By Anthony Esolen
Last week, King Charles III of England refused to issue an Easter greeting to the people of the church he is supposed to lead as Defensor fidei. However, he makes sure to mark Islamic holidays, which has led some to speculate that he is a secret convert to Islam. The speculation is not as absurd as it seems, since Charles has studied Arabic and has written about Islamic theology.
Be that as it may, this fits into a pattern we see in Western churches in general, among the «liberals» —I use the term for lack of a better one—; among those who have lost control over the affirmation, made by the Lord Himself, that He is «the way, the truth, and the life», and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Liberals are also strongly represented among those who are ashamed of the directive that the risen Lord gives to all believers: «go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit»; among those who aid in the social animadversion against Christians who hold what have become deeply unpopular beliefs, particularly regarding sexual sins. Paul tells the Corinthians to «flee fornication», but Paul, says the liberal, was an unreliable guy.
The pattern is simply that the Muslim faith must be honored, its reductive theology must be overlooked, and its historical record, which continues to the present and is notably bloody even by human standards, must be whitewashed.
Christians, of course, should hold themselves to the high standards of the Lord. That they have not done so reliably is no surprise. We are a fallen race, quick to anger, slow to forgive, and prone to see specks in others’ eyes and miss the beams in our own. But when Christians have accepted God’s grace to lift them above the mire, we see real and astonishing transformations, which extend also to the social world.
Where is the Islamic counterpart to Matteo Ricci, spending years studying the Chinese language, customs, philosophy, literature, and music, so that he could go to the Imperial City and bring to the mandarins themselves the inestimable gift of the faith: of Christ crucified for the sins of all humanity? Or the Islamic counterpart to Father Damien, who hid on a ship to reach Molokai and tend to the bodies and souls of the lepers abandoned there?
I am aware that when I say that Christians have the truth and Muslims do not, I must immediately qualify the statement, since God has not left any people entirely in the dark. Indonesia, which has never been contacted by the outside world, and whatever they believe about divinity is not going to be entirely wrong, though I believe I would prefer not to be present at their sacred banquets.
But the call to evangelization can be urgent only if you believe that you possess the truth, and that the darkness about the ultimate matters of human existence, about death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell, is something terrible.
There is the key. The liberal is sure of his political beliefs, but not so much of his religious beliefs. Things should be the other way around. He will talk a lot about providing state care for single mothers, but very little about the virtues that make marriage nearly universal and single motherhood rare, and nothing at all about those virtues as commanded by God Himself.
He will talk a lot about the State’s duty to alleviate suffering in the flesh; quite less about suffering as a gift when united to the suffering of Christ; almost nothing about the Church’s duty to tend to hearts, minds, and souls corrupted by irreligion, ignorance, and license, and that suffer the inexorable spiritual consequences.
Thus, he wants to believe everything good about Islam, while practicing animadversion against Christians who irritate his conscience. He lacks confidence in his own faith, and detests the Christians who do have that confidence.
So he submits to the Muslims (kowtows), trusting that if he is kind to them, they will be kind to him, and undoubtedly many will be, at least for a time. There is nothing so immediately reassuring when you meet someone as knowing that you have the same enemies. Nor is there anything perceived as immediately contemptible as when someone who should know better and who holds a nominal position of authority behaves like a subordinate, praising you for virtues you do not have.
Among liberal Christians, this is exacerbated by shame or envy, when they seek to ingratiate themselves by issuing apologies for the men of old who stopped the Muslim advance on the West at Poitiers, Lepanto, or Vienna. Those men had a fighting spirit. They did not practice servility or flattery.
To kowtow, in the literal sense of the Chinese verb, meant to kneel before the superior and, bowing, strike the head against the ground: k’o for striking or knocking, and t’ou for head.
I am not mocking the custom. I admire the Chinese veneration for elders and their sense of a hierarchical social order. But an elder is an elder, and the head of the monastery is your superior. Those are realities. The gesture of humble submission is the way the inferior participates in the authority of his chief, the wise acknowledgment of the young to the wisdom of his elder.
But where is the authority when a Christian prince or prelate, having lost confidence in the Church, bows before those who have made a practice not only of striking others’ heads, but of cleanly cutting them off?
Ah, but everyone, especially the weak, flocks under the shadow of a winner.
About the author
Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. Among his books are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and most recently The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is a distinguished professor at Thales College. Be sure to visit his new website, Word and Song.