The War Against the Past: A Christian Look at History

The War Against the Past? What Frank Furedi Gets Right, What Complicates the Story, and What Christians Should Do With History

Ask a group of Christians whether history matters and almost everyone will say yes. The Bible is, after all, a book rooted in events: an exodus, an exile, a crucifixion, an empty tomb. Faith that can’t point to something that happened isn’t the faith of the New Testament.

Yet how we remember history is one of the most heated arguments in the West today. Statues come down, book lists are reviewed, school curricula are rewritten, and each side accuses the other of distorting or erasing the past.

A recent book review on The Daily Declaration by Bill Muehlenberg, republished from CultureWatch, draws attention to one influential contribution: Frank Furedi’s The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight for Its History (Polity, 2024). The review argues that the rewriting and erasure of history is in full swing across the West.

This post sets out Furedi’s argument, checks some of the examples, looks at where historians and other critics push back, and offers a Christian way of thinking about history that’s committed to both truth and memory.

What Furedi Argues

According to the extracts in the review, Furedi, a sociologist and author, makes several key claims:

• A real “war” against the past. He says the word “war” isn’t merely a metaphor. In his view, the main driver of the culture wars is an undeclared war on the past, which discredits its legacy and damages communities whose way of life is underpinned by European culture.
• Moral crusade. He sees a frenzied effort to make people feel ashamed of their origins by targeting the symbols, values and achievements of the past.
• The past as the “Bad Old Days.” Institutions, he says, now routinely paint the past in the darkest colours, so that achievements from Greek philosophy to the Enlightenment are indicted for their association with exploitation.
• Presentism. Activists, he argues, erase the distinction between the present and the past and seek to fix contemporary problems by readjusting what has already happened.
• Libraries and books. He gives examples of libraries hiding or replacing older books, which he describes as censorship.
• Young people suffer. Young people with a weak sense of connection to what came before are, in his view, the casualties, living in a mood of cultural malaise.
• A balanced note. Importantly, Furedi isn’t calling for nostalgia. He says the past isn’t morally superior to the present, nor an era in need of our moral instruction, and that he is not recommending an uncritical embrace of tradition or a golden age. Rather, he argues for understanding past societies in their own context and for the virtue of knowing the traditions to which we belong.

That last point is worth emphasising, because it’s easy to flatten his argument into a simple “the left is destroying history” slogan. His own position is more careful.

Checking the Examples

The review quotes four specific examples from the book. It’s good practice to look at each carefully.

• Enid Blyton in Devon (2023). Furedi reports that Devon libraries decided to hide Enid Blyton books with outdated language in off-limits sections and to buy updated editions. Editions of Blyton’s books have indeed been updated over the years by her publisher, which is a long-standing practice. Whether library policy amounted to “censorship” depends on how access was handled, and readers should check the original reporting.
• A Melbourne school library audit. Furedi describes an audit of 7,000 titles guided by an Indigenous education expert, Dr Al Fricker, in which books on colonialism judged outdated were removed. He quotes the argument that nonfiction should be updated like science books. That reasoning is debatable, as Furedi notes: older works in the humanities remain primary sources for understanding earlier thought. At the same time, “weeding” outdated books is a routine part of library management, so context matters.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder (2018). The American Library Association’s children’s division removed her name from a lifetime achievement award because of her portrayal of Native Americans and others. Her books remain widely available, and the award was renamed, so the decision was about honouring her, not about suppressing her work. Supporters of the change say an honour is different from preservation.
• Dr Seuss (2021). Dr Seuss Enterprises, the organisation that manages his estate, decided to stop publishing six titles because of racist and insensitive imagery. That was a decision by the rights holder, not a government ban, and the books remain in libraries and second-hand markets, though critics call it a retroactive erasure.

These examples show the kind of decisions at stake. Some people see them as sensible updates, others as troubling overreach. The pattern matters more than any single case, and reasonable people weigh them differently.

A Note on Famous Quotes

The review closes with three well-known quotations, and it’s worth being careful with them, since care with sources is part of good history.

