Vetus Ordo Seclorum
Of the five factions emerging in the early postmodern era, Restorationism stands apart as the only faction that offers a coherent, unified, and future-oriented civilisational vision. While it rejects the modern order, it does not merely resist or survive it. It seeks to replace it, not with novelty, but with order rooted in transcendence.
Restorationism includes Traditionalist Catholic, Orthodox, and even some Protestant currents, each of which may pursue their own exclusivist theological paths, but all of which share a metaphysical impulse that unites them across doctrinal lines.
That shared impulse is this:
Modernity failed because it severed society from the transcendent. The solution is not reform but restoration. Not as nostalgia, but as future legacy.
What Is Restorationism?
Restorationism is not a political party, nor a religious revival movement in the conventional sense. It is a civilisational current, animated by the understanding that the late modern world, built on secularism, individualism, relativism, and materialism, is a fracturing spiritual wasteland.
Modernity has not simply erred in governance or economics, but has severed man from the sacred, disenchanted the cosmos, and disoriented the soul. Restorationism sees liberal modernity as not just wrong, but as metaphysically malformed:
- A world without sacred time or sacred space;
- A culture without virtue, shame, or beauty;
- A political order without hierarchy, honour, or holiness.
In response, Restorationists seek to rebuild civilisation from first principles, beginning with worship, truth, and moral order.
This is not reaction. It is not “going back.” Restorationism draws on the history of Holy Christendom not to replicate it, but to revive the principles that made it glorious, and to apply them anew.
A Civilisation, Not a Coalition
Restorationism is not a coalition of traditionalists. It is not a pan-religious alliance, nor a platform for interfaith cooperation. It is a civilisational movement, oriented toward the rebirth of Holy Christendom, that is, the integrated moral, political, and spiritual order of the historic Christian West.
Restorationism may draw inspiration from diverse traditions, but it is not pluralist. It is exclusivist in principle. The Restorationist holds that:
- Truth is not manifold, but one;
- Order is not procedural, but hierarchical;
- Salvation is not self-determined, but revealed.
This is not “denominationalism” in the modern Protestant sense. Denominationalism, the idea that multiple theological expressions can coexist peacefully within a shared framework of relativised belief, is itself a liberal fiction, a direct byproduct of the Enlightenment’s attempt to tame religion by privatising it. Restorationism repudiates this fiction.
Each Restorationist sect, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or High Protestant, may claim exclusive legitimacy. They may disagree fiercely about doctrine, ritual, and authority. But what they share is far more important than their differences: a conviction that modernity is a metaphysical error, and that society must be reordered according to divinely revealed truth.
This unity is not theological, but civilisational. It arises from a common rejection of the disenchanted liberal order, and a common aspiration to re-found Christian society upon its ruins.
Islamadon and the Civilisational Divide
Islamadon may echo certain Restorationist themes (order, law, hierarchy) but it is not a variant of Restorationism. It is a rival civilisation, rooted in a different revelation, aiming at a different eschaton. Islamic traditionalists may appear to mirror the Restorationist impulse, rejecting modernity, promoting hierarchy, and restoring sacred law. But their goal is not the restoration of Christendom. It is the construction of Islamadon: a parallel civilisation, rooted in the ummah, the sharia, and the political theology of Islam.
While temporary tactical alignments may emerge between traditional Muslims and Restorationist Christians, particularly in opposition to globalism, deconstructionism, and secularism, these are not signs of convergence, but of separate resistance movements operating on distinct metaphysical blueprints.
The Restorationist seeks to re-establish the sovereignty of the Incarnate Logos, not simply to halt liberal decay, but to manifest the Kingship of Christ in temporal form. Islamadon, by contrast, seeks the restoration of a non-Christian order. The two are competitors, not allies, in the postliberal arena.
The Talmud as Anti-Civilisation
In Restorationist thought, Islamadon represents an external civilisational rival, whereas Talmudism is seen as an internal metaphysical current that had, over time, reshaped and weakened the order of Holy Christendom.
Restorationists describe the Talmudic paradigm as a worldview that resists transcendental objectivity, favours intricate legalism over universal truth, and erodes the moral architecture of Christian civilisation.
For Restorationists, liberal proceduralism, relativism, and pluralism are not accidents of secularisation, but the outcome of long-standing philosophical divergences, with the Talmudic rejection of Christ being the decisive point of separation.
Because of this, they reject “Judeo-Christian” synthesis as incoherent, holding that it attempts to unite two metaphysically opposed orders.
To restore Holy Christendom means, in great part, to disentangle the West from Talmudic influence by exorcising the metaphysical errors that have corroded its soul.
