Europe’s Choice 
Return to Christianity or endure Islam

For decades Europe has slowly, but now with increasing rapidity, been committing suicide. The people of the continent have lost all sense of who and what they are. Europe has forgotten its past and any sense of connection to it, and as a result it has lost its identity and its reason for being. The future is precarious at best.

Christian heritage

If it is to be any more than a land mass with an undifferentiated population, the various countries of Europe must recover and reintegrate their Christian heritage. This is why we in the UK, and other European countries, have to use every legal, political, and law enforcement means to fight this. But we must recognise that the core of the struggle is not legal but cultural. 

Here in the four nations of the UK we have a disparate but unified sense of history and culture. We have different stories, customs and accents, but we make up a single identifiable community. At the core of what makes Britain a particular place with a definite identity is the Christian religion.

At the heart of culture is cult, or religion. This is unpalatable to many, especially our politicians and ecclesiastical leaders. Politicians in Europe ‘don’t do God’. This is most clearly seen in the decision of the European Parliament in 2004 to reject any proposals to make reference to Europe’s ‘Judaeo-Christian roots’ in official documents.

Turning our backs

That this is indicative of a deeper malaise is evident. We can hardly accuse our politicians of turning their backs on the Christian foundation of Europe when our church leaders have done the very same thing.

We can hardly accuse our politicians of turning their backs on the Christian foundation of Europe when our church leaders have done the very same thing.

Earlier this month Pope Leo XVI issued an apostolic exhortation titled Dilexi te (‘I Have Loved You’). In it he quoted with approval the previous pope, Francis I: ‘We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved. They are an occasion that Providence gives us to help build a more just society, a more perfect democracy, a more united country.’ To which Pope Leo added: ‘In every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.’

Re-Christianise or Islamise

At the time of the most recent census in 2021, there were 3.9 million Muslims residing in England and Wales, reflecting a remarkable increase of 42.9 per cent over the decade since 2011. Presently, Muslims constitute just over one in 20 of the electorate. Coupled with the declining birthrate among the indigenous population, this proportion is poised to rise. In contrast, the number of individuals choosing to identify as Christian has diminished by 17.1 per cent. Europe faces a pivotal choice: it can either re-Christianise or undergo Islamisation. There is no stable third choice.

Most nationalisms, particularly in the last century, bear a sanguinary legacy, from Rome’s militaristic conquests to pagan ethnocentrism and fascist totalitarianism. However, the Christian iteration of nationalism, the virtuous patriotism that forged our nation, stands as a distinctly different phenomenon. Christian nationalism is not a threat to our democracy; rather, it is the very foundation upon which our democracy is constructed.

Raising the colours

Any attempt to revive the Christian foundations of our society is bound to be met with fierce opposition, particularly from within the Church. From the mainstream Church, which is predominantly of the left, we find heartfelt complaints of ‘the deliberate co-opting of Christian imagery to stoke division and fear’. Advocates of a return to the Christian heritage of our nation are accused of a ‘calculated effort to use the language of Christianity as a tool to divide’.

Any attempt to revive the Christian foundations of our society is bound to be met with fierce opposition, particularly from within the Church.

The recent ‘Raise the Colours’ movement illustrates the situation within the UK. The diocese of Oxford objected to the flags, ‘being used to represent a divisive and exclusionary agenda.’ As part of our Christian action in this area we are instead encouraged to fly posters from ‘Hope not Hate’, a group described by Douglas Murray as indulging in ‘sinister tactics’.

We have reached the stage in this country where hoisting the national flag is viewed by the authorities as a potential incitement which could lead to violence from immigrants. Councils immediately removed the flags raised on spurious grounds of heath-and-safety, having allowed Palestinian flags to fly from lamp posts for extended periods. This isn’t a good place for any country to be in.

Bible-believing Christians hold that the secular, liberal society in which we grew up is in terminal crisis. Britain, and the West generally, will only be put right when it returns to its foundational Christian laws or principles.

Standing strong

Christians have been desperate for leadership, and the Church has failed to provide it. How can people respect a Church which doesn’t respect itself? It is a scandal that theologically uneducated Christian men and women are more courageous and effective advocates for Christian moral teaching than countless of the ordained, professional clerics.

It always makes me wince when men and women proclaim loudly that they are on the side of God. And yet Western civilisation really was built by men - not necessarily good men, sometimes great sinners - but men who were confident that the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of Peter and Paul, was the guarantor of Truth. Our elites are presiding over a once-great civilisation that is dying because it no longer believes in God or in itself. Those who raised the colours, and their countless supporters, are not prepared to join the funeral rites.

Our elites are presiding over a once-great civilisation that is dying because it no longer believes in God or in itself. 

These working men and women don’t dot all the i’s or cross all the t’s of theological nicety. But they are ready to take a stand against the spirit of the age and for Christ.

The question is, do we have the courage to turn away from the culture of death that our elites, secular and religious, have tried to build without God?

If there is to be Christian revival in the United Kingdom and in Europe, it’s going to come from people who want something real. From people who realise that you can just get on and do the things God requires without waiting for the imprimatur of the ecclesiastically recognised.

(First published in TCW)