Dr Neil Summerton: EU ‘Christian’
View our videos:
Firstly, The European Union’s Tower of Babel
Secondly, The European Union’s Woman on the Beast
Thirdly, The European Union’s Pagan Foundation
Fourthly, European Union- Does the Lord Keep the City?
Lastly, The European Union’s Roman Empire
One Christian argument for the European Union, certainly superior to vague sentiments of unity, hospitality and ease of travel, is the one which declares the EU to have been from its inception a Christian project. Of course this argument provokes the response that for ‘Christian’ read ‘Catholic’ and that it was actually a Roman Catholic plot. The two views are two sides of the same coin.
Dr Neil Summerton promotes these views in an article for Future First, a newsletter published by Christian researcher Peter Brierley.
EU PROJECT ‘CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT’
Dr Summerton was a trustee and board member of Christian Research between 1990 and 1998. He has been in local church leadership. He worked in the Department of the Environment for thirty years. Interestingly, he was involved in negotiations in the European Union in the 1990s. He writes:
‘Most British people are quite unaware that the European project has been deeply Christian Democratic in character, owing much to Catholic social thought. That has now largely been displaced by post-modernist secularism – though Brexit will not defend the UK against that. A vote to leave is a vote to leave something which was at base a Christian project.’
He goes on to warn of ‘an element which owes its roots to right-wing Christian reaction, deeply suspicious of Catholic Europe as a popish plot. This is the Protestant thread which was foremost in British-ness for more than 300 years. It is still very common among older, particularly nonconformist, evangelicals’. Warming to this theme, he concludes ‘I find that they are often sympathetic to, if not active in, UKIP’. UKIP, eh? Enough said.
PAST TENSE FOR CHRISTIANITY
The United Kingdom needs national repentance
In one sense, by putting the alleged Christian – or Catholic- base of the EU project in the past tense, Dr Summerton has already lost the game. He has to resort to saying Brexit will not defend the UK against post-modernist secularism. In that he is quite right. Our politicians were and are quite willing and able to legislate against Kingdom principles without any help from the European Union. In the event of Brexit the Lord’s people will need to start praying in earnest for national repentance. But at least they will have that opportunity. With the UK in the EU, it does not really exist.
So Dr Summerton would have to concede that if the EU is now post-modernist secularist, it matters not at all what it was when it was founded. The alleged Christianity has gone, if it ever existed at all. But I argue it never existed, however much it is talked about. I believe both views, Dr Summerton’s positive view of the EU as a Christian Democrat project and the Catholic-plot view he sends up are both equally wrong. The answer to this article’s headline is ‘neither’. The European Union, including its forerunner the European Economic Community, was never a Christian, or if you prefer a Catholic, project at all.
CATHOLIC FOUNDING FATHERS
Now, I’ll accept that at least three of the EEC’s prime movers were strong Catholics. In February 2007, in the run up to the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the President of the Association of the Europe Foundation, Giorgino Salina, said it was time to combat what he described as ‘the rising anti-Christian attitude of EU bureaucrats’. It is not just Dr Summerton who has noticed it.
Salina praised the ‘spirit, ideals and hopes,’ of ‘the three men credited with founding the European Economic Community’; West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Italian statesman Alcide De Gasperi and French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. These men, he said, were ‘three Catholic Christians with a great and clear awareness of the common good for which nationalist egoisms must be sacrificed, but also statesmen gifted with great political realism and wide vision.’ (From ‘Time to reclaim EU’s heritage,’ The Universe, February 23, 2007)
Robert Schuman
ROBERT SCHUMAN
Indeed, Robert Schuman was an intensely religious man. He was strongly influenced by the writings of Pope Pius XII and St. Thomas Aquinas. He was arrested in 1940 for acts of resistance and protestation at Nazi methods and interrogated by the Gestapo. He escaped in 1942 and joined the French Resistance. He became passionate about Franco-German and European reconciliation and rose to great prominence after the war. He was French Minister of Finance, Prime Minister from 1947–1948 and Foreign Minister in the latter year.
On 9th May 1950, Schuman invited the Germans to manage their coal and steel industries jointly with France. This formed the basis of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. He conceived the idea with compatriot Jean Monnet, another Catholic, though not as devout. They suggested if the two countries jointly managed these resources, they would be unable to go to war with each other. At the time, with the erection of the ‘Iron Curtain’, Europe seemed an unstable place. Schuman’s idea made sense in his day.
Konrad Adenauer
KONRAD ADENAUER
Konrad Adenauer was the first post-war Chancellor of (West) Germany. He developed a “weltanschauung” – a worldview – to provide a complete account of the universe, man, and politics. Adenauer realized that part of the appeal of totalitarianism was the promise of such a worldview. Democracy was seen as neutral about outcomes, simply managing the clash of competing interests. In contrast, communism and fascism offered complete worldviews. However, said Adenaur, they were ones based on ‘atheistic materialism’.
Adenauer said both communism and fascism reduced the individual to an automaton of the state. He argued for a spiritual worldview to replace atheistic materialism. Fortunately, Adenauer argued, Western democracy had such a worldview in Christianity.
