Beyond the Culture of Nihilism

America’s culture wars mask a deeper crisis: a shared nihilism defined by destruction and the will to power. How do we rebuild meaning through a restored sacred order?

This is a guest post by Dr. John Seel and Lee Byberg.

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For decades, many believed America was divided between the Right and the Left, conservatives and liberals, believers and secularists. This is the framework used by cable news services. But sociologist James Davison Hunter now argues that this map no longer helps us. The deeper reality is that both sides share the same underlying condition: a culture of nihilism.

“Nihilistic culture,” Hunter writes, “is defined by the drive to destroy, by the will to power.” This is now our common world. As such it is our missional front line.

The real question for leaders is no longer; how do we win the culture war? The real question is, how do we rebuild meaning itself?

This requires restoring what the West has lost: a shared sacred order. Without it, a society cannot endure. Technology, prosperity, and politics cannot substitute for it. A culture cannot survive on material gains when its spiritual and moral foundation has crumbled. Rebuilding this sacred order requires liminal leaders in the church, people able to navigate this in-between time between the old, collapsing order and what comes next.

Collapse of the Sacred Canopy

Sociologists like Émile Durkheim, Peter Berger, and Philip Rieff saw this long before it arrived. They warned that modernity would hollow out the structures that give life moral shape. They warned that expressive individualism would dissolve the bonds that hold communities together. They warned that without a shared sacred order; societies unravel into confusion and conflict.

We now live in that reality.

Meaning has thinned. Institutions have weakened. Identity has become weightless and self-invented. Extreme violence is daily news. Reality itself is contested.

The symptoms are all around us, but they are symptoms of a far more lethal systemic metastasizing disease than many imagine.

We are not simply lost. We have lost our ability to find the way home. When Hunter asks whether we have the cultural resources to reverse this decline, his implied answer is sobering, “very few.” This is why liminal leadership must focus not on tactics but on foundations—not on arguments but on architecture. Renewal begins by rebuilding the deep structures of culture.

A sacred order rests on three legs:

1. Authority — the vertical source and story of truth and obligation.

2. Plausibility — the social and institutional environment that reinforces belief.

3. Ritual — the embodied practices that sustain identity and community.

Remove one, and the structure falls. Our culture has lost all three. Renewal requires restoring each one. Let us take them one at a time.

Recovering Sacred Authority

Every society needs a story that rises above personal preference. Without it, people become their own sources of truth, and society dissolves into competing wills. Today, the modern creed is simple: “You do you.” But a culture grounded only in personal choice cannot endure. Freedom without form is chaos. Authority is not about domination; it is about acknowledging that reality has a shape. It means we live in a moral universe—one we did not create but one with which we must align.

Modern people believe morality is a personal preference. But morality is not invented; it is discovered. It arises from the structure of creation. Marriage, sexuality, identity, truth—all have meaning because the created world has meaning and design. Ethics has a metaphysical basis.

We cannot rebuild authority with data alone. People live by stories. They trust what captures their imagination. They are shaped more by images than arguments. To rebuild authority, we must offer a compelling, beautiful, and true story about life. The rebuild starts with the imagination and often with artists.

This is why the Christian story is central. Rather than the simplified idea of “Believe so you can go to heaven,” Scripture presents a grand narrative: God is actively restoring everything and calls His people to join Him in that renewal today.

Theologian N.T. Wright reminds us that the Christian hope is not escape from the world but transformation in and of the world. Heaven is not a distant realm but the power of God’s future breaking into the present. “On earth as it is in heaven” is more than a prayer, it’s our mission now. This creational story grounds authority. It explains who we are, why we exist, what life is for, and where history is headed. Without it, we drift into the emptiness of self-invention.

Churches unintentionally weaken sacred authority by focusing on an individualistic theory of change:

• “Change hearts, change society.”

• “Get everyone to believe the same worldview.”

• “Focus on personal faith.”

But culture does not change one individual at a time. Culture is not the aggregate of individual choices. Culture is a normative invisible reality, a separate thing, created through institutions, networks, symbols, and shared imagination that define reality for all others in a manner that is largely taken-for-granted. Cultural change is not about mass mobilization but reality-defining worldmaking. Most evangelical institutions and ministries in America have adopted an understanding of culture and a theory of cultural change that is false and will fail.

Churches must reclaim their role among the reality-defining institutions (academy, media, entertainment, and business)—teaching not only Scripture but also the meaning of creation through story. The power of culture is the power to define reality. Our approach to reality is not to invent it but to align ourselves to it as an authoritative objective cosmic order, which is the view assumed in Scripture.

To restore the vertical is to say truth is real and objective, morality is not up for negotiation but given, identity is derived, not designed, and freedom is found in conscious alignment with God’s design. This is the foundation of cultural renewal. It’s a view that is radically countercultural.

Rebuilding the Social Ecology of Belief

Even if sacred authority were restored, this belief cannot survive alone. Convictions need community. Faith needs a home. Moral vision needs a shared life. Individuals need institutions. Individualism will fail faith.

Early Celtic Christianity practiced a powerful rhythm: belong → behave → believe. Community came first. People lived the Christian life in community before fully understanding it or believing it. This aligns with how the human mind works. We learn truth not only by thinking about it but by belonging in it.

Modern churches reverse this: believe → behave → belong. This creates a fragile faith that prioritizes cognitive believing over relational love—being in community with believers and in communion with God. Belonging builds belief.

