To Save the West: Jordan Peterson and ARC

A Report from the 2025 Conference in London

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

—Tennyson, “Ulysses”

As Jordan Peterson stalked the stage of the 2025 ARC conference in London, Tennyson’s elegy came to mind. It rang in my head throughout the entirety of my recent visit to England. As I drank in the neo-classical grandeur of Whitehall, traversed the elegant paths of Cambridge, and marveled at the many monuments to forgotten—even derided—heroes of World War II (including Churchill, de Gaulle, George VI, the RAF pilots), the line “We are not now that strength” rang like a bell.

This is what England has willed to be. At least, it is what some in England have willed to be. From the left, the country seems to find purpose only in undoing itself. We are not what we once were is for some not only a descriptive observation, but a positive declaration of intent, even a political credo. We could tweak it slightly: We must not be what we once were. Never again! So it is that England, like America, has been “Made weak by time and fate.”

It was in these socially depleted conditions that ARC 2025 met in East London (or as Douglas Murray humorously put it, “East of East London”). Yet ARC did not meet in a spirit of desolation, but of hope. Some 4,000 people gathered from across the world to seek, however improbably, a renewal of the West. In what follows, I’ll try to capture the spirit of this unique and enlivening conference, offering six humble reflections about ARC 2025.

First, ARC 2025 exuded a spirit of joyful celebration. Let’s just state the obvious: the victory of Donald Trump limned the entire conference, with attendees cheering the man and his leadership at many points. ARC 2025 felt altogether different than ARC 2023, which was similarly hopeful, but conducted in much, much worse social conditions.

In this way, I experienced ARC 2025 less as a midnight strategy session in the basement of a bomb-shattered Westminster and more as a joyful Evensong for the West. Not for nothing did the aforementioned Douglas Murray label the era dawning even now as “Reconstruction.” An apt coinage, this.

Second, ARC recognized Christianity as essential to civilization. The lead voice of ARC in intellectual terms is the psychologist Jordan Peterson. Peterson elicits a wide range of opinion for his theological and cultural views; I won’t try to sort all that out here. Without knowing exactly where Peterson is on his spiritual journey, I found his contributions at ARC profound.

In his opening message, Peterson zeroed in on the nature of civilization. At its heart, he argued, is sacrifice. Here’s a selection from his remarks:

…sacrifice is by necessity the foundation of civilization. Civilization is social and future-oriented. And that means, since it’s social, that the individuals who come together to constitute society have to sacrifice their narrow pleasure-seeking individuality, demanding gratification in the moment, for the sake of their mutual reciprocal relationships with others. Locally first in marriage, in family, in town, in city, expanding to province and state and country, nested all under—let’s say—the auspices of the divine.

Peterson still seems to understand biblical salvation in terms of psychological “being and becoming.” I cannot say that I yet hear from him a mature articulation of redemption through Christ’s vicarious atonement and subsequent justifying faith on the part of our sinner. Yet with that (very) important point noted, two things stand out to me at this point.

First, Peterson’s argument with reference to civilization is very much on the mark. He is entirely right to contrast self-sacrifice with self-indulgence as the organizing principle of society. The first will build a structured empire of politics and culture; the second will build nothing, and destroy whatever already exists in the social realm. Countries like America and England were founded, quite imperfectly, on the first conviction, and have of late been ferociously assaulted by the cannons of the second conviction.

But the West survives. The light has not all the way gone out. There is still hope. Peterson and others seem to see that Christianity must be—at the absolute least—a vital part of this reconstruction. Indeed, Christians played a major role at ARC 2025. Baroness Philippa Stroud leads the entire effort as organizer and emcee; Os Guinness gave a percipient message on cultural renewal; numerous speakers gave testimony to the human need for God.

The renaissance of faith in our time is a bit bewildering, and even breathtaking, for those of us accustomed to the Atheism v. Christianity mudfights of the 2000s. Then, the New Darwinism hunted the church and convinced many that Christianity was the chief boogeyman of the age. It turns out that this was rather on the wrong side, to adopt the understated ways of the Brits.

In time, the ideology called wokeness proved far more invasive and aggressive and destructive than evangelicalism. After it showed its sinister nature, popular opinion on “social justice” shifted. As it was implemented in America and the UK and other countries, wokeness revealed itself to be the virus that Christianity was purported to be (but wasn’t).

Over the last half-decade, the left viciously cracked down on free speech, advocated for the “trans-ing” of seven-year-olds, flooded girls’ sports with testosterone-bursting young men, cancelled comedians for mildly off-color humor, and condemned innocent people for the color of their skin. As this tragedy played out, many people in the murky “center” started to wake from their dogmatic slumber.

