The imploding liberal/progressive world view

From First Things, an excerpt of a piece by Edward T. Oakes, SJ:

The liberal worldview has imploded so quickly because no one, absolutely no one, believes in its myth of progress anymore. To go back to Nietzsche once more: whatever else his legacy means, advanced civilizations can no longer believe that things are getting better (which is why, among other reasons, there is so much hoopla over “climate change”).

Oddly, though, and in one of the great ironies of history (which knows only one law: the Law of Unintended Consequences), the collapse of this myth of progress has been turned to great advantage by Muslims in Europe, giving them a leg up in their search for converts, as Christopher Caldwell notes in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe:

Islam may be quantifiably backward, but it is backward at a time when progress has acquired a bad name. To say that controversial Muslim figures “come straight out of the Middles Ages” . . . does nothing to blunt their appeal. The Middle Ages is their selling point. One need not be fundamentalist or a fanatic to worry that it is in the West’s nature to advance too far, too fast. The Green and anti-globalist movements share such worries.

By no means are liberals alone to blame for this turn of events, however. Christians, too, are deeply implicated in helping to bring about this upside-down world, especially those in the liberal churches, where dogmatic integrity is eschewed, if not completely scorned. I will conclude these somber lucubrations with another quotation from Caldwell’s immensely insightful book:

The problem is not just that Saudis do not permit Christianity in their country; it is also that Europeans are less interested in evangelizing there than Saudis are in proselytizing in Europe. As long as Muslim believers are more passionate than Christian ones, and as long as the Christian world is more free than the Muslim one, [reciprocity] is a nostalgic wish, rather than a demand.

And so we come to the dénouement of this bizarre story: an epicene liberalism practices its petty harassment on an epicene Christianity because it can afford to do so, but it gives a safe-conduct pass to Muslims because it is afraid to do otherwise.