The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos

New York Post opinion editor Ahmari (From Fire by Water) argues in this sweeping work that the West needs to re-engage more meaningfully with religious traditions in order to flourish. He asks 12 questions about the nature and duties of life that “confident, progressive modernity should readily be able to answer” but cannot (such as “How Do You Justify Your Life?” and “Can You Be Spiritual Without Being Religious?”), and offers his own replies, drawing from a wide range of eras, traditions, and thinkers, including second-century Gnostic Christian Marcion, Confucius, English theologian John Henry Newman, and feminist writer Andrea Dworkin. He pushes the view of God as rational through the work of Thomas Aquinas, and the need for a day of rest with the life and writing of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Ahmari argues being spiritual but not religious lacks “existential seriousness” and fails to bind community the way rituals associated with religion can and should. He uses Alexander Solzhenitsyn to question unchecked freedom of liberalism and Seneca to teach about the good death. While Ahmari’s arguments are intriguing, he is more concerned with telling a story than engaging with his points. Secularists will disagree with Ahmari’s basic argument, but those who worry about the decline of religion will appreciate this adamant call to return. (May)