The Once and Future Christendom

By James P. Pinkerton
The American Conservative, September 10, 2007

Edited by Andy Ross

The biggest danger we face is the clash of civilizations, especially as we rub against the bloody borders of Islam.

In July 2004, Princeton historian Bernard Lewis told Germany’s Die Welt that Europe would be Islamic by the end of this century. If present trends continue, the green flag of Islam could be fluttering above Athens and Rotterdam in the lifespan of a youngster today. If this Muslimization befalls Europe, the consequences would be catastrophic for Americans as well.

Professor J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for The Lord of the Rings. We might speak of the Shire Strategy: the Shire is ours and we must defend it. Yet by the same principle, since others have their homelands and their rights, we should leave them alone, as long as they leave us alone.

In Tolkien's world, all creatures great and small have their own place in the great chain of being. So the Hobbits mind their own business. Some races in Middle Earth were given Rings of Power, a metaphor for hubristic overreach. The Hobbits' biggest mission is the destruction of the One Ring, or Ruling Ring, Tolkien's symbol of evil.

Tolkien died in 1973. He once confided, "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." In his world, the Shire is Christendom.

The vision of an ever-expanding European Union has collapsed. The new EU constitution omitted reference to Europe's Christian heritage. How about a revival of Christendom as a political concept?

To keep the peace, we must separate our civilizations. We must start with a political principle, that the West shall stay the West, while the East can do as it wishes on its side of the frontier. It has been unfashionable to talk this way in the West, but Muslims are avidly applying it as they set about martyring the remaining Christian populations of Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt.

The Christian countries of Africa are part of the Shire Strategy. The immediate mission is to delineate a Christian Zone and a Muslim Zone, dividing countries if need be. A wall should go up between the warring faiths.

Samuel Huntington was right about the clash of civilizations. Islam is at odds with all of its neighbors. Huntington was mindful of the direct danger posed by Muslims: "Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards," he writes. "Muslim bellicosity and violence are late-twentieth century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims can deny."

If we look forthrightly into the future, we can see blood and fire ahead for Israel. Any destruction of Israel would be accompanied by the destruction of much of the Middle East.

The West could unite around the Shire Strategy to secure and protect all Christendom.

We in the West will always need warriors. Men such as Leonidas, whose Immortal 300 held off the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC, long enough for other Greeks to rally and save the nascent West. Or Aetius, the last noble Roman, who defeated Attila the Hun, Scourge of God, at Chalons in AD 451. Or Charles Martel, King of the Franks, who defeated the Muslim invaders at the Battle of Tours in AD 732. Or Don Juan of Austria, who led the Holy League to naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Or Jon Sobieski, whose Polish cavalry rescued Vienna from the Turks in 1683.

If we dutifully honor those heroes, as heroic Men of the West and of Christendom, we will be rewarded with more such heroic men. Future Knights of the West, ready to defend Christendom, are waiting for the call of duty.
 

AR  (2007) The clash of civilizations is a powerful vision, but history never repeats so exactly. The breakout from the rivalry of Christianity and Islam has already occurred. Global capitalism, secular humanism, technological millenarianism, and the rise of East Asia have laid the foundations of a new age that puts the Abrahamic era firmly into the prehistory of Homo sapiens. Of course, the aftershocks, as the rival gangs duke it out in the Middle East and elsewhere, could be nasty, but the outcome is clear. Web angels shall inherit the Earth.

(2010) The future is global. See G.O.D. Is Great.