Creating institutional plausibility structures for a transcendent sacred order is the second leg of the stool. In today’s cross pressured world this is more important than ever.

We live in a world of endless choice. People build spiritualities like playlists—picking and choosing what feels right. Private spirituality cannot withstand public pressure. It cannot shape identity or ground moral obligation. Its beliefs running on bald tires on wet roads.

To restore the sacred order, we must build communities where faith is normal, desirable, and relationally supported. This means churches must become places of deep relationship, communities of shared practice, ecosystems of belonging, schools of virtue, families across generations. Without these, faith becomes merely a hobby that is easily set aside.

Reconstituting the Embodied Life of the Sacred

If authority gives us the story, and plausibility gives us the community, then ritual gives us the embodied practices of the sacred. This is what changes beliefs from mere abstractions to lived personal realities.

We know from experience that community is formed through shared group rituals: SEC tailgating, BLM protests, Phish concerts, memorial services, block parties, and worship concerts. Rituals bind people together, transmit identity, teach morality, create emotional energy, and give bodily form to belief.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim’s “collective effervescence” describes the intense unity people feel during shared practices—whether in worship, protest, concerts, or sports. Rituals reveal what a community loves and supports. It’s not uncommon for a political protester to know little about the public policy being protested. The point of the protest is to be with his or her “people.” This creates the sense of meaning, of being a part of something larger than oneself.

Modern society has many rituals—but most reinforce consumerism, politics, or entertainment rather than the sacred. We must restore rituals that form people in the way of Christ.

The sacred order norms and provides social authority. Institutions and communities create the plausibility structures that give these norms social credibility and sustainability. And rituals create the social patterns that habituate a sense of the sacred into our embodied experience.

The sacred order is the North Star. The plausibility structures the magnetic field surrounding the compass. And the rituals are the daily practices that keep the boat on course. This is the missional framework needed to address a culture of nihilism. You need all three and, in our society, we have lost all three.

Why This Matters Now

We are living through a civilizational crisis. The old world is dying, but the new world has not yet emerged. We are in the liminal space—a threshold between ages. We have moved beyond postmodernism, but the contours of post-postmodernism are not quite clear. The next phase based on the premises of postmodernism is nihilism with its loss of meaning, animated resentment and violence, and drive for power.

Nihilism fills this space with dysfunction: deaths of despair, polarization, loneliness, anxiety, social fragmentation, online rage, and loss of purpose. Young people feel this most intensely. Without a sacred order, the human heart withers and society resorts to violent chaos.

We have not yet reached the bottom. Many older adults still live off the leftover nostalgic moral capital of the past. Younger generations do not. They face identity without anchoring, relationships without covenant, gigs without security, technology without wisdom, freedom without guidance, spirituality without community, and life without meaning. The crisis is not finally political or psychological. It is spiritual and cultural. It stems from the loss of the sacred.

The Work of Liminal Leaders

In such a moment, we need liminal leaders—men and women who can guide others through a world in transition with clarity, conviction, and courage.

Liminal leaders speak truth plainly, embody the sacred story, rebuild communities, restore ritual life, resist misplaced hope in politics, ground their work in creation, build institutions that endure, frame life in prayer and worship, and embrace the need for innovation.

Many churches are already doing their part. For them the need is simply to sharpen their focus on the dynamics of latent nihilism. There are three tracks of practical response. The first two lead pastors to address the negative dynamics of expressive individualism.

The expressive track challenges the vertical starting point of the sacred cosmos. Efforts at grounding the church’s ministry and teaching in prayer, in a four-chapter gospel story (creation, fall, redemption, and restoration), in a kingdom vision beyond simply getting people into heaven but getting heaven into people.

The lie of individualism must also be addressed. Membership and its demands must be highlighted. There are no “Lone Ranger” Christians. The church needs to be a place of belonging, community, and accountability. Small groups and Sunday school classes need to be more than just avenues of instruction. They must be places of relational solidarity and genuine communion.

If we tell a cosmic gospel story, celebrating a loving community, with practices that move beyond the cognitive, we will be on our way to countering the challenges of our nihilistic culture.

We need institutions that prepare leaders for this task. Too often churches, ministries, and seminaries provide only boot camp training, when officer training schools are needed. Fortunately, there are colleges like Black Mountain’s Excel College and missional labs like Canada’s Trellis Ventures that seek to equip the next generation for this task.

Our is a moment that calls for more than the taken-for-granted status quo. Nihilism is the frontline in the West’s missional challenge. These are the contours of a negative world. It is the culture overwhelming the coming generations. This outlines the beginning of a framework for a strategic response. We need a new generation of liminal leaders who are up to the task.

We know the task is long. We know results are not guaranteed. To rebuild a sacred order, we must restore the vertical of sacred authority, rebuild communities of plausibility, and renew the rituals that bind us together.

This is the architecture of cultural renewal in the face of a culture of nihilism. The sacred canopy will not rebuild itself. We must take up this mantle with humility and courage as we enter the New Year.

David John Seel, Jr., Ph.D. is a cultural analyst and writer. He was most recently the director of cultural engagement for the John Templeton Foundation. His forthcoming book is Liminal Leadership: Navigating a Change of Age (Spring, 2026). Dr. Seel and his wife, Kathryn, live in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Lee Byberg is the founder and president of Excel College in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Excel is launching Mission America, a national kingdom-oriented leadership training program focusing on art, education, ministry, and business (https://www.excelcollege.com/mission-america/).

Cover image: Friedrich Nietzsche