Melanie Phillips and “The Builder’s Stone”

What we need to know to help save the West

Three female hostages held by Hamas terrorists for 471 days were released, in exchange for 90 criminals in Israeli prisons. The emotions were raw as they finally met with loved ones. 

One woman had two fingers missing – shot off by the barbarians when she was first captured. More such exchanges are expected to occur in coming weeks, in no small measure due to the strong threats given by Donald Trump.

It is quite likely that the October 7, 2023 terror assault would never have occurred if Trump was in the White House back then. All this is part of a global civilisational war that is taking place. In large measure, it involves political Islam versus the free West.

We are as a civilisation at a crossroads. Many important social and political commentators have documented this for years now. One of them is the British Jewish journalist, author and broadcaster, Melanie Phillips. As with a number of public intellectuals, she began on the left, but has since shifted to the right. She wrote about that transformation in her 2018 book, Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity. Others are reviewed here and here.

Here however, I want to draw your attention to her brand-new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It. As with her previous books, this is a wise, impassioned and informed look at the current state of play and how things might be turned around.

Because she will soon be in Australia to give some talks based upon this book, I will not here properly review it – hopefully that will soon be forthcoming. Instead, I simply want to share some introductory and summary quotes that will give you a feel for the book, and what she will be talking about when she comes here in early February.

Early on she offers this overview of the book’s contents:

“Western civilisation is at a critical inflection point. The Hamas-led pogrom in Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the largest and most barbaric single slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, presented the West with a clear choice. Would it support civilisation or barbarism?

 

It did not choose civilisation. By lining up with Israel’s enemies, either through active support or by undermining the Jewish state’s attempt to defend itself against a genocide enemy, the West’s political and cultural classes put wind in the sails of those out to destroy both the West and civilisation itself. What this starkly illuminated was that Western elites had lost not only their conscience but also their minds.

 

It has often been said that the Jews are the canary in the coal mine. A society that turns on the Jews is a society in deep trouble. The reaction to the October 7 onslaught showed just how much trouble the West is in. It revealed a culture in an advanced state of decay and disintegration. More than that, it also pointed to why that was so. Even more remarkably, as this book will show, the explanation suggests that the Jewish targets of this onslaught could become the West’s salvation.

 

The fact that the Jews were the target of this explosion of hatred and malice wasn’t an incidental by-product of Western decadence. The unprecedented onslaught occurred because the Jews are central to Western civilisation – a society against which the West itself has venomously and self-destructively turned. The culture wars over race and gender that have so roiled society in recent years are but the latest manifestations of the same story. October 7 turbo-charged the West’s decades long process of cultural suicide.

 

After a depraved pogrom perpetrated by barbarians who slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis, dragged some 250 of them back into Gaza as hostages to be abused or murdered, and vowed to repeat the exercise until Israel was destroyed, one might have thought people in the West who would resolutely stand up for the defence of the innocent against the very great evil.

 

Not a bit of it. Sympathy in support for Israel lasted a few hours. What then erupted was a tsunami of brazen, frenzied Israel-hatred and antisemitism.”

 – pp. 1-2

And these words come from her closing chapter:

“The October 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel and its aftermath revealed not one but two cultures of death.

 

The first was Islamism, whose weapon against the West is, as the Islamists repeatedly declare, that they love death as the West loves life. The second was within the West itself, which has spawned a powerful movement determined to destroy its core values. As a result, the West is stricken with a kind of death wish of its own – a loss of the will to survive.

 

That’s why it won’t defend itself effectively against the Islamist onslaught upon it both from within and without; it’s why it has allowed its core values to be weakened and undermined; it’s why it has turned on Israel and the Jews for presuming to fight back against the attempt to wipe them out.

 

But the West could adopt a different course, one that would pull it back from the cliff edge towards which it is rapidly sliding. Instead of demonising Israel and the Jewish people, it could listen more carefully to what they are telling it.

 

Somehow, Western civilisation has to recover, repair, and revitalise its faith in itself and the principles that gave it shape and meaning. Clearly, this is a tall order. It would involve a counterrevolution within shattered institutions such as the family and the education system. It would mean drawing a line in the sand to defend inherited Western values against universalism, moral relativism, and identity politics. It would mean reclaiming the meaning of language in order to move the cultural needle back to the true center ground. And it would mean a revival of ways of life and social organisation shaped by biblically grounded rules to keep the civilisation show on the road.”

 – p. 281

She finishes by asking whether all this is actually achievable. In good measure the answer to that question really depends on us. How will we respond? Will we be part of the new resistance? Will we find the moral courage to take a stand, even if it appears that the odds are stacked against us?

The outcome of this war on civilisation is not set in stone, and we all have a role to play. The grace of God, our fervent prayers, and our willingness to act and to get involved are all a part of this ongoing scenario. And sharing a book like this with others is also a good start for what we can do.

Afterword

Mark Leach is a Sydney Anglican Pastor and Co-Founder of “Never Again Is Now” who would know of and be involved in the work of people like Phillips. He just posted the following on the social media. It fully ties in with the theme of her book and is worth sharing in full:

To all the well meaning liberals around the world who have been supporting Hamas/Gaza for the past 14 months, I have some questions for you:

1. Do you now see that you have been played? Your good intentions, your aversion to war and death and suffering, have been taken advantage of by a sophisticated, relentless barrage of lies, fed to you by people consumed by hatred and shameless in their desire to massacre Jews.
2. Will this be the moment when, like your liberal, marxist grandparents who were confronted with the horrors of Stalin’s Gulags, that you abandon your support for the enemies of your own culture and civilisation, and realise how evil Hamas is, and, by comparison, how good Western civilisation is?
3. Will you abandon support for any political party in your country that does not wholeheartedly support Israel in its fight against terror?
4. As you see the naked hatred of the screaming mob of Gaza’s ‘civilians’, as they try to lynch 3 innocent Israeli women, will you realise that your marches in cities around the world are expressions of the same hatred and that, if given the chance, your marches will erupt into pogroms and violence against Jews (and any who stand with them)?
5. Will you abandon, once and for all, your false, Marxist worldview, where the world is neatly divided into oppressor vs oppressed, and where you consistently place your own Western civilisation on the side of oppression, resulting in your support of the evil we see so clearly marching through the streets of Gaza now?
6. To those who have been calling for a ceasefire since Oct 8th, 2023, will you admit that you were profoundly wrong, and that any outcome that left Hamas in power in Gaza was an outcome that could only result in a repeat of October 7th, and further massacres and terrorism?
7. Do you see now that there are only two choices – either Hamas is removed and Gaza, and the Palestinians de-radicalised over the next 20 years, or Israel is destroyed and the Jews and Christians driven out of the land?
8. Who will you choose? Death or life? Hamas or Israel? Jihad or Western civilisation?

Bill Muehlenberg teaches ethics, apologetics and theology at several Melbourne Bible Colleges. His independent blog, Culture Watch, has over 5,000 articles commenting on the major cultural, social and political issues of the day.