Why (Some) Christians Should Care About ARC
I joined 12,000 people at the O2 this week. Why were we there?
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You could be forgiven for having missed the ARC Conference in London this week. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (very respectable name that) is a new project aiming to pull together conservative and right-leaning thought leaders to think big (or, I suppose, lead thought) about the political, social, and philosophical problems facing humanity. It’s an alternative to the liberal, left-leaning World Economic Forum—an “anti-woke Davos” as Sebastian Milbank dubbed it. The public face of ARC is Jordan Peterson, who, in the unveiling of ARC, now seems to have completed his transition from reputed pop psychologist to full-fledged omnivorous public intellectual.
ARC was in many ways identical to the UK NatCon conference back in May, in terms of both content and the actual speakers; and yet its reception in the UK mainstream media was markedly different. Whereas, the British media foamed at the mouth over NatCon, ARC received a fairly open, if not positive, response from places like The News Agents (so I am told—I confess I am not made of stern enough stuff to force myself to listen to Emily Maitlis). This was partly intentional on ARC’s part—the main conference was largely invite-only, and I am reliably informed that they purposely downplayed themselves in the wake of NatCon.
I wasn’t able to attend the main conference, but I did go to its crowning event at the O2 on Wednesday night: a lecture from Jordan Peterson, followed by a panel with the conservative journalist Douglas Murray, the Eastern Orthodox YouTuber Jonathan Pageau, and the Danish climate sceptic Bjorn Lomborg (and Ben Shapiro, unveiled as a special guest toward the end). The event was quite something: 12,000 people turned up on a Wednesday night to hear five men discuss… well, a bit of everything really. Psychology, morality, the importance of marriage, the future of the West, technological solutions to global problems, resentment—these all got a look in, and more besides.
The sprawling nature of the event makes it hard to offer concentrated reflections, but my overall verdict on what I saw of ARC as a whole, and of the O2 event specifically, is pretty much the same as my verdict on NatCon: it is a body in need of a soul.
That said, the fact that two major events like this have occurred on the UK in the last few months is really worth the attention of Christians who are interested in the cultural and political future of the UK. My impression is, however, that many of my fellow evangelicals who saw anything of ARC this past week will have been at best indifferent, if not concerned about or critical of it.
I think such an attitude is quite mistaken—and reflecting since my outing to Greenwich on Wednesday, I have thought of two big reasons why Christians should care about ARC (at least, why those who claim to take an interest in culture and politics should).
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