To start with Praxis Circle Contributor Os Guinness, one of America’s biggest fans and the inspiration for the founding of Praxis Circle, concerning the Creator God Narrative (CGN) versus the Man God Narrative (MGN):
“Freedom and responsibility are central to the Bible’s high view of human worth. Secular philosophies . . . limit themselves to reason, to nature, and to science, and the plain truth is that not one of these three has ever been able to establish the fact of human freedom. Their inevitable outcome for modern secularists is determinism, just as the result for the ancients was fate. The assumption of human freedom is uniquely the gift of the Bible. It is the understanding, in the words of Rabbi Sacks, that ‘humanity is constituted by its freedom. We are what we choose to be.'” (American Agonistes, 2025, pages 93-94)
“Karl Marx as a ‘godless self-god,’ [quoting Karl Marx here:] “Religion is only the illusory sun around which man revolves until he begins to revolve around himself.” (American Agonistes, page 90)
Let’s also start with the true and beautiful, summarizing what the CGN requires (and opposes in the MGN):
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8 (New American Standard Bible)
Introduction: The Importance of Narrative
This week leading up to America’s 250th anniversary, we celebrate the true sources of our nation: the Gospel, the Bible, and the Creator God Narrative. The Declaration’s Preamble makes obvious reference to the CGN: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We’ve mentioned the CGN and MGN many times before. Searching for these terms on our blog produces 42 posts dating back to September 2019. But the CGN and the MGN are not recognizable or generally accepted phrases or acronyms. So far as we know, these are Praxis Circle phrases we coined to refer efficiently to the worldview the West created (the CGN), and the one, as we speak, that’s destroying it today (the MGN). The MGN evolved from the CGN.
Moreover, Praxis Circle regularly develops new words, phrases, and acronyms as a creative worldview force because we not only explore worldviews thoroughly, we build them.
As another example, the culture of the West itself is based on Classical Judeo-Christianity (CJC). This also, as far as we know, is only a Praxis Circle term. The first C in CJC means “Classical” (or ancient Greek and Roman), J means Judaism, and C means Christianity (being based on Judaism, obviously, with key differences). The three have been woven together over 2,000 years to create the CGN, our still dominant national narrative today.
(Of course, there is no official religion or philosophy called “Judeo-Christianity.” Like Hinduism and Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity are related, with the latter developing from the former.)
Worldviews are based on metanarratives that presume certain metaphysical views of reality (or a lack of truth or reality). A basic level of understanding of worldview is needed to understand the CGN and MGN.
Metanarratives Define Worldview
With this in mind, we offer Os Guinness’ terrific 23 minute video above, entitled Os Guinness and the Search for Meaning: What Matters (2023). It’s well worth your time regardless of whether you care about worldview. Everyone wants meaning, purpose, fulfillment, happiness, and even glory in their life. Os will get you started down a good road.
The reason we selected this video is that Os outlines many of the differences between the CGN and MGN without using the phrases. He offers three basic global worldviews into which one can fit almost every other: Christianity, Secularism, and Eastern. While there are many overlapping beliefs, values, principles, and sentiments among the three, ultimately each is distinctive enough where combining them becomes problematic. Indeed, that’s why only three summary worldview categories exist, not fewer, after thousands of years of mutual existence. There will never be one worldview.
Christianity and major Eastern religions (like Hinduism) both believe in the supernatural and god(s). The Secular worldview is also a faith, worldview, or ideology, but it totally excludes the supernatural and concept of god.
In the West, Christianity (and the three Abrahamic faiths, which all believe in the God of the Bible) and Secularism cover the vast majority of individuals. Eastern religion is not in the West’s worldview wars crosshairs (between the CGN and MGN) because only a comparative few in the West hold an Eastern or New Age point of view. In addition, as explained below, Eastern worldview does not embrace a Creator God, if their gods are creators in the same way at all.
As emphasized many times before, everyone has a worldview. According to the extremely interesting research of Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center (CRC), the dominant worldview in America today is actually Syncretism. Over 90% of adults adopt this disparate, irreconcilable collection of beliefs or worldviews that they then move in and out of to suit the situation and their “selfish” purposes.
