parties have never been so unpopular—not because the electorate has shifted to the Left, but because it has moved further to the so-called “Right.” Australians are now embracing One Nation in record numbers, while the Brits are backing Reform UK and Restore Britain.

The question now is whether the “Right” will repeat the same mistakes as the conservatives did. The success of the new Right will largely depend on its ability to resist cowardice and properly diagnose the problem it seeks to address.

The West is under assault on every front: the family, marriage, children, education, energy, economics, finance, immigration, national identity, borders, law, justice, military strength, and so on. But these are not isolated issues that have emerged independently of each other. They are fundamentally intertwined because they all indicate the same underlying issue. As such, each one must be understood as a symptom of a deeper disorder, not the disorder itself.

Not all symptoms are equal. Some are more destructive than others. But if we mistake any one symptom for the cause, we will ultimately fail to reverse the decline. We’ll merely manage the consequences while leaving the disease untouched. That’s precisely what conservatism did—and it conserved nothing.

History shows that great civilisations do not collapse overnight. Their decline is gradual, but it is driven by decisive cultural shifts that make every subsequent assault possible. In the Western world, no shift has been more significant, more consequential, than the decline of the Church’s authority in the public square. I’m not referring to any particular church, but to the role of the Church as a collective institution in society, including its broader leadership and public influence.

Many today assume that the decline of Christianity produced a secular, religiously neutral society. It did no such thing. Religion did not disappear; it simply changed institutions. The state became the new church. The civil government has today become the final arbiter of morality, justice, and truth. Rights that were once understood to come from God have been reduced to privileges dispensed by the state. The state now claims ultimate authority over your life, your children, your property, your speech, and your nation.

That is the root of the crisis, and the reason Christless conservatism was doomed to fail. It is also why a Christless “new Right” will fail in the same way. By virtue of its Christlessness, it is rendered incapable not only of properly diagnosing the problem, but of offering any meaningful solution.

Until we recognise that the state has usurped the place that once belonged to God, no meaningful political movement—whether conservative or otherwise—will reverse the West’s decline. At best, it will slow the rate of decay while leaving its cause intact.

The solution is not merely smaller government or better policies. It’s the restoration of the Christian foundation upon which Western civilisation was built: that God alone is the source of morality, justice, rights, and human dignity, and that the state is accountable to His law rather than sovereign over it.

We are, in the words of Jesus, to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God; and yet today, we are suffering the consequences of rendering to Caesar what belongs to God alone.

The greatness of the West did not arise from economics, military power, or democratic institutions alone. Those were fruits. The root was Christianity. As the root dies, so do the fruits.

Until that root is restored, every political victory will be temporary, every reform will be reversible, and every emerging “Right-wing” movement will ultimately fail for the same reason its predecessors did: it mistook fruit for root, and symptoms for cause.