“Amazing Grace” couldn’t be a better song for this vibe-shift moment. The third verse sums up the emotion of being graciously preserved or plucked from the pit: “Through many dangers, toils and snares / I have already come: / ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, / And grace will lead me home.” If Western culture turns back from the brink of decadence and self-inflicted ruin, it’ll only be because of a gracious move of God.

Two of the most beautiful things I saw on TV last year were broadcasts from Paris, taking place in the city’s two most iconic structures. One was explicitly Christian—the December 7 reopening ceremony (and concert) for the restored Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral. The other was decidedly secular yet also spiritually resonant: the climactic cauldron lighting in the Paris Olympics opening ceremony as Céline Dion sang Edith Piaf’s “Hymn to Love” (L’Hymne à l’amour) from the Eiffel Tower, on July 26.

Both moments of sublime beauty came in the wake of ugliness. Notre-Dame’s reopening followed the terrifying near-death of the 700-year-old cathedral in a fire five years prior. Dion’s performance followed more proximate ugliness—the hedonistic transgression on display in the ceremony’s prior three-plus hours (most infamously the drag queen Last Supper tableau).

These two moments symbolize a vibe shift underway in Western culture. It’s the shift of a culture that has recognized itself on the precarious brink of moral and aesthetic collapse and is now pulling back. It’s the shift of a post-Christian secularism that sees with new eyes how Christianity built Western civilization and what it still offers. It’s the shift of an unsettled and spiritually hungry culture, veering from destruction to reconstruction, from iconoclasm to retrieval, from nihilistic despair to earnest hope.

New Light Dawning

A new light is dawning across the West. We see flickers of it everywhere: soaring Bible sales, Wesley Huff sharing the gospel with millions of listeners on Joe Rogan’s podcast, formerly outspoken enemies of Christianity now appreciating the faith’s role in society, Gen Z men rediscovering church, The Chosen becoming the most-translated TV show in history, Denzel Washington getting baptized and becoming a licensed minister, Russell Brand getting baptized by Bear Grylls in the Thames, contemporary Christian becoming one of the fastest-growing music genres, and on and on.

The glimmers are evident not only in explicit Christian occurrences but also in pop culture’s shifting posture toward traditional values and spiritual transcendence, evident in everything from Volvo and Apple commercials to Superman trailers (and “Look Up” advertising slogans). We see it in politics with voters around the world rejecting the excesses of wokeism and globalism, choosing instead to favor candidates who vow to conserve “traditional” goods like the family, local economic flourishing, and national sovereignty.

This shift is apparent all over the place, but the two Paris events this year strike me as particularly potent expressions, in part because of the city’s symbolic significance. Just as California is a bellwether for trends in America, Paris is often a trendsetter for Western culture generally—often the birthplace of political, philosophical, gastronomic, and artistic movements. Will the City of Light be a harbinger of a new (or recovered) spiritual “enlightenment” across the world?

‘Hymn to Love’ and the West’s Spiritual Ache

Light figured prominently in the finale of the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony.

The climax began with the stunning cauldron lighting—a blazing ring lifted by an illuminated hot-air balloon elevating nearly 200 feet in the sky above the Tuileries. As the balloon rose, the camera shifted to the “surprise” of Dion standing with a microphone on the 187-foot-high first level of the Eiffel Tower. Dion hadn’t performed publicly since 2020 but passionately belted out Piaf’s “Hymn to Love,” even as the rain poured, producing puddles on the grand piano beside her. Watch the moment.

The timeless song is a requiem of sorts, written by Piaf as she grieved the death of French boxer Marcel Cerdan—who had died in a 1949 plane crash on his way to see her. Dion brought her own grief to the performance: the loss of her beloved husband, René Angélil, to cancer in 2016, and the loss of her regular performing abilities due to stiff-person syndrome.

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