EU Denying Europe's Christian Roots Contributed to Brexit
Britain has decided that joining hands and singing "Kumbaya" on the deck of the sinking "Titanic" that is the European Union will not save the ship. Wisely, a majority of her voters saw through the EU illusion and decided they should abandon the vessel.
The British lifeboat will likely be on troubled waters for a while until she steadies on her beam, but that's better than being on a plunging ship.
But why is the ship sinking?
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First, the EU's framers themselves blew a big hole in the hull. "Nearer My God to Thee," sang the perishing on the Titanic's dying decks in 1912. The EU is most definitely not singing that. The framers of its constitution intentionally left out reference to God and Europe's Christian roots because, they said, such inclusions might be divisive.
They may as well have been singing, "As Far From God As We Can Get."
A leader of Britain's National Secular Society said: "We are very glad a reference to God has been left out, it would have created unnecessary barriers in Europe ... Europe has to be secular for it to be really unified."
In light of the disjointedness of European society one can only say, "Really?"
It's pointless to include mention of God in the EU constitution because of "the increased secularization of morality and public life," declared the British Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association almost fifteen years ago.
The thuggery and explosion of public disorder in many European cities shows graphically what that "secularization" has produced.
Second, the EU "Titanic" is in peril because it is little more than the old Europe attempting to be a new Europe. Though many of the Brussels elite may disdain the past tradition of royal houses, they themselves have become every bit as dominating.
For example, their flowery views of immigration are no less romantic than Queen Victoria's might have been whiling away a sleepy afternoon at Balmoral as the Prussians were invading Denmark.
So the ruling highbrows in the European Parliament seemed oblivious to the way their policies were affecting workers in the British Midlands and big industrial cities. The shock was that this time the blue-collared Labour voters defied that party's potentates. The heaviest voting for Brexit was in working-class areas.
The left is always shouting, "Power to the People!" Now that the people really have taken the slogan seriously the elites are stupefied. Even Hollywood, as represented by such profound political thinkers as Lindsay Lohan, is in an uproar.
Leftists don't like authoritarianism unless it is their own.
Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban is one of Europe's most insightful leaders. "We want a democratic European Union with internal relations, day-to-day rules, an ethnic composition and culture which are determined by the people living in the countries of Europe, rather than by a Brussels elite," he told a radio interviewer. The current EU elitists are "quite clearly acting against the will of the European peoples," he said.
Jonathan Sandys is no elitist, but he is the great-grandson of Sir Winston Churchill. He and I co-authored God and Churchill, which explores Jonathan's great-grandfather's spiritual background and providential destiny. Jonathan, a British citizen now living in Houston, very much wanted Britain to remain in the EU.
"A United Europe was my great-grandfather's dream," he said, as we had a friendly debate.
Jonathan, like his famous ancestor, has a broad vision. He is concerned for Britain's security in a world where Obama foreign policy has shredded overseas confidence in a friendship with the United States.
"My great-grandfather would have voted 'Remain,'" thinks Jonathan.
But I'm not sure.
Churchill's vision was in the context of 1945 Europe. It was a continent struggling to rebuild after the Second World War. Europe in 1945 still remembered the First World War, when the august ruling monarchs, most blood-related, went at each other through the sacrifice of their young men. Churchill wanted a Europe that would live as a community, not an asteroid belt of colliding states.
Further, as Jonathan and I show in detail in God and Churchill, Sir Winston saw the Second World War as being for the survival of "Christian Civilization," a term he used repeatedly. One doubts he would be excited about the rabid secularism of the current EU and its abandonment of "Christian Civilization."
Jonathan and I, though disagreeing about the current vote, concur that Brexit contained important lessons. For one, he says, it revealed the weakness of the UK's leadership. Were Churchill in power now the vote would have never come up because he would have personally gone to Brussels and roared at the elites, confronted their errors, and demolished their authoritarian policies.
Jonathan and I believe the UK vote is a wake-up call for Britain and its leaders, as well as the United States. But the current situation is ominous. Hillary Clinton's foreign policy flaws, from the casual handling of secrets essential to national security, to failure to grasp what is really going on in certain situations, are painfully obvious right now. And what of Donald Trump's undeveloped, unproven, and vague, sometimes even confused, understanding of global issues?
Naïveté about the world and disregard for its member states are the jagged edges of the iceberg sinking the EU "Titanic." That, combined with the core problem of the rejection of God and the Judeo-Christian worldview, and the aloof arrogance and authoritarianism of the Brussels elite have caused the EU ship to not be seaworthy for the tempests roiling the globe.
That's why she may break up on those troubled waters, and why likely there will soon be a rush to the lifeboats.
