Onward Christian Soldiers…

Civitas, 26 November 2004

Many among Europe’s intellectual and political elite are atheists and would welcome Europe becoming entirely secular.
Their attitude towards religion was recently well illustrated by the recent decision of the European Parliament to reject the entire team of Commissioners proposed by the incumbent President of the Commission than accept as one someone who had had the temerity publicly to espouse a religious doctrine he must share with literally millions of fellow-Europeans, be they Roman Catholic like him, or non-Catholic.
Another illustration of the same mind-set was the recent decision of Islington Education Authority to remove the word ‘Saint’ from the title of one of its previously Anglican schools, ostensibly to avoid offending adherents of any other faiths whose children might attend it, and despite opposition to its removal from local Jews and Muslims who would prefer the English to affirm their traditional faith, even if different from theirs, than lapse into unbelief.
A third illustration of this same mind-set was the decision by those responsible for drafting the new European Constitution to remove from it all reference to God or to Europe’s Christian heritage.

There are signs, however, that the Christian population of Europe, who probably still outnumber all others within that continent, are increasingly unwilling to respond to this repudiation of their continent’s heritage by turning the other cheek.
Yesterday’s newspapers report that a Christian coalition has been formed to challenge the decision to make the European Constitution a godless document. The coalition has so far gained over one million signatures to a petition that is designed to appeal to heads of governments in member states to make some reference to their country’s Christian heritage in their own national versions of the preamble to the Constitution.
With the characteristic self-effacement for which he has become so well-known and highly regarded, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the man given overall responsibility for drafting the text of the Constitution, remarked of the decision not to include any reference to Christianity, ‘I have chosen not to insert the reference to the Christian heritage in the Constitution. Rather I appeal to you to persuade me of its necessity.’
In one sense, of course, Mr d’Estaing is correct to deny the need for any reference to Europe’s Christian heritage in its Constitution, but, by the same token, many would harbour similar doubts as to the need for such a Constitution in the first place.
The case for including reference to Europe’s Christian heritage is not one of necessity, in the sense that no form of written Constitution for Europe could make semantic or grammatical sense without it.
The case for including such a reference is one of desirability in the sense that, more than anything else, it is that common Christian heritage of Europe that unites the cultures of its various constituent nations. In so doing, it thereby unites them in a way no number of directives or pieces of paper emanating from Brussels ever could, and this irrespective of however religious or irreligious any European happens personally to be.
No one saw more clearly that it was their common Christian heritage that bound the peoples of Europe together than the poet and philosopher, T.S.Eliot. Speaking in German to the defeated German nation in three radio talks broadcasts in 1946 under the title, ‘The Unity of European Culture’, Eliot observed:
“The common tradition of Christianity … has made Europe what it is… and this common Christianity has brought with it … common cultural elements. … It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is Christianity that the laws of Europe have – until recently – been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian Faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will spring out of this Christian heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning.
To our Christian heritage we owe many things besides religious faith. Through it we trace the evolution of our arts, … our conception of … Law, … our conceptions of private and public morality, and … common standards of literature…. The Western World has its unity in this heritage, in Christianity and in the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity, we trace our descent…. This unity in the common elements of culture, throughout many centuries, is the true bond between us. No political and economic organisation, however much goodwill it commands, can supply what this culture unity gives. If we dissipate or throw away our common patrimony of culture, then all the organisation and planning of the most ingenious minds will not help us, or bring us closer together.” [T.S.Eliot, ‘The Unity of European Culture’, in Christianity and Culture (San Diego, New York and London: Harvest Book, 1960), pp. 200-201]
Perhaps, Mr Giscard D’Estaing would do well to reflect on T.S.Eliot’s words, suitably translated into French, of course.
There is, then, a powerful case for including reference to Europe’s common Christian heritage in the preamble to its Constitution, if Europe must have one. Whether it needs to do so is another matter. As to whether Europe ever will, all that can be said at the moment is, God only knows….