The Prophet J.D.Vance

- foretelling and forth-telling

You may consider the “foretelling” traditionally associated with a prophet as the ability to forecast the events of the future. Or, you may (accurately) believe with the great American missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones, that in the New Testament, a prophet does not “foretell” as much as “forth-tell” the good news (Gospel) of new life and eternal life in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Or, you may combine the two ideas and speak of the modern day prophet being engaged in both foretelling and forth-telling. And if the “forth-telling” is accurate, you may conclude that it will “foretell” what lies ahead - as a matter of logical deduction.

Taken in this latter sense, the various utterances of the American Vice President J.D. Vance about the perilous and critically declining state of spiritual, civic, collective and moral life in Europe (and Canada/Australia) must be cause for urgent soul-searching and alarm for all of us in the West.

The recognition of the possibility of nations and civilizations destroying themselves from within is not new. As the historian and popular philosopher Will Durant wrote of ancient civilizations in his, “Story of Civilization:” “A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Describing a much later time in its history, (the reign of the English King Richard the Second in the 14th century) Shakespeare recognized the perils that awaited England if it did not change course. The rot was within - and not on account of a supposed enemy from abroad:

“England, bound in with the triumphant sea

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:

That England, that was wont to conquer others,

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”

Those of my readers familiar with Shakespeare’s “Richard the Second” will immediately point out that I quoted only the latter part of the famous speech by the dying Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt.

The earlier part of this famous dying speech indeed also applies to J.D. Vance’s acknowledgement of our debt to the Christian civilization that arose in Europe and then spread around the world, including the Americas - and so, I shall by no means commit minor treason by leaving out the first few famous lines of this speech!

At one time, every child in England of a certain age, could recite the opening lines of the speech. Here are these inaugural lines, that are an ode, a paean of praise to England:

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”

I shall address in another essay, why the geographically descriptive term, “Western Civilization” can only be clothed with meaning, if (along with eminent historians, including Tom Holland), we acknowledge that ours is much more a Christian Civilization than a civilization that is geographically limited to the West. Indeed, if a Christian civilization had flourished instead in the African continent for two thousand years (as it did in Europe), the Africans would in all likelihood have forged a civilization more advanced than the West (and not vice-versa).

In his recent interview on Fox News, J.D. Vance describes this historical acknowledgement quite well and he calls Europe, the “cradle” of the North America we live in. And it does not take a genius to conclude that had people without a Christian tradition settled North America, there would have been a very different result (and probably no United States and no Canada!). This is a conclusion that may be arrived at without defending the evils of colonialism and the displacement and dispossessing of indigenous Americans from their ancestral homelands.

Elsewhere, I have described Jeffersonian democracy as the high-point of the democratic ideal - and America’s gift to the world. There is no need for any sense of learning beyond common sense to deduce that were it not for the ideas inherited from Puritan England (and the Puritan emigration) and the Christian civilization of England and Europe, there would have been no Declaration of Independence and no Constitution of the United States as we know it.

If we then accept that it was from Europe (and especially and uniquely from England) that the ideas that founded America were born, it is surely no travesty or sacrilege to inquire about the present state of Europe itself, whence these ideas originated - including the fundamental, foundational and cornerstone Christian civilization, which is its fountainhead.

In his earlier speech in Munich, J.D. Vance spoke of how NATO falls into irrelevance, if the values that made the Western world were no longer present in Europe. Free speech itself is under assault, he points out, in England, in Germany and in Romania - so what is NATO defending? And then he points out again that massive, unvetted immigration that the Globalists facilitated into Europe will completely change the face of Europe - will lead to the collapse of the Christian civilization that made the West.

There were some other heavily implied, thinly veiled and all but completely obvious implications in J.D. Vance’s speeches and interviews - for example, is transgenderism and abortion and political persecution of opponents (all rampant in the European Union/Canada/Australia) worth defending?

The very big elephant in the room of course is that there is a vacuum at the heart of Western civilization. A civilization that once prospered and thrived because of its Christian roots can no longer be called a Christian civilization. An accurate description of Europe (and Canada/Australia) today would align rather closely with that of pagan Rome, complete with the persecution of Christians.

The terrible state of Europe and the West is recognized by Christians and non-Christian patriots alike. And there is an attempt to blame this wholly or in part on things like “wokeness” and immigration. But as this American Orthodox Christian priest points out, the crisis in Western civilization is not because of immigration, but is directly attributable to the loss of its Christian roots and foundation. Only as the latter is restored and a Christian civilization rises on the ruins of the new and present, pagan Rome, will all that we cherished in the civilization be restored. And once restored, it can be defended.

At present, there is nothing or very little left in the EU/Canada/Australia to defend - and this enormous vacuum is being filled rapidly with such things as uncontrolled immigration, transgender mutilation, abortion and euthanasia. The latter are serious symptoms of a grave, underlying disease, but not the disease itself.

Since the falling away from Christ and the values of His Kingdom lies at the heart of the rot within our nations, only a return to Christ can solve the problems of the West. This is not a theological or spiritual hypothesis - but a logical, rational deduction based on the historical roots of our Christian civilization. Christians and evangelists take note!