Stillborn Civilizations
I wrote a piece some time ago making a case against the clash of civilizations thesis. There were a couple of points I wanted to make in that paper on the topic of civilizations that didn’t fit comfortably in the flow of the argument, and so I am writing this as a postscript of sorts.
In that paper I stated there are three Christian civilizations. It is worth recapitulating this point as a corrective to confusions brought about by the plurality of meanings given to “the West” both generally and by Perennialists[1]. The West is founded on Western or Latin Christianity. Orthodox civilization, centered on Eastern Europe and extending into Asia in the Levant and the Caucuses is founded on Eastern Orthodoxy. The third, Afro-Asian, Christian civilization is based on the Oriental Orthodox Church. This tripartite schema holds true as it pertains to most of history. However, the legacy of Western colonialism has complicated this picture considerably.
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Missionaries spread Western Christianity so widely that, in large parts of the world, it completely or almost completely replaced local the faiths. This presents a problem for the comparative study of civilizations. How do we designate places like Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Eastern Indonesia? Huntington is inconsistent in how he categorizes these areas. He considers Africa and Latin America as civilizations unto themselves. Papua New Guinea is categorized as part of the West while Eastern Indonesia is part of Islamic civilization (we should extend Huntington the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not know that Eastern Indonesia is predominantly Christian). Somewhat bewilderingly, the map at the beginning of The Clash of Civilizations indicates that the Philippines is a blend of Western and Sinic civilization! Huntington gives no explanation of this in the text of the book. Also unexplained, is why he considers Haiti a “lone country” like Israel when Haitians overwhelmingly identify as Western Christians. It has also been observed by some, including Seyyed Hossein Nasr, that Latin America could well be considered part of the West.
Within the framework laid out in the previous paper, most of Huntington’s taxonomic decisions are justified. Christianity in its societal application, obtains an “outer law” through an act of synthesis with older, local Traditions — which often brings with it the assimilation of indigenous cults. On this score, we can only fault him on his inclusion of the Philippines and Papua in the West. This plethora of Christian civilizations, coming into being as they did on the cusp of modernity, are — in a sense — still born. One is reminded of a similar concept in Spengler. These civilizations, these unintended products of modern colonialism, were denied ever having a truly Traditional existence, just as their natural cycle of rise and fall was aborted. The introduction of Christianity by colonialists often functioned as a dissolving force to dis-integrate what had earlier been integral civilizations. It is regrettable that this has impeded our ability to fully appreciate what civilization(s) had previously inhabited sub-Saharan Africa, although their lack of literacy speaks to the possibility of their magnificence (literacy being a sign of degeneration). Nonetheless, we should not here malign Christianity as such, only its historical function and use by the revenant West. Most of these aforementioned places, with perhaps the exception of Latin America, have far healthier spiritual lives today than does the West (or better said, what once was the West).
[1] These are that the West is a synonym for Europe (and its extensions), Christendom as a whole, or all of the Abrahamic religions (including Islam).