• “A nation that forgets its past has no future.” This is widely attributed to Winston Churchill, but fact-checkers, including Snopes after consulting the National Churchill Museum, have found no written record that he ever said it. Churchill did believe strongly in studying history.
• “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” This one is genuine: it’s a Party slogan from George Orwell’s novel 1984. It’s a line spoken by the regime in the story, and it’s a warning, not Orwell’s own endorsement.
• “To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.” This is often attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but we weren’t able to find a reliable primary source for it, and readers should treat the attribution with caution.

None of this undermines the point that remembering matters. It’s a good reminder that those who care about history should be careful about the history of their own quotations.

Where Historians Push Back

Not everyone agrees with Furedi’s framing, and a fair post has to say why.

History is always being revised. Historians constantly reinterpret the past as new evidence emerges, as archives open and as previously overlooked voices are heard. Revision itself isn’t erasure. Some of the greatest advances in historical understanding have come from asking questions earlier generations didn’t.

Earlier histories were also selective. Critics point out that national histories written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often omitted or minimised the experiences of women, colonised peoples, workers and minorities. Adding those stories can be seen as completing the record, not destroying it.

Australia has had its own “history wars.” In the 1990s and 2000s, Australians argued bitterly about how to tell the story of European settlement and its effect on Aboriginal people. The historian Geoffrey Blainey coined the phrase “black armband view of history” in 1993 to criticise what he saw as an overly negative account, while historians such as Henry Reynolds documented frontier violence and dispossession, and Keith Windschuttle challenged some of those accounts. More recent projects, including the University of Newcastle’s mapping of colonial frontier massacres, have sparked further debate. This is a debate about evidence and interpretation, and it can’t be settled by slogans from either side.

Censorship concerns are not one-sided. The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights opposes removing materials because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval, and many librarians strongly resist censorship. In the United States, large numbers of school library book challenges in recent years have come from the political right. If the principle is that books shouldn’t be removed because someone dislikes their ideas, it should apply to everyone.

Context versus cancellation. Many educators argue that the answer to offensive attitudes in older books is context, not removal: notes, discussion and teaching children how to read critically.

None of this refutes Furedi’s concerns. It does suggest that the truth is more complicated than a simple story of one side destroying history.

What Does the Bible Teach About History?

Christian faith has a distinctive relationship with the past.

We’re commanded to remember. Deuteronomy 6:20–25 imagines children asking what the laws mean, and parents telling the story of the exodus. Psalm 78:1–8 speaks of telling the next generation the glorious deeds of the Lord so that they put their trust in God and do not forget his works. Joshua 4:6–7 sets up memorial stones so that future generations will ask what they mean.

The Bible tells the truth about its heroes. Scripture doesn’t airbrush. It records Abraham’s lies, Moses’ anger, David’s adultery and murder, Peter’s denial. Psalm 106 and Nehemiah 9 recount Israel’s history, including its repeated failures. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 does the same. The biblical model of remembering is neither flattery nor condemnation. It’s honest recounting that leads to repentance and gratitude.

History carries lessons. Paul writes that the events of Israel’s history were written down as warnings and examples for us (1 Corinthians 10:11). Hebrews 11 recalls a “cloud of witnesses,” though it includes flawed people.

Truthfulness is a command. The ninth commandment forbids false witness (Exodus 20:16). That applies to the way we tell the past, whether by whitewashing or by caricature.

Christianity is historical. Luke begins his Gospel by saying he has carefully investigated everything from the beginning so that readers may know the certainty of what they’ve been taught (Luke 1:1–4). Paul grounds the gospel in historical events that could be checked (1 Corinthians 15:3–8).

A Christian Historian’s Warning Against Both Extremes

The review lists several Christian works on history, including Herbert Butterfield’s Christianity and History (1949). Butterfield is worth highlighting because he warned against errors on both sides. In The Whig Interpretation of History (1931), he criticised the habit of reading the past as a march toward the present, dividing historical figures into heroes and villains according to today’s standards. At the same time, as a Christian, he argued that history should be told with humility about human fallenness, including our own.

That combination is a good guide: avoid the arrogance of judging the past as if we were morally superior, and avoid the sentimentality of pretending the past was spotless.

The Church’s Own History

Christians should apply this honestly to their own story. The church’s record includes remarkable achievements: hospitals, universities, the abolition of slavery, care for the poor, the preservation of ancient texts. It also includes failures: persecution, complicity in injustice, abuse and cover-up. A church that tells only the first half is as dishonest as a critic who tells only the second.

