On one level, families and Christianity reinforce each other on the level of plausibility. The responsibilities of parenting often drive people to (or back to) church. At the same time, Eberstadt points to the Christian narrative’s dependence on family language, such as God the Father, and God the Son. At a deeper level, Christianity’s social ethic assumes what today goes by the name “traditional” family. These reinforcements function as a sort of social double helix, “two spirals that when linked to one another can effectively reproduce, but whose strength and momentum depend on one another”…

Mary Eberstadt. How the West Really Lost God (West Conshohocken, Pa.: Templeton Press, 2013), x + 257 pp. $24.95 (cloth).

Conservative Protestants are suspicious of fake Christianity. Liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics may set the bar lower for church membership, but conservatives will not be fooled again. Whether you take cues from the Reformers who were wary of Roman Catholic affirmations of faith, revivalists like George Whitefield who feared Christians merely going through the motions, or fundamentalists who questioned Protestant modernist double-talk, if you identify yourself as a conservative Protestant you want something more from a professing Christian than mere assent to church teaching, church membership, or pious intentions. 

What do you do then when someone professes faith at a stage of life where circumstances seem to favor settling down and putting matters right with the Lord? For instance, I know an elder of many years in a Reformed church who did not make a profession of faith, though he was born, baptized, and reared in Reformed Protestantism, until he was married and had children. The man not only served capably in his congregation but also reared children who went on to make credible professions themselves (with grandchildren also following parents and grandparents in the faith). Some conservative Protestants might be suspicious of this man’s Christianity since it emerged from a time when faith was convenient. Instead of resulting from a personal quest directed by the work of the Spirit, affirmation of faith and church membership coincided with the demands of marriage and parenthood. Is it possible that God uses the rhythms of life to accomplish his purposes as much as the dramatic conversion experience? Conservative Protestant convictions about the supernatural origins of saving faith and Christian perseverance aside, the workings of family are sometimes even more discernibly effective in producing Christians than the immediate (and hidden) work of the Spirit. 

Mary Eberstadt’s book, How the West Really Lost God, is about the importance of families to the life and health of Christianity in Europe and North America. For those who want to reflect on the consequences of family atrophy for churches and Christian influence, this is a worthwhile read. At the same time, the book has more to say about theories of secularization in the West than about families or God. As such, the large sections of the book on secularization, though useful in their own right, take up space that Eberstadt could have spent on the theme that she herself thinks is so important for understanding Christianity’s decline in the West – namely, family life and sexual relations.
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