A book currently climbing the German bestseller charts caught my attention recently, not least because its title poses a question that seems at once paradoxical and profound. Jan Loffeld’s Wenn nichts fehlt, wo Gott fehlt (“When nothing is missing where God is missing”) examines a growing phenomenon across Western societies that transcends conventional secularisation.
Loffeld, a Catholic priest and theologian at Utrecht University, does not merely document the familiar decline in church attendance or religious affiliation. He identifies something more subtle yet far more significant: “apatheism.”
The term itself is revealing – a blend of “apathy” and “theism” that captures both religious indifference and the deeper lack of concern that characterises it. Unlike atheism (which actively rejects religious claims) or agnosticism (which maintains uncertainty about them), apatheism describes a state of profound indifference.
The religious question itself – not merely the answer – has ceased to matter. For an increasing number of Europeans, God’s existence or non-existence has become utterly irrelevant to their lives. They experience no sense of loss or void; spiritually speaking, nothing feels missing where God is absent.
This strikes me as rather extraordinary. It is one thing to reject religion – atheists have done that for centuries. It is quite another to stop caring about the question entirely.
After finishing Loffeld’s work, I found myself pondering whether this pattern of indifference extends beyond religion. Could we be witnessing a parallel “apatheism” toward the foundational values and principles that underpin our civic life and democratic structures? Not an active rejection of constitutional principles or democratic norms – but a growing failure to even register their significance or, indeed, their relevance?
The concern keeping me awake at night is not that people actively oppose liberty, the rule of law or constitutional government. It is that they increasingly neither know nor care about these principles. Like Loffeld’s spiritually indifferent Europeans who live contentedly without noticing anything missing, our fellow citizens may be drifting into a state of civic indifference where the absence of constitutional understanding or commitment leaves no felt void.
I cannot help but find this alarming.
The former German President Richard von Weizsäcker once articulated a distinction that illuminates this problem perfectly. In his famous speech on the 40th anniversary of the German Basic Law in 1989, he said: “Wir haben uns hier versammelt, um unsere Verfassung zu feiern, weil wir sagen dürfen: Wir haben eine gute Verfassung. Aber es wäre doch eine oberflächliche Feierlichkeit ohne die ernsthafte Frage an uns: Sind wir in einer guten Verfassung?”
A translation would be: “We have gathered here to celebrate our constitution, because we can say: We have a good constitution. But it would be a superficial celebration without the serious question to ourselves: Are we in good constitutional health?”
Weizsäcker was making a play on words: “Verfassung” means both “constitution” and “condition” or “state” in German. Thus, he was asking whether the nation, while having a good constitution as a document, was itself in good constitutional health.
This insight resonates with what German constitutional jurist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde famously called the liberal state’s dilemma: “The liberal, secularised state lives by prerequisites which it cannot itself guarantee.”
Liberal democracies depend on cultural and moral resources – civic knowledge, constitutional commitment, public-spiritedness – that formal structures alone cannot create or maintain.
Historically, these resources have been transmitted through education systems that prioritised civic and historical knowledge, cultural institutions that reinforced democratic values and social norms that encouraged engagement with public affairs. When these transmission mechanisms weaken, the gap between constitutional text and constitutional reality widens. Formal institutions may persist in their outward form while gradually losing their animating purpose.
Sound familiar? It should. We are watching it unfold before our eyes.
Signs of this civic “apatheism” are increasingly visible across Western democracies. Studies consistently reveal declining knowledge of basic constitutional principles and governmental structures, even among the educated classes. In the United States, the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows an alarming downward trend in civics knowledge among students (despite civics being compulsory in many states). In Europe, research demonstrates widespread misconceptions about fundamental constitutional arrangements.
But more concerning than mere factual ignorance is the erosion of substantive engagement with underlying principles. Democratic citizenship increasingly reduces to procedural compliance – voting periodically, perhaps – without meaningful commitment to or understanding of constitutional values.
One cannot feel the absence of something one has never known or valued.
We see this growing void in many practical ways. Parliamentary procedures, designed to ensure proper scrutiny and deliberation, are increasingly sidestepped through mechanisms like “urgency” provisions.
In New Zealand, for instance, bills that would once have received thorough committee examination are now too often rushed through Parliament under urgency. The concerning aspect is not just that this happens, but that there is so little public concern about it. The value of these democratic processes – ensuring scrutiny, allowing for public input, preventing hasty legislation – seems no longer widely understood or appreciated.
Similarly, constitutional provisions are increasingly treated as tactical instruments rather than embodiments of principle. We witness a casual disregard for procedural norms when they impede desired outcomes.
Perhaps most tellingly, we observe how little these violations seem to matter to large segments of the public. When constitutional norms are transgressed, as we have seen with some of US President Trump’s actions during his second term, there is some outrage, but it remains limited and often confined to those already politically engaged rather than representing a broad public consensus that something precious has been violated.
This paradox – that we seem to have lost the very spirit that our governance systems were designed to embody – leads to interesting phenomena. As this spirit fades, we may witness increasing attempts to codify in law what once existed as shared understanding.
