The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West

The CIC was excited to welcome Robert Royal to discuss his book, “The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West.” This book is the first CIC book group pick of 2019! The CIC book group is managed by Linda Formella and Milton Grenfell.  The group meets weekly at the CIC on Thursday from 12:45pm-1:30pm. Be sure to pick up your copy of “The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West” at the CIC today.

Secular humanists and other “progressives” have been predicting the demise of religion for the past 250 years. But they keep running into a problem: those who were supposed to be liberated by the secular gospel that God is Dead aren’t buying it. Except for some parts of western Europe and in countries culturally destroyed by Communism, secularization in the radical sense has not occurred.

While it has not obliterated the religious impulse, however, the drive towards “progressive irreligion” has, Robert Royal believes, encouraged ignorance of religion’s central role in the development of the West. In The God That Did Not Fail, Royal offers an original reading of religion in ancient Greece and Rome, of Christianity and Judaism, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the several modern Enlightenments, culminating with a profound assessment of our current postmodern moment. He concludes that since religion is a permanent part of human nature and of the particular character of the West, our efforts should be directed not into a quixotic effort to deny the undeniable, especially as we face challenges from Islamic fundamentalism, but into promoting a well thought out and dynamic interplay of faith, reason, and modern freedoms.