A Culture in Spiritual Eclipse
Something’s shifting in the West’s soul. Churches sit emptier. Familiar creeds fade from memory. Statues are toppled, not just from public squares but from the heart’s inner sanctum. Many look around and wonder: Is this the end of faith in the modern world? Has religion run its course in Western culture, a relic of the past fading into the digital dusk?
“What if this isn’t a death? What if it’s a descent? Not into despair, but into something deeper.”
But what if this isn’t a death? What if it’s a descent? Not into despair, but into something deeper. The old mystics knew a strange truth: the soul sometimes must pass through a night so dark that it feels like abandonment.[1] Yet that very darkness is where something luminous begins. What if the spiritual unraveling we see around us isn’t collapse but a kind of purification? What if the West isn’t faithless but being led through its own “dark night”?
The Dark Night as a Map, Not a Mourning
John of the Cross spoke of the “dark night of the soul” not as punishment but as purgation: a painful grace.[2]In infinite tenderness, God sometimes withdraws the consolations of felt presence. Having grown too dependent on spiritual sweetness or certainty, the soul learns to love God for God’s sake instead. In the absence of light, we discover what our love is made of.
Now consider the Western world. We once lived in what felt like a spiritually saturated culture: church bells marking time, religious holidays shaping calendars, and faith stitched into the fabric of daily life. But that familiarity often became institutional, assumed, even rote. The structures remained, but the fire dimmed. And maybe now, the scaffolding is falling away, so something more essential can emerge.
The decline of religion may be less about loss and more about refining. It’s uncomfortable, even excruciating. But the night isn’t abandonment. It’s an invitation.
“The decline of religion may be less about loss and more about refining. It’s uncomfortable, even excruciating. But the night isn’t abandonment. It’s an invitation.”
When God Feels Absent: The Cultural Echo
In a dark night, the soul feels like God’s gone silent. Prayer dries up. Scripture sounds hollow. The warmth of previous seasons fades. For many, this can feel like failure or divine rejection. But for the mystics, it’s a deepening: a pulling back so the soul might grow in longing, trust, and purity.
Isn’t this what we see in much of Western secularism? A felt absence. A spiritual silence. People report longing for meaning, yearning for transcendence, yet turning away from inherited forms of faith. Many raised in religious homes describe feeling as if the presence they once knew has vanished. They’ve walked away not because they’re indifferent but because what once nourished now feels hollow.
Maybe this cultural malaise isn’t faithlessness but thirst. Perhaps it’s not the denial of God but disorientation in God’s apparent silence. The West isn’t alone in this experience. It’s walking a path the mystics charted long ago: a painful purgation that strips away false images, leaving the soul naked and true.
“Maybe this cultural malaise isn’t faithlessness but thirst. Perhaps it’s not the denial of God but disorientation in God’s apparent silence.”
Stripped Down to Longing
The dark night empties the soul of idols—not just golden calves but subtler ones: certainty, security, reputation, power, and control. It teaches us to relinquish our expectations of God, our need to feel “spiritual,” and our addiction to inspiration. What’s left is a raw, wordless longing and hunger we can’t name but also can’t shake.
Isn’t this the mood and yearning that lingers beneath the surface of our time? Beneath the noise of culture wars and the rise of the “nones” is a deep spiritual homesickness. Many are done with religion but not with the sacred.[3] They’re tired of formulas but still listening for divine presence. The yearning hasn’t died; it’s been refined.
The night reveals what we truly hunger for: not a nostalgic return to Christendom but a lived encounter with the Holy, not a new program or polished answer but presence, mystery, and depth.
The Cross as Companion
“The night reveals what we truly hunger for: not a nostalgic return to Christendom but a lived encounter with the Holy, not a new program or polished answer but presence, mystery, and depth.”
For the mystics, the dark night is not traversed alone. It’s walked with the Crucified One. Christ doesn’t watch us wander from a distance. Christ descends with us into the shadows.
This is no easy comfort. It’s not the promise of a quick exit or restored familiarity. It’s the assurance that even in obscurity, we’re not forsaken. The One who cried out in abandonment on the cross understands this silence. And through that silence, something new was born.
Western spirituality may be undergoing a similar cruciform transformation. As public religion fades, as churches lose their place of privilege, something hidden might be forming—a kinder, humbler, more honest faith—a faith that doesn’t seek dominance but presence, not performance but love.[4]
A Hidden Renewal
What if we’re witnessing not the decline of Christianity but its transformation? Not its erasure, but its simplification? There’s beauty in things being pared down to their essence. Many are rediscovering ancient practices—contemplation, silence, lament, hospitality. They’re lighting candles in small rooms, praying alone on subway rides, seeking God in the margins.
The renewal may not look like revival tents or massive movements. It may look like seeds in the dirt, like tears in the night. But it’s real. And it’s rising.
This is how spiritual life often moves: not with fanfare, but with fermentation. Beneath the apparent decay, the soil is being turned. Something new is being made ready.
Hope in the Night
So, we need not fear the dark. It’s not the absence of God but the refining of our sight. It’s not death but gestation. The Western soul may be aching and disoriented, but hasn’t been abandoned. It’s being gently led into mystery.
The question is not how we recover cultural dominance or rebuild lost institutions. The question is: How do we remain faithful in the dark? How do we listen when there’s no sound? How do we trust when the path disappears?
Faithfulness in the night means letting go of what no longer gives life, practicing unseen acts of love, turning toward God even when God feels absent, and waiting with hope, even when there’s no guarantee of dawn.
Dawn Comes Softly
Every dark night has a purpose. And every dark night gives way to morning. Not always the morning we imagined, but one shaped by grace.
The West may never return to its old religious forms. But maybe it isn’t meant to. Maybe something truer is emerging—less showy, more surrendered. Less certainty, more trust. Less control, more love.
The invitation is to walk this night with open hands. To trust that even in silence, the Holy is near. To believe that what looks like loss may be clearing space for something more profound than we’ve ever known.
“The dark night isn’t the end. It’s the place where dawn begins.”
Bibliography
Hunter, James Davison. To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
John of the Cross. The Dark Night of the Soul. Translated by E. Allison Peers. New York: Image Books, 1959.
John of the Cross. The Dark Night of the Soul. Translated by Mirabai Starr. New York: Riverhead Books, 2002.
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Notes
[1] John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, trans. Mirabai Starr (New York: Riverhead, 2002).
[2] John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, trans. E. Allison Peers (New York: Image, 1959).
[3] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).
[4] James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