The Protorestorationist Inheritance
Restorationism did not emerge ex nihilo. It is the fruit of forgotten seeds, planted throughout the 20th Century by thinkers, movements, and communities that sensed, often dimly, often in isolation, that modernity had gone wrong at the root.
These earlier efforts did not yet form a unified movement. Many were incomplete, incoherent, or confined to narrow ecclesial or social spheres. But they shared a longing: to recover what had been lost, not merely traditions or institutions, but a civilisational form ordered to God.
Restorationism now gathers these fragments and fuses them into a singular project.
Among its chief forerunners:
- Distributism, which rejected both capitalism and socialism as inhuman systems, and called for a return to household economy, guild structure, and moral production;
- Catholic Integralism, which proclaimed that the temporal order must be subordinated to the spiritual, that law, governance, and kingship are not secular ends in themselves, but ordained toward divine justice;
- Liturgical Traditionalism, which preserved the rites and rhythms of sacred time not as museum pieces but as the ritual soul of civilisation;
- Orthodox monastic revival, especially in the East, where tradition was guarded as a living inheritance, not a relic;
- Confessional Protestant renewal movements, which, in their better moments, preserved moral clarity, anti-modern realism, and theological seriousness in an increasingly therapeutic age;
- Rural and homesteading intentional communities, which sought to withdraw from the metabolic storm of modern consumption and reorient life around the land, the altar, and the family.
These were not yet Restorationists in the full sense. Some remained constrained by liberal assumptions they had not yet transcended. Others mistook nostalgia for prophecy. A few lacked the sacramental imagination needed for true reconstruction.
But, taken together, they revealed a latent civilisational memory: the sense that Holy Christendom is not dead, only buried.
Today’s Restorationism does not imitate these movements. It integrates them purged of their weaknesses, baptised with clarity, and rearmed with historical awareness. It is no longer content with pockets of resistance or half-measures. It seeks to rebuild the entire edifice: liturgy, law, kingship, economy, architecture, education, and metaphysics, all once again bound in sacred order.
Between Vitalism and Transcendence
Restorationists sometimes ride the energy of Vitalism, especially in times of cultural breakdown. They may share traits: martial symbolism, sacred architecture, mythic memory.
They may even share allies in opposing the regime, but they are inherently opposed to one another:
- Vitalism is instinctive; Restorationism is principled.
- Vitalism is post-rational; Restorationism is meta-rational.
- Vitalism tears down; Restorationism builds.
- Vitalism affirms will; Restorationism submits to God.
Restorationists reject the nihilism that haunts Vitalist circles. They may harness vitality, but only when yoked to virtue. They certainly invoke myth, but only ordered to truth and their own sacred traditions. They see strength not as an end, but as a means toward justice and sanctity.
Parallel Institutions, Prophetic Vision
Because they have no faith in the salvific power of liberal systems, Restorationists do not seek to reform the regime. Rather, they seek to outlast it by building parallel institutions, cultural lifeboats, and sacred enclaves that can survive the collapse.
This includes:
- Alternative schools and academies rooted in classical formation;
- Domestic economies and land-based living;
- Liturgical communities of cultural memory;
- Guilds, brotherhoods, and orders of virtue;
- Political theologies that can anchor legitimate authority after liberalism.
But this is not escapism. Restorationism is not retreat. It is formation for conquest: moral, cultural, and spiritual. Its goal is not to hide from the future, but to own it.
The Prophecy of Restoration
Restorationism is the only postliberal faction that proposes a path to civilisational coherence. It is not bureaucratic, like the Proceduralists. It is not managerial, like the Globalists. It is not self-consuming, like the Deconstructionists. It is not chaotic and instinctual, like the Vitalists. It is rooted in transcendent order, a cosmos rightly structured around the will of God, the kingship of Christ, and the beauty of holiness.
It is, perhaps paradoxically, the most forward-looking of all five factions, not because it dreams of novelty, but because it knows what must be recovered. It draws from a well that has never run dry: the memory of Holy Christendom.
Restorationism does not seek a pluralistic synthesis. It does not aim to coexist within the modern order. It seeks to replace it entirely, not with something modernised, not with something merely traditional, but with something eternal made visible once again.
It will be:
- Hated by the Globalists, because it cannot be bought;
- Mocked by the Proceduralists, because it refuses to play by their rules;
- Feared by the Deconstructionists, because it unmasks their parasitism;
- Misunderstood by the Vitalists, because it calls strength to serve sanctity.
And yet, it will endure. Not because it is fashionable but because it is true. Not because it flatters the age but because it speaks from beyond it. In the end, the Restorationist does not offer a counter-narrative, but a counter-civilisation.
Not a memory. A mandate.