Does Modern Man Ache for Christian Civilization?

Modern Life, Nostalgia, and the Appeal of Christian Civilization

So my wife and I took a trip to Manhattan to see the Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring in concert with the whole orchestra and that was last night. And I have a question, this will be the question of the day, do people in experiencing modern life in an urban environment, so the most secular people, people who live in New York, do they actually want a traditional society, a Christian society, deep down, in some way, in some part of their being, is there something in them that misses or has a nostalgia for something that's been lost?

Lord of the Rings as an Explicitly Christian Fantasy

Now why do I ask this? Well, the Lord of the Rings is an explicitly Christian fantasy and I don't mean that people are born again after they watch it, I mean it just has a lot of parallels and assumptions that would come only from someone who bought into somewhat of a Christian worldview, providence, sovereignty, purpose, a divine being that controls our destiny in mysterious ways sometimes we don't always understand, shaming the strong, using the weak to do so, there's all kinds of things we could talk about.

Why the Audience Cheered for Kingship, Race, and Traditional Courtship

But here's the thing that stood out to me last night, people in the audience reacted in ways that were exceptionally interesting. One was when Aragon throughout the movie is foreshadowed as being the true king, people cheered, and I just kept thinking to myself, especially in the end when Boromir is dying and he calls Aragon his king, everyone cheers, why do we want a king?

And it's a fantasy, I know, but why cheer for that? Why cheer for monarchy? Monarchy is bad, I thought, we want democracy, right? But somehow that was something that was cheered. Another thing that I thought was interesting is all the racial things in the movie.

For example, Gimli is very proud of being a dwarf and he even says things like he won't be ruled by an elf, he won't be led by an elf. And these are the kinds of things that the audience laughs at when he says these kinds of things.

They don't think to themselves, well, what a bigot. They think it's funny how proud he is of his particular race in that sense. And there's very firm designations between the elves and the dwarves and the men and the hobbits, and these wouldn't be compatible with an urban multicultural society, a globalist society.

So why do we want that? Why do we find it's interesting in our fantasies? Why do we think that the courtship of Aragon and the elf lady, I can't think of her name now, played, well anyway, traditional kinds of courtships.

Why is that something that's attractive to us as well? So these are just some questions I have. Are we aching deep down for something that's actually more traditional, more Christian, more medieval maybe in some senses, or pre-modern?

And if that's true, what are we doing about it? And why are Christian institutions doubling down on modernity?