Thus, nine years ago, the late Richard John Neuhaus called this new place "American Babylon." Today, in another eponymous book, Rod Dreher speaks of a "Benedict Option." George Weigel called in his 2017 Simon Lecture for a new Great Awakening, and elsewhere for what he dubs "the Panula option" after the recently deceased Fr. Arne Panula, a tireless evangelizer. Using T. S. Eliot as a touchstone, First Things editor R. R.

Much of the West is the direct result of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Of course other earlier influences would include ancient Greece and Rome, and more recently, things such as the Enlightenment. But to speak of Western civilisation is by and large to speak of Christian civilisation.

Her experience with same-sex attraction and the gay lifestyle gives her insight into what is at the heart of homosexuality and why it is fundamentally incompatible with the human person and with Christianity.

"Our Creator said that a man leaves his mother and father and comes together with his wife and the two become one flesh. God's creative design was for men and women, not for men with men or women with women," she said.

The church is headed by a woman, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who told Sweden's TT news agency the church had been discussing using more inclusive language since its 1986 conference.

Archbishop Antje Jackelen said the Church of Sweden has been discussing inclusive language since 1986(Image: AFP)

She said: "Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human."

But not everyone is happy with the decision.