Putin is no defender of Christian values—here’s why.

This week on the podcast Matt Malone, S.J., and Kerry Weber speak to Sohrab Ahmari about de-Christianization in the West. Ahmari, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, wrote recently on this subject for America in the article, “De-Christianization in the West is a real threat. But Putinism isn’t the answer.”

Mr. Ahmari explained that even before he converted to Catholicism he worried about “the erosion of the West’s Judaeo-Christian heritage, of the moral precepts and [of the] authority that the church, and Christianity more broadly lent to liberalism.” He clarified that his usage of the term “liberalism” refers to “the broad philosophy—[it is] not a shorthand for the center-left of the Democratic party.”

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“Even as I worry about that I see in some conservative Christian quarters, where there’s such a sense of being besieged by a very strident liberalism on issues like sexuality, marriage, gender theory and so forth, a tendency to look to Vladimir Putin and his level of governance as perhaps offering an alternative, or something Christians should cheer. And that was alarming for me.

For all of our dissatisfaction with liberal order as Christians, those frustrations should not lead us to embrace the regime that is as ruthless at home as it is abroad, and fundamentally corrupt in so many ways.

“For all of our dissatisfaction with liberal order as Christians, those frustrations should not lead us to embrace the regime that is as ruthless at home as it is abroad, and fundamentally corrupt in so many ways.”