As Christianity Dies In The West, The West Dies, Too

 By Vince Coyner

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

Since that quote was first published in 2017 by G. Michael Hopf in Those Who Remain, it has become one of the most oft-quoted phrases in the conservative universe. (I’ve quoted it a number of times.) That’s because it perfectly captures the current state of Western civilization.

I’ve experienced a good bit of that Western civilization. I’ve had the good fortune to have lived over a quarter of my life outside of the United States. I’ve lived in Cuba—albeit on a rather well-known American base rather than in the Communist part—Italy, Germany, and France. I do not say good fortune because I think living in America is bad. On the contrary, living outside of the United States has given me a perspective on America that I’m most certain I wouldn’t have had I not lived outside her borders for as long as I did.

I spent most of my time outside of America in Europe. The thing that most attracted and attracts me to Europe is the history, or, more accurately, the physical manifestations of history. From the Colosseum and the Vatican in Rome to the Louvre and Mont-Saint-Michel in France to the Heidelberg Castle and the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, I simply can’t get enough. Europe is covered with countless such monuments, most of which long predate the United States.

Many of what I call monuments to history aren’t actual monuments at all. Most are structures built for a function, and most of them were created to either celebrate Christ or were created by men impelled by Christianity. Of course, Christianity is, like everything crafted by man, imperfect. Still, overall, the civilizations grounded in Christianity have created more freedom, technological advances, and prosperity than any civilization in human history.

Image by Grok.

As it relates to America, as much as leftists want to argue that America was not founded as a Christian country, they’re simply wrong. Christianity infused virtually every element of life in what became the United States and the Europe from which its founders came. While one can make the argument that men like Franklin or Madison may have been “deists,” the reality is that they were very much part of the penumbra of Christianity that infused the colonies.

240 years on from America’s founding is where Hopf’s good times / hard times construct comes in. As Western civilization gets farther away from Christianity, the worse it becomes.

Read the rest: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/as_christianity_dies_in_the_west_the_west_dies_too.html