CRC breaks down Os’ three worldviews into eight and uses a rather strict definition of “biblical worldview” to limit America’s Christian category to less than 10%.
Using a much broader definition, Pew Research puts Christians at over 60% of the American population, with younger generations being lower than older ones and a growing number of “nones.” While many are detecting renewed interest in religion in America, as of March this year, the CRC has not yet detected an increase in religious belief in its own sampling.
Nonetheless, these numbers reflect a drift from the inception of our nation, which could, at the time, undoubtedly be called a Christian one based on the 75-80% of Americans who faithfully attended their churches in the 1700s and beyond.
The Critical Importance of Worldviews and Narratives to Politics
To highlight again the importance of narrative:
Do you want the Far Left to continue dominating the American public square? If not, then get yourself on a more persuasive and forceful narrative bandwagon.
Why is it that “democratic socialism” continues to make advances in America—as recent as this month’s primary elections—when the benefits of “capitalism” are a no-brainer, in contrast to socialism and communism? They have laughably nothing to do with “democracy” and have failed everywhere they have tried. Any examples of successful “socialism” involve capitalism covered over by a skillful or lying narrator. The Democratic Party is laced with them.
Should Christians use the word “capitalism” to characterize their political-economic system when the word itself (the listener knowing nothing more, which is most under- or mis-educated Americans today) suggests money is the first priority in a zero-sum, oppressive existence? (Nothing could be further from the truth.) Should they proudly and loudly repeat their arch-opponents’ narrative (most without realizing it) by using a word that presumes the primary MGN (Marxism): revolution and Christianity’s and liberalism’s downfall?
When the Left realized that “liberalism” and being a liberal was a damn good word to have in one’s narrative, they adopted it. Then, American Christians let them have it. They started calling their opponents “liberal” as an insult and, get this, progressive. (And now many are “post liberal.”)
Huh? As Uncle Remus used to say, “that’s throwing Brer Rabbit in the briar patch.” Touché, Far Left!
In other words, does the word “capitalism” (invented by communists to mock family, free markets, and Christian religion) fit the CJC narrative from which it emerged?
We have argued strongly in a series of posts that it does not. Without question, it’s well beyond the time to come up with a new word and an updated narrative that fits the CGN and the CJC-based religious, cultural, social, political, and economic existence that, after 500 to 2000 years, we know works extremely well. Praxis Circle has been doing and will continue to do this.
Indeed, we’ve proposed such a word to replace capitalism: creastruction. We’ve also updated the narrative, too, in an extremely detailed fashion, but that’s getting off-topic in this post.
In sum, without good communication and persuasion, only power, force, and violence work. And, like Europe, the Middle East, and China before us, increased violence is where America is headed (now often before our eyes), unless we good Christians get our collective act together. It’s up to each American citizen first to listen well and to be persuasive starting with their most important “weapon,” their narrative. This is a primary theme of Os’ American Agonistes.
Fortunately for Christians, it’s also the truth, and the truth always wins in the long run. (As evidence and forecast, we submit the Bible.)
Back to the CGN and the Flag of Its National Angel
We’ll return to Os and other recent authors early next week with the CGN vs. MGN Part II, where we’ll explore these two narratives and their irreconcilable differences in detail.
In any case, let’s end with Os’ advice about how to use the freedom declared in 1776 and won in the American Revolution to implement the CGN via creastruction. (Our Praxis Circle acronym and word.) George Washington’s patriots knew self-evident truths and were blessed with an abundance of common sense.
As a result, they didn’t have to wrestle with the obvious: In the long run, it’s impossible to know justice, love, and kindness, and walk humbly, if there’s no Lord.
In God We Trust: U.S.A.!
“Thus, once gained through liberation, freedom is active and not passive, an achievement rather than simply a gift. Freedom means understanding and following a way of life that pivots on what it takes to live truly free and to stay free. Like growth in an art or a sport, such as playing the piano or learning to ski, growth in freedom is a personal and moral achievement that requires skill, habits, discipline, time, and perseverance, but always with the goal of growth and maturity, and therefore with the desire to become more and more free over the course of time.” (American Agonistes, pages 96-97)
