Secularism is the final stage of civilization.

When Albert Mohler visited the masterfully restored Notre-Dame in Paris, he realized that the public had been mostly moved by the burning of the church because of its status as a beloved secular national symbol. It was built as a monument to faith but had become a refutation of it. In fact, the secular fires began far before the first spark lit the cathedral. Notre-Dame serves as a haunting parable of Western civilization as a whole—a culture that lovingly preserves the hollow physical shell of its heritage but rejects the worldview that created it.

Civilizations die for many reasons—disaster, disease, defeat. But why would a civilization choose its own demise? The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge called it the Great Liberal Death Wish—a strange affinity for self-destruction cloaking itself in the language of liberality and liberation.

Intrigued by that term ever since he encountered it in the 1980s, Mohler has spent the last 40 years tracing the roots of the Death Wish across history and politics. He has grown steadily more astonished by how well it predicts the calamities of modernity, from the genocidal population control efforts of the 20th century to the misanthropic transhumanism of Silicon Valley.

The secular Left rejects the sanctity of life, leading society to degenerate into a literal Culture of Death. Every person becomes disposable if they stand in the way of progress toward an imagined human-created Utopia.

Deeply researched, comprehensive, and compelling, The Great Liberal Death Wish unmasks the disastrous consequences of decades of secular shift. This sweeping journey through history, philosophy, and policy points us back to the one thing that can set everything right: the wisdom of God’s Creation Order.