Americans don’t suffer from amnesia. We prefer it. Memory shapes who we are as individuals, a nation, and a culture. But we define ourselves as a “new order of ages.” Those words are stamped directly on America’s Great Seal. Thus, Americans dislike the past. And since the 1960s, Europeans have followed suit. The reason is simple. History as it really happened is inconvenient baggage. We ignore or reinvent it, the better to reinvent ourselves. And this is exactly how the modern spirit (see here and here) treats our civilization’s Christian roots.
The term “Middle Ages,” for example, is a creature of Renaissance humanists. The Enlightenment added a bitter flavor to the mix. For men like Voltaire, the Christian past was little more than a blend of cruelty, ignorance, and superstition. And that caricature – that perversion of real history – persists today. Robert Eggers’ upcoming film Werwulf, releasing on Christmas Day 2026, features a predictably wicked priest in a ferociously bleak 13th century. Ridley Scott’s 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven showcases 12th-century corrupt Christian clergy and psychotic crusaders quacking “God wills it!” in pursuit of mayhem.
The trouble with caricatures is that they’re false. They’re a cocktail of fact
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