There are moments in 2020 when it feels like I’m watching the collapse of Western civilization. So much is crumbling or being torn down. Vast cultural changes are being accelerated. The post-truth, post-Christian landscape of the West is as “post” as it has ever been. And yet arguably we are also in a “post-secular” age, where people are no less spiritual or even religious than they used to be; it’s just that they’ve moved on from traditional church practices to new forms of religious ritual. This is why I see glimmers of hope in the mayhem of our contemporary situation. People are still hungry for meaning, desperate for truth, and drawn to morality and justice. Even if they look for these things in the wrong places sometimes, they are still looking. And that’s a good thing.

The spiritual searches of our post-secular age often intersect with the arts—where story and beauty provide natural avenues for exploring the transcendent. That’s why cultural apologetics is so vital today. It’s why I spend so much time writing about God-haunted Hollywood, whether in movie music, grace-filled scenes, or an episode of The Crown. As Joshua Chatraw writes in the excellent essay below, “The stories we love to tell and hear . . . remind us that, even in post-Christian cultures, we can’t seem to escape the echoes and, at times, the allure of the gospel story.” That means we Christians ought to be looking for the echoes too, and recognizing the holes in secular stories, ultimately inviting searchers in to “‘come, taste and see’ the true story of reality.”