Adenauer viewed the formation of the Christian Democratic Union in 1945 as a non-denominational party open to all people, while insisting on a platform that stated: ‘Only Christian precepts guarantee justice, order, moderation, the dignity and liberty of the individual and thus true and genuine democracy … We regard the lofty view that Christianity takes of human dignity, of the value of each single man, as the foundation and directive of our work in the political, economic, and cultural life of our people.’ Well, Amen.
Alicide de Gasperi
ALCIDE DE GASPERI
The Italian politician Alcide de Gasperi was, like Schuman, deeply affected by the Second World War. He said: ‘the lesson that all Europeans can learn from their tumultuous past is that the future will not be built through force, nor through a desire to conquer, but by the patient application of the democratic method, the constructive spirit of agreement, and by respect for freedom’.
De Gasperi opposed all forms of totalitarianism and when Chairman of the parliamentary group of the Italian People’s Party, he opposed the rise of the fascist party.
From 1943 he occupied various ministerial positions, and continued to oppose the powerful Italian Communist Party. De Gasperi responded immediately to Schuman’s call, and worked closely with the latter and with Konrad Adenauer.
CHRISTIANITY NOT MENTIONED
It was only five years after the end of the Second World War that Schuman said in his 9th May 1950 declaration: ‘Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework.’ Oddly enough, Christianity was not mentioned.
So far we have a Frenchman, a German and an Italian launching, as their defenders say, a ‘movement to build a Europe that they hoped would be peaceful, prosperous and democratic.’
What of the other three members of the founding six countries of the European Union, as it would become? During the war, in London, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands had formed a Benelux customs union and even fixed their currencies against each other. Schuman’s vision went down well with the Benelux countries.
Jean Monnet, President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) from 1952 to 1955
TREATY OF PARIS
So it was that the Treaty of Paris (1951) which formed the European Coal and Steel Community was attended and agreed by ‘the inner six’: France, Italy, the three Benelux countries and West Germany. The United Kingdom refused to participate. Britain’s Government of the day, under Labour’s Clement Attlee, rejected the supranational authority set up by the Treaty.
The Paris Treaty did indeed set up a ‘High Authority’, to which the UK had objected. That would become the European Commission. Its first president was Jean Monnet. There was also a Council of Ministers and a 78-strong Common Assembly.
In 1954, plans for a political union with a common European army came to nothing when the French refused to consider it, so a conference was planned for the next year and was held in Messina in Sicily. It was there all six countries decided upon a customs union and a common market using the Benelux model.
CHRISTIAN / CATHOLIC THREAD UNRAVELS
Paul-Henri Spaak
Now here is where the Christian / Catholic thread unravels. Somehow, a Belgian politician by the name of Paul-Henri Spaak was proposed and entrusted with drawing up proposals for a European Common Market. Spaak was neither a Catholic nor a Christian Democrat. He was a socialist activist and a revolutionary who had talks with Trotsky. Well-heeled through family, education and his legal and political career, he led his party’s left wing. Spaak became known as the ‘Bolshevik in the dinner jacket’. He had been instrumental in the Benelux project. Spaak described himself as a socialist and an agnostic.
Paul Belien of the Washington Times, writing at BrusselsJournal.com, contrasts the view of the three Catholic statesmen with that of Spaak like this: ‘Some of the EU’s founding fathers claimed that political unification was needed to prevent European nations from going to war again. Others, such as Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian foreign minister who authored the Rome treaty, dreamed of a European superstate. He hoped that such a state might one day become as powerful as the United States.’
‘The Europe of tomorrow must be a supranational Europe,’ Spaak stated in a rebuff to French President de Gaulle’s 1962 ‘Fouchet Plan’. De Gaulle called for a ‘Union of the European peoples’ ‘without supranational institutions.’ Spaak was always intent on a superstate.
Chateau de Val Duchesse
CHATEAU DE VAL DUCHESSE
The Spaak Committee presented its report in April 1956 to another conference of foreign ministers of the six. It was approved, and Spaak went away to draft the full treaty.
His right-hand man in the project was one Baron Robert Rothschild (not to be confused with the New York banker of the same name). In 1954 Rothschild had been appointed Spaak’s chef de cabinet at the Belgian foreign ministry. For two years he worked with Spaak on the Treaty of Rome.
As summer turned to winter during 1956, the ‘Treaty establishing the European Economic Community’ was being put together in a Belgian country house, the Chateau de Val Duchesse.
The first Eurocrats
Typist: Marie Helene von Mach
A BBC webpage says: ‘From the beginning they struck a tone that dogs the European project to this day: they worked largely in secret. There was little reference to public opinion. The political elites laboured on in splendid isolation. The Treaty was put together in secret.’
Even the typists, who included the bilingual Marie-Helene von Mach, had to sign contracts which banned them from talking about their work, even to their families. The team formed, says the BBC, ‘a new kind of public servant: these were the first generation of what would come to be known as the Eurocrats.’
According to the Daily Express, Paul-Henri Spaak claimed in his memoirs that ordinary people were ‘indifferent’ to his plans, but that his elite ignored them anyway.
