Christendom Rising: A Path for Hope

St Constantine the Great, Blessed Charlemagne, and all ye Patrons of Europe, pray for us! A return to Christendom is the only hope for Europe in the face of the jihadist invasion.

From The European Conservative

By the Editorial Team

Europe must become Christendom again. We have no other choice, but it’s a merry one. A bright star is in the sky, all we must do is follow it.

This December 25th, only a minority of Europeans will get themselves to church to acknowledge the meaning of the day. Among Christian celebrations, Christmas alone remains alive in the modern Western imagination. There is one reason for that: stuff. 

At Christmas, people get stuff. A society based upon materialism and commodification, a society that has transposed our innate longing for the infinite onto the finite, will still celebrate a Christian feast day if it can be reframed as a chance to get more stuff.

But fortunately there are people all around the world who still know the true meaning of Christmas. They will wake up and get themselves to church, knowing that on the way to their worship, they may be stoned to death; or they may be hacked to pieces in the street with machetes; or on arrival at the church, be blown to smithereens by a carefully placed bomb. I refer to the Christians of Egypt, of Nigeria, of Pakistan, and many other countries around the globe. 

Open Doors, a non-denominational organisation that supports persecuted Christians around the world, has recorded that in the past year 7,679 churches and Christian properties were burned down or seriously damaged, 4,744 people were imprisoned for their Christianity, and 4,476 Christians were killed for their faith. Most of us in the West, on the other hand, cannot even be bothered to attend the Christmas Day service down the road. 

Besides Jordan—a country that’s only existed for eighty years—there is not a single example of an Islamic state that does not persecute Christians. This is a significant fact, as an Islamic ascendency in Europe could entail that the old continent will find itself under Islamic rule in the not-too-distant future. What that could mean for European Christians is worth considering.

It may be the hostility towards Christians that’s observable across the world which explains the deep sympathy for Islam harboured by our secular overlords—perhaps they see Islam as an essential means for exorcising Europe of its Christianity. But our elites are growing anxious. They’re worried that Christianity may be returning, despite all their labours to undermine it and quash it. Their latest tactic has been interesting: they claim that the political ‘Right’ is cynically appropriating Christianity for ‘divisive’ purposes. Signs of a Christian reawakening, they say, are nothing but a veiled fascism masquerading as piety.

But what if a significant population really came to believe that their civilisation could not survive without reversion to the Christian faith?

Those allegedly guilty of ‘politicising Christianity’ are in fact only acknowledging that Christianity is already inherently political. After all, Christianity calls for the nations to be discipled (Matthew 28:19); it teaches that there is no earthly power other than that which is bestowed from above (John 19:11); that every knee must bow at the name of Jesus, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Philippians 2:10); and Christianity looks forward to the resurrection of the dead, when all the earth’s nations will gather before the Lamb (Apocalypse 7:9). Whatever your local pastor might tell you, Christianity is already political. 

Many are waking up to the fact that decades of atheism, secularism, progressivism, and materialism have made us weak and effeminate. Either Europe will rediscover the spirit of Charles Martel and of St. Boniface, whom Martel supported and protected, or it will fall. As the great English historian Christopher Dawson, some time at the midpoint of the last century, wrote:

No civilisation, not even that of ancient Greece, has ever undergone such a continuous and profound process of change as Western Europe has done during the last 900 years. … The principle of change has been a spiritual one and the progress of Western civilisation is intimately related to the dynamic ethos of Western Christianity.

Every one of the half a million church spires and towers across Europe testify to the fact that the Faith is the soul of our civilisation. And if Dawson is correct in what he writes above, then either Christianity is political—in the sense of animating and informing the polities it permeates—or it is not political anymore, in which case it had better get political again, for the alternative is the end of our civilisation.

It is worth meditating on the role of the Magi. Those wise men from the East, who were likely astrologer-priests of Zoroastrianism from Persia, have come to symbolise the nations in the Christian imagination. 

The Magi have come to represent all the peoples of the earth, who must humble themselves and prostrate themselves before the Lord, and ultimately become discipled. The nations of the West are no exception. If they have abandoned the Lord in some damnable spasm of hysterical apostasy, then they must repent and return to Him. And if atheists and progressives despair at the thought of such a conversion of the nations, then we should be all the more pleased at the first signs of it.

Europe must become Christendom again. We have no other choice, but it’s a merry one. A bright star is in the sky, all we must do is follow it. 

Pictured: Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne. From Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis.