Just as there were undiscerning Christians last century who refused to acknowledge the diabolical evil of the Nazis, so too we have many today who have not the slightest understanding of political Islam and their designs on the West. They think we should just welcome them in with open arms, regardless of their clearly stated hatred of Jews and Christians, and aims of world domination. There are so many Christians who cannot see the threat that stares them in the face. And we have various stories of naïve pastors and priests in Europe providing shelter and sanctuary to Islamist migrants, only to end up being murdered by them.

During World War II there was a small minority of Christians who were gung-ho pacifists who thought it was wrong to join the Allies in resisting German and Japanese aggression, imperialism and genocide. While pacifism has long been around, it has never been a mainstream Christian option in church history.

Most believers over the centuries have recognised that Scripture affirms the importance of justice and the defence of the innocent, and that some things are worth fighting for and using force against. Sometimes there are necessary just wars. Sometimes the clear Christian option is to resist a Hitler or other tyrannical aggressors.

As I was writing this piece, I happened to come upon a speech Ronald Reagan gave in France on June 6, 1984, commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day at Normandy. He began his moving speech this way:

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

Here is another part of it:

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt. 

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you. 

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies…. 

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/ronald-reagan-normandy-speech-point-du-hoc/

You can watch and listen to his inspiring 13-minute talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTLVIp1AjAg

The Islamic invasion of the West

I write all this not to revisit the legitimacy of just war theory and the like, but to look at some parallels today. Just as America and Europe had to fight off the invasions of the Japanese and Germans last century, so too today we have a similar sort of invasion happening in the West.

Every day boatloads full of military-aged single young men from Muslim nations are coming ashore in Britain and Spain and Italy and elsewhere. Whether these are illegal immigrants or mass migrations allowed by leaders like Macron and Starmer and Sánchez, the whole face of the West is changing radically and rapidly.

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