Some thoughts for Easter Monday
Published: Mon, 04/22/19
Well, something had to displace Brexit in the news cycle and the Notre Dame fire seems to have done the trick.
What has been interesting is the way this event has focused attention on religion in modern Europe. From the responses I have seen there are some that are genuinely heartbroken that such an important church has been partly destroyed. There are others who think the rebuilding should should serve a contemporary purpose such as a temple to environmentalism. There are others who mourn the loss of a cultural monument and fine piece of architecture while emphasising that they have no association with the faith that originally built the cathedral. There are some who think it is just a joke and have taken the opportunity to mock religious faith and are happy to see a church burned down. All these responses are hardly surprising in contemporary Europe.
I have been wondering what the spiritual future of Europe might hold. I know a majority of people have a vague notion that Christianity, at least in Europe, had had its day and in the future most people will subscribe to a benign secularism in which everyone is fairly nice to each other and believes in caring about the planet. I don’t think it is going to work out quite like that. Religion is the basis of culture and identity, religions do change over time and sometimes a new religion largely replaces an old one. When that happens culture and identity changes with it. What you cannot do is create a vacuum and also fill it with a vacuum. Due to various factors a spiritual vacuum is being created in Europe right now. Secularism is not an alternative religion, it is a vacuum of belief. If secularism effectively destroys traditional Christianity in Europe, and that process is well under way, then the vacuum created is going to be
filled with something. I cannot be sure what the European religion of the future will be in Europe but I would suggest that there are three likely candidates:
Islam has become well established in the UK and many other European countries. Muslims seem to have a great deal more confidence in their beliefs and culture than many westerners do. Muslims, particularly in the UK have the current advantage of being able to claim victim status and ‘Islamaphobia’ is strongly condemned. I am not suggesting that Muslims who live in Europe are all bloodthirsty jihadists determined to impose Sharia law on everyone. A few may be like that, but I suspect that the majority are actually quite worried about the western attitude to religious faith. Muslims do not want to be used as pawns in a war against Christianity. Telling the majority population that they cannot do or say something because ‘Muslims might be offended’ creates tensions which will eventually have a populist backlash. Even if ‘Islamaphobia’ is being used now was a weapon for imposing political correctness, intelligent Muslims know that
once the war against Christianity seems to have been won, they will be the next target. If Islam becomes the dominant religion in many European countries it will be because Muslims will be demonstrating a confident and coherent belief system which the traditional faith has lost. In fact a European Islam may not seem so foreign to nominal Christians either since Islam and Arian Christianity are not so different doctrinally.
The second option is the worship of Gaia which will be a pretty brutal pagan cult masquerading as environmentalism. I am all in favour of taking care of the environment, I live here too. However, environmentalism has taken on all the key characteristics of a religion. There are certain belief structures, an acceptance of man made climate change being the chief one. Rigorously enforced practices are required of all of us of which recycling is an obvious example. There are three bins in our front garden and if I use them wrongly I could be in serious trouble. Questioning climate change is blasphemy and all over the countryside are spinning shrines to Gaia. Did you really think that wind turbines actually produce enough electricity to justify the cost of building them? Recent events in London show what devotees of Gaia, sorry environmentalists, think about freedom of movement for ordinary people.
The third option is waking up to the importance of traditional religion as it has been practised in Northern Europe for the past few hundred years. I know the prevailing attitude towards traditional Christianity is to claim not to be religious, not to believe in ‘sky fairies’ and have better things to do than go to church. That is a choice and every society gets a short window of living on credit from the past before reality bites. I would suggest that Western society is surviving spiritually, financially, industrially, educationally, culturally, militarily and in many other aspects on credit from the past. When the credit card reaches its limit the next stage is bankruptcy.
Remember that he world operates on the 80/20 principle and that applies to religion and spirituality as much as it does to any other aspect of human life. The majority of belief and practice in any society will be done by a minority of the population. If you personally have never been much interested in religion then that is okay, in the past you would probably have been part of the 80% who went along with supporting the generally accepted faith while leaving he heavy lifting to the 20% who took it more seriously. If that 20% becomes Muslim or Gaia worshiping environmentalists then be ready for a dramatic change in lifestyle and culture which will affect all of us.
I am not telling anyone what to think or believe. But I would suggest that you open your eyes to the spiritual vacuum which is being created in Western society. Have a serious think about what you would like to see fill that vacuum. Whatever fills the void, I think you can be sure that it won’t be some vague and benign humanism. If as a society we don’t make a deliberate and sensible choice then we will get the culture we deserve rather than the one we think we want.
Hope you had a happy Easter weekend whatever you did.
regards
Graham
PS I spend most of Saturday and Sunday at the York School of Defence Easter HEMA seminar. I also fitted in the Good Friday morning Service and the Evening Service on Sunday, so it was a pretty full weekend. The seminar was very good even if I did nearly get knocked out on Saturday afternoon, more on how that happened and what I learned from it later in the week.