This is especially relevant in Australia, as we discussed in recent posts on reconciliation. Honest history includes the good that missionaries and churches did, and the harm that was done in the same period.

Our Take

Here’s where we’d like to add some commentary.

1. Remembering is a duty, not an option.

Whatever our politics, forgetting where we came from makes us poorer. Christians in particular are a people who remember, in worship, in the Lord’s Supper and in telling their children what God has done.

2. Tell the truth, both ways.

Whitewashing the past and demonising it are equally dishonest. We can be grateful for what earlier generations built and honest about what they got wrong, as Scripture does with its own heroes.

3. Avoid presentism, and avoid golden ages.

Furedi himself says the past isn’t morally superior to the present. We should try to understand people in their context, and still be willing to say that some things were wrong then and are wrong now.

4. Distinguish curation from censorship.

Libraries must make choices, and children’s books are often updated. The principle worth defending is that adults and researchers should have access to the primary sources, with context, and that decisions to remove or alter works should be made transparently and not out of ideological fashion, from any direction.

5. Be careful with the language of war.

The review describes the situation as the radical left’s attempt to destroy the West. That’s a sweeping claim, and many teachers, librarians and historians are working honestly, including many who are Christians. Painting everyone who disagrees as an enemy makes it harder to persuade or learn.

6. Teach the next generation.

The best response to historical amnesia isn’t complaint but teaching. Read history with your children, tell them your family’s story and your church’s story, visit museums and old churches, and talk honestly about hard questions.

7. Be a model of careful scholarship.

Checking quotations before sharing them is a small but real act of integrity. Truthfulness in the details builds credibility for the larger argument.

The Other Side of the Conversation

In fairness, here’s how others might respond to the review:

• Furedi’s critics argue that he overstates the extent of the problem, treats legitimate reappraisals as attacks, and ignores the fact that earlier national histories were often one-sided.
• Historians of colonialism and Indigenous history would say that omission was itself a form of erasure, that bringing neglected stories to light is a form of recovery, and that those who call this a “war on the past” may be uncomfortable with what is being recovered.
• Librarians would say that weeding and updating collections is routine, that they defend access to controversial works as a professional principle, and that cases of removal are the exception.
• Some conservatives share Furedi’s worries about the loss of tradition and want greater attention to the achievements of the Western past, particularly in school curricula.
• Some Christians emphasise that the church’s greatest need is to repent of its own failures, and that defensiveness about Western heritage can sound like excuse-making.
• Others warn that wars about history can distract from the present, and that the most important thing is to live faithfully now.

A thoughtful reader can recognise the strength in each of these positions.

Practical Steps

• Read widely. Read history from different perspectives, including works by Christians and non-Christians, and by people from different backgrounds.
• Start with the Christian history list in the review: Bebbington’s Patterns in History, Butterfield’s Christianity and History, Dawson’s The Dynamics of World History, Sarah Irving-Stonebraker’s Priests of History, Mansfield’s More Than Dates & Dead People, Montgomery’s History and Christianity and Swanstrom’s History in the Making, alongside Furedi’s book.
• Learn your local history, including the story of the land and its first peoples, and the story of your church.
• Record your church’s history: photographs, minutes, testimonies and memories, before they’re lost.
• Support local libraries and historical societies.
• Check quotes and sources before sharing them.
• Talk about the past with your children and grandchildren.
• Pray for wisdom for educators, librarians, historians and public leaders.

Questions to Reflect On

• What stories about the past have shaped my faith and my family?
• Do I tend to idealise the past or to condemn it, and why?
• How do I handle uncomfortable parts of my own church’s history?
• How could I help young people in my life to know the story they belong to?
• Do I check the facts before repeating a good-sounding quote?

A Short Prayer

Lord, you are the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Lord of history who acts in time. Teach us to remember your faithfulness and to tell it to our children. Give us honesty to face the failures of the past, including our own, and gratitude for the good we have inherited. Keep us from pride and from despair, and make us wise stewards of the story we have received. May we hand on a faith, and a world, better understood and more truthfully told. Amen.