If everyone valued constitutional norms and democratic principles, we might not need elaborate mechanisms to enforce them. But precisely because this shared commitment is weakening, we sometimes see formal rules created to compensate for the loss of informal understanding.
Conversely, we may also witness the enactment of laws that should be incompatible with constitutional norms, yet no one cares enough to point out the contradiction. The absence of substantive outcry when fundamental principles are transgressed reveals the civic apathy that has taken hold.
New Zealand’s 2025 Regulatory Standards Bill provides a timely case study of this tension. For readers unfamiliar with New Zealand politics, the Bill emerged from a coalition agreement following the 2023 election. It represents a significant attempt to improve regulatory quality by reinforcing clear and long-standing principles for sound lawmaking – an issue of particular interest for Australian readers, who have witnessed similar debates about regulatory overreach and quality.
The Bill codifies values central to the Western liberal tradition: the rule of law, protection of liberties and property rights, equality before the law, transparent processes and evidence-based decision-making. Ministers and agencies would be required to assess legislation against these principles and explain any inconsistencies. A new Regulatory Standards Board would review compliance and investigate complaints, though its recommendations would be non-binding.
The Bill’s intentions are worthy. Indeed, I share its underlying commitment to liberty, transparency and regulatory restraint. But I wonder whether it can succeed in the current climate of civic indifference.
Its efficacy depends on assumptions that increasingly seem questionable: that agencies and ministers will engage substantively with its principles rather than merely complying procedurally; that parliamentarians and officials share a common understanding of concepts like “the rule of law” or “liberties”; that Parliament and the public will use transparency mechanisms to hold government accountable; and that recommendations from the Regulatory Standards Board will carry weight even without binding force.
In short, the Bill presupposes precisely the civic spirit that appears to be fading. It relies on a shared constitutional understanding to give meaning to its formal requirements. Without this animating spirit, even the most carefully crafted regulatory framework risks becoming an empty exercise – a form without substance.
The dilemma brings us back to Böckenförde’s insight. Formal institutions – whether regulatory frameworks, legislative bodies or constitutional courts – cannot generate their own prerequisites. They depend on cultural resources that they cannot produce themselves.
When regulatory principles are widely understood and valued, minimal enforcement mechanisms may suffice. When such understanding wanes, even elaborate compliance systems prove inadequate.
The more we rely on formal requirements to compensate for diminishing civic knowledge and commitment, the more we may inadvertently signal and accelerate that very decline. There is an irony here: the proliferation of explicit rules often reflects the weakening of implicit understanding.
This is not to suggest that a formal codification of principles lacks merit, particularly when those principles face erosion. But we should be clear-eyed about the limitations. No framework, however well-designed, can succeed without the civic spirit it presupposes. And that spirit cannot be legislated into existence.
In his book, Loffeld makes a crucial point about religious institutions: adding more rules, structures or reforms to religious organisations does nothing to counter fundamental indifference. People who do not care about religion will not suddenly start caring just because a church introduces new procedures or modernises its practices.
The same principle applies to our civic institutions. Creating more elaborate regulatory frameworks, oversight boards or compliance mechanisms will not restore civic spirit if that spirit has fundamentally eroded. These institutional fixes address symptoms, not causes. They might even mask the deeper problem by creating an illusion of engagement where none truly exists.
Yet Loffeld’s analysis also offers an unexpected glimmer of hope. He suggests that within the crisis of religious indifference lies an opportunity for genuine renewal. In a pluralistic society where faith is no longer the default position, those who embrace religion do so consciously rather than conventionally.
As Loffeld puts it, “Religion and faith free themselves from the merely habitual, traditional and inevitable. Those who choose God in a plural society full of equally valid life choices do so freely and very consciously.”
Now there is a thought worth pondering.
Our civic values could require a similar transformation: from inherited, taken-for-granted traditions to consciously chosen commitments. As we can no longer assume widespread understanding of constitutional principles or regulatory ideals, we must deliberately articulate and choose them anew.
In this light, New Zealand’s Regulatory Standards Bill might be viewed not merely as a defensive codification of threatened values, but as an opportunity to articulate what we consciously stand for. It becomes an invitation to rediscover the principles it embodies rather than assuming their continued resonance.
Loffeld concludes with a thought that seems equally applicable to our civic condition: perhaps we must “learn from other religions that one can find salvation even as a minority.”
As those committed to constitutional values and sound regulatory principles increasingly find themselves a minority, they may need to cultivate a more deliberate, conscious commitment to these ideals. The battle for freedom is never won forever. The socialists in all parties to whom Hayek dedicated his Road to Serfdom must once again be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men.
The “disappearing spirit” in its traditional form may indeed be fading. But a new civic commitment – more conscious, more articulate and perhaps ultimately more resilient – might yet emerge.
Still, the prerequisite is recognising what is truly at stake: not just particular policies or institutions but the cultural foundations that make liberal democracy possible.
The question for us, then, echoes Loffeld’s title: what happens when nothing feels missing where civic spirit is absent?
The answer may determine whether our constitutional systems retain their substance or merely their form in the decades ahead.
Perhaps the first step toward renewal is simply acknowledging that something essential has indeed gone missing, whether we have noticed its absence or not.
To read the article on the Quadrant website, click here.