That’s a lovely question. The Western Civilization is the world made by Christianity. When Christianity seeps into every manifestation of life at every level, that’s Western Civilization.
You know that you’ve become Western when somebody pushes you accidentally in a public place and you automatically say, “Sorry.” Or when you walk for 30 minutes holding a receipt or an empty can because you can’t throw it anywhere except in a trash can.
To help students understand the connection between the things I described in the preceding two paragraphs, I’d introduce them to the following two texts:
- Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland.
- Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive James.
You can introduce pretty much any major Western thinker and artist through these two books. They constitute two necessary poles for discussing the Western Civilization. The first describes the source of its glory and the second explains its biggest wound. They are also beautifully written.
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