Goodness, Beauty, and Truth
Why the West is turning back to God and what it asks of us at work
We're proud to welcome Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing, one of the most respected apologists in the English-speaking world as a Senior Fellow at Access Ventures. In her essay, she argues that the renaissance of belief now stirring in boardrooms, parliaments, and centers of tech innovation is inseparable from the work of human flourishing we care about.
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (c. 1818) A lone figure stands at the threshold of the unknown which is the Romantic image of a soul awake to something greater than itself.
I was fascinated to sit in a meeting with some of the top marketeers in America a few months ago. As a part of the project we were working on one of the executives gave a brief run-down of the generational preferences in the West:
Boomers (born 1946-1964): the main question was/is “Is it true?”
Gen X (born 1965-1980): the main question was/is “Is it real?”
Millennials (born 1981-1996): The main question was/is “Is it good?”
Gen Z (born 1997-2012): The main question is “Is it beautiful?”
Gen Alpha (born 2013 -): The main question is looking like it will be “Is it trustworthy?”
I couldn’t help but notice that the Christian faith preached and practiced with conviction and clarity and lived out in our working lives with incarnational authenticity, covers all the generational preferences with its goodness, beauty and truth.
Perhaps it is no surprise then that we are living through a renaissance of belief in God in the English-speaking world with so called secular cities and young people under the age of 25 leading the charge.
In the last year I have seen evidence of this in conversations with people working in tech, finance, the law and politics in San Francisco and the Bay area, New York City, Washington DC, Sydney, Oxford, London and many other places not known as being any kind of Bible belt.
Britain, once known as a bastion of the New Atheism, and fast declining churches is at the forefront of this surge of interest in God, with university cities and commercial districts of London leading the way. My entire professional life has been focused on public Christianity and apologetics. In the last twenty-five years I haven’t seen a climate like we are experiencing today. People are awake and open to God in board rooms, Parliaments, Universities and the centers of tech innovation.
Tom Holland touches on his own story in his bestselling book Dominion but it really only sank in for me when talking to him before interviewing him in London last year. When I asked him what sparked the Dominion thesis (that everything good about the West is a legacy of Christian faith) he explained that the animating drive behind his quest initially – was the outrage of the “me too’. He realized that the suffering of women mattering, at all and the sexual exploitation of the weak by the strong being concerning – that was peculiarly Christian.
How extraordinary to have lived through an era in the church when the sexual exploitation of women and male young people mattered so much that it could usher in an intellectual quest to rediscover Christian faith on the part of those who didn’t believe but mattered so little to institutional church leaders that victims and advocates needed to be intimidated, shut down and cast out. How very like the God of the Bible it is to see that just as a reckoning came in the corruption and misdeeds of the church, the very same thing - women mattering - and young people mattering - which have always been hallmarks of the gospel - arose as a reason for public intellectuals to consider Christianity.
Spiritual awakening will lead to human flourishing – this has been the pattern of history as those filled with the Holy Spirit build successful businesses, educate the next generation, enable meritocracy, reform institutions and contribute to free and prosperous nations. But this often also entails resisting the ethics of extractive capitalism, standing up for the weak, challenging sexual exploitation and protecting the freedoms we hold dear.
A few weeks ago, I was in London visiting the Churchill War Rooms and I was reminded of the cost of resistance to evil and the courage needed to hold fast to what is good, beautiful, and true. In his speech broadcast to the United States and to London on 16 October 1938 he said:
“As we look back over the long story of the nations we must see that… their glory has been founded upon the spirit of resistance to tyranny and injustice, especially when these evils seemed to be backed by heavier force. Since the dawn of the Christian era a certain way of life has slowly been shaping itself among the Western peoples, and certain standards of conduct and government have come to be esteemed. After many miseries and prolonged confusion, there arose into the broad light of day the conception of the right of the individual; his right to be consulted in the government of his country; his right to invoke the law even against the State itself.”
Broadcast to the United States and to London by Winston S. Churchill 16 October 1938. Churchill, Into Battle (London: Cassell, 1941), pp 83-91.
As we live out our faith pursuing a vision of human flourishing in our work, responding to the spiritual openness in the English-speaking world and resisting the ideas and pressures to extract, destroy, exploit and dominate let’s muster the courage we need to be faithful in the moment and places God has called us to live in.
About the Author
Dr Amy Orr-Ewing is a Senior Fellow at Access Ventures, Teacher in Residence at Vintage Church LA and Epic Church San Francisco, as well as Distinguished Scholar at Wheaton College, Illinois.