This had the effect of helping many non-Christians to see that evangelicals are not the forces of darkness we were said to be. In fact, many Christians have supported figures like Peterson who have taken a courageous stand against leftism in various forms. This in turn seems to be opening up many hearts and minds to the gospel of grace. (See Justin Brierley’s important book and podcast on this trend.)

By my lights, Peterson is, as Jesus once said of a man, “not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34). So it is with many others who attended ARC. There is a new spiritual openness in the West, and ARC incarnated this strange new reality.

Third, ARC took a clear position on “heterosexual” marriage. Peterson communicated this stance in a slightly surprising moment: his interview with Nigel Farage. While referencing a lively conversation among ARC leaders on the subject, Peterson made it clear as crystal: the vision of marriage and family that ARC supports is “heterosexual.” Marriage is between one man and one woman for life.

I cannot underscore how significant this affirmation was. Here is why: if we conservatives do not conserve marriage, we will have nothing left to conserve. Why do I say this? Because marriage is the foundation of the natural family. All else flows from this point. Put in slightly different terms, children need a father and a mother. If conservatives will not hold to this, then everything else collapses.

I appreciated how ARC promoted and gently defended the natural family. It gave real attention, in addition, to the plight of children. Along these lines, Sophie Winkleman’s message on low-tech childhood education landed like a live electric wire at ARC. Winkleman is known, and highly regarded, as an actress, but gave a stellar address on the need for human-driven formation of youth.

Fourth, ARC succeeded in promoting an inspiring political vision. Instead of hating everything traditionally Western, ARC encouraged us to see the good in our inheritance. For example, we heard John Mackey celebrate the free market (rightly), we heard Niall Ferguson honor the West (rightly), and we heard numerous sessions on viable energy pathways that rose above the doom and gloom of climate apocalypticism.

There is something for conservative evangelicals to glean from this approach. We sometimes omit the “grace” ingredient from the “grace and truth” model of Christ (John 1:14, 17). I genuinely appreciate how ARC seeks to inspire and elevate as its primary mission. Of course, we do have to draw lines on moral issues, both for the glory of God and the love of neighbor (Matthew 22:34-39). But we do well to do so in as positive a manner as we can.

Fifth, ARC featured stimulating reflection on technology and AI. I confess that I do not know exactly where I fall with regard to AI. I am skeptical about allowing AI to simply take over much of our existing world, and I agreed with Mary Harrington when she praised technology as a tool, not a master. This is a useful heuristic for thinking about technology in general: servant, not god.

But we must extend the point a bit further, because this helpful distinction can be easier to draw in theory than in practice. Using AI for learning a foreign language could be good, but we must also account for the way technology gets its hooks into us. Few of us would think of our smartphone as our master, for example, but many of us would recognize that this little device is far more engaging than we might like to admit in polite company.

The point is this: It is not nearly as easy to turn off the tap of technology as we might like to think. If this is true for us adults (as it surely is), it is surely true for our children. Because of this, traditional education wrangled through books and texts and handwritten assignments and critical thinking should have pride of place over edutechnology, in my judgment.

Sixth, ARC again featured beautiful art in its programming. In general, art is treated by many today as an afterthought in the post-modern world. (Sadly, this is not untrue in Christian circles.) Beauty is out; meaning is out; entertainment and mindless recreation is in. Art is not beautiful for its own sake; it is merely a means to an end.

Too few of us go to art galleries or symphonies anymore. Instead, we scroll on our phones, watching 15-second cat videos. Tik Tok is the new Louvre, you could say. This is a rather ghastly state of affairs. For this reason, I loved ARC’s emphasis on art and beauty. Through ARC, I have learned of two artists I otherwise had never encountered: Sabin Howard, a magnificently gifted sculptor, and Joshua Luke Smith, a truly lyrical spoken-word poet. (I also enjoyed Makoto Fujimara’s compelling presentation on “kintsugi” art, a practice that has deep spiritual resonance.)

If you enjoy art and crave beauty as I do, you should seek out the work of these men. Howard has created a World War I memorial sculpture that is now unveiled in Washington, D. C. It reminds me of the glorious RAF tribute in central London, as it is evocative of the suffering and tragedy and heroism of war.

For his part, Smith delivered a showstopper poem on “sunflowers in Babylon.” This evocative moment was the closest ARC came to a necessary but often-neglected duty today: remembering the good that is in our past. The irony is that, if we are to tell a better story, we must remember the noble past. We are, after all, conservatives. This does not mean that we store up memories in dusty cases; it means that we are the truly future-oriented, for we dare to believe that by God’s grace tomorrow can dawn, and many can prosper in it.

This itself is a revolutionary way to think. ARC 2025 embodied that spirit. In doing so, it reminded me of another section of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

No, it is not.