According to Christopher Dawson civilisation should not exist for its own sake but “ought to be a sacred order which rests not on the will of man but on the Law of God. When a civilisation has entirely abandoned this belief, when it makes itself its own law and its own end and cuts itself off from its roots in the spiritual order, its days are numbered … That is the fate that threatens Western culture to-day”:

Religion and the Modern State (1935).