THE ANCHORESS: OUR LACK OF FAITH MIGHT DOOM US IN A WAR AGAINST RADICAL BELIEVERS

The ANCHORESS:


Friends,

When I finished writing this I cried, because I know it's true:

The enemy we are about to engage may show the same viral strain as in the past, but the antibody of the West has shifted significantly since 1945, and may no longer be effective against it. Like the culture itself, it has evolved, and no longer contains one essential component necessary to fight the evil that instigates human savagery on this level, that of a faith; a language and method of engaging with the supernaturalism that lies beneath, and sustains a movement like IS.

Consider that when the Nazis were barreling through Europe, the majority of the western world professed – with no fear of ridicule or of giving insult, anywhere – a belief in something greater than itself. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill were conventionally religious men of their times, not overly prayerful. But they were imbued with enough faith to recognize that some occasions called for more than even the most sublime rhetoric; some things called for enough humility to make a prayer of supplication, one calling on the Deity to guide, to bless, to sustain – to, as Lincoln said, have “firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”

Roosevelt led the nation in prayer on D-Day. In Britain, Churchill openly spoke of “a miracle of deliverance”: “A guiding hand interfered to make sure the allied forces were not annihilated at Dunkirk.”

Our post-Christian, post-faith western leadership is no longer capable of making public prayer, or willing to credit heaven with anything but twinkling stars. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was told by his own government “we don’t do God” and the President Obama, who once defined the notion of “sin” as being “out of alignment with my values” would be very unlikely to attempt to lead a nation in prayer.

That will matter as we face IS.


Read the rest here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/08/09/the-west-lacks-one-essential-tool-to-defeat-isis/