Burke is a defender of the institutions of Christian civilization. Understanding this liberates us from the need to defend failing institutions simply because those institutions happen to exist.

Love of country, patriotism, unity, the desire for religious liberty, and the hopes to see the world evangelized ought to mark Christians. Yet, these qualities exist alongside the realities of a fallen world, marred by sin.

Butterfield did not offer us Christian apologetics, but he did offer a Christian understanding of history far more appealing than Lewis’s dismissal of the project.     

Herbert Butterfield’s Christian faith essentially inspired his view of history and government and made him the English forerunner of a hopeful Christian Realism as an alternative to both Western secular materialist liberalism and collectivist atheist Marxism.