Mr Spaak wrote: “There were a great many sceptics. Overall, public opinion was not hostile; it was indifferent. The work accomplished was done by a minority who knew what they wanted.”
CHOOSING A VENUE
Not only did Spaak and Rothschild draft the Treaty, they also had the opportunity of deciding where it would be signed. They chose the principal first-floor room of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the southern peak of the Capitoline Hill in Rome as their venue.
The author outside the Palazzo dei Conservatori
Bedecked with murals depicting Romulus and Remus and the rape of the Sabine Women, the Hall commemorates the battles between the seventh-century BC families of Horatii and Curiatii. At each end of the long hall stands a massive black marble statue of a pope. Innocent X sits at one end and Urban VIII at the other.
But I suggest it was neither the decorations nor the statuary which were the point for Spaak and Rothschild. They knew the Palazzo had been constructed in the middle ages right on top of the Temple of Jupiter. The site had immense spiritual and political significance. Every year, the Roman Senate held their first meeting in the Temple. Jupiter was the protector, the ‘Conservator’ of Rome. Not only that, he was the Roman successor to the head of the Greek pantheon, Zeus. Moreover, if the altar to Zeus in Pergamos was said in the Bible (in Revelation 2:13) to be ‘Satan’s Seat’, this was Rome’s equivalent.
Rothschild and Spaak were overlooking the ruins of the Roman Forum (the road up to the Capitoline Hill is on the right) when Spaak said they had re-established the Roman Empire.
ROMAN EMPIRE RE-ESTABLISHED
The key objectives of the EEC were the establishment of a common market and customs union, ever closer union among the peoples of Europe and the pooling of resources to strengthen peace.
But Spaak and Rothschild had managed not only to avoid any mention of the Christian faith which had allegedly inspired the process. They had also brought Konrad Adenauer (the only one of the ‘Catholic three’ to sign – neither Schuman nor Gasperi represented their countries), to take part in a ceremony held on the principal pagan site in Europe.
In case I am thought to be reading too much into this site, a revealing comment from Spaak confirms it. Baron Robert Rothschild recalls in his memoirs that he was standing beside Spaak gazing over the Forum in Rome on the eve of the signing of the treaty. ‘I think,’ Spaak said, ‘that we have re-established the Roman Empire without a single shot being fired.’
Leaders of the original six signing the Treaty of Rome in the Palazzo dei Conservatori built on top of Jupiter’s Temple. Paul-Henri Spaak, signing for Belgium, is in the foreground, Adenaur sits four places to his left.
‘WE FELT LIKE ROMANS’
Paul-Henri Spaak moved on to become Secretary-General of NATO. Later he allegedly said: ‘We felt like Romans on that day; we were consciously re-creating the Roman Empire once more’.
I say ‘allegedly’. I have tracked this comment down to a book by American Christian writer Grant R Jeffrey called ‘The Signature of God’. It appears on page 208 of the 2010 third edition of the book. Jeffrey claims in a footnote that Spaak said it in a BBC documentary and also says he found the comment at: http://europa.eu.int/abc/obj/chrono/40years/3testim/coll-en.htm.
Annoyingly, he says the site is now discontinued. Indeed it is, and I have been unable to trace the quote any further. The quote is not on any saved version of the page at www.archive.org. Nevertheless, it chimes with Rothschild’s recollection. On its own, that showed that reviving the Roman Empire, the one mentioned in Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as being formed of ‘iron and clay’, was at the front of Spaak’s mind.
I don’t know how such an interest in Classical studies and pagan religion fits in with Spaak’s self-confessed agnosticism. I suppose we are complex beings inclined to spirituality. C S Lewis proposed that when we cease to believe in the Almighty, we do not believe in nothing. We actually believe in anything. It may have been thus with Paul-Henri Spaak. More research, as they say, is necessary.
IMPERIAL AMBITION
Be that as it may, for whatever reason, Spaak himself believed he was reviving the Roman Empire, without firing a shot. It was an empire he hoped would rival the United States in power and influence. Spaak’s was no Christian project and no Catholic plot. Gone was Adenauer’s Christian world-view, Schuman’s humility and Gasperi’s devotion to his church. In their place was Spaak’s imperial ambition. He had found the perfect venue to initiate it. Indeed he could have found no more appropriate site in the whole of Europe.
Tony Blair and Jack Straw were among leaders of 25 EU nations who signed the godless European Constitution in October 2004 in the same room of the Palazzo dei Conservatori as the Treaty of Rome was signed.
Moving on some forty-seven years, we come to the attempt at cementing the European Union together with a constitution. In October 2004, Tony Blair and Jack Straw gathered with the representatives of the other twenty-four countries of the EU and signed the document.
They signed it in the same room of the Palazzo die Conservatori on top of the Temple of Jupiter as Spaak, Adenauer and the rest signed the original Treaty of Rome in March 1957.
EU CONSTITUTION PLAQUE
Boris Johnson, in his book ‘The Dream of Rome’, says the Italian government erected a plaque in the Palazzo commemorating the event.
Written in Latin, it translates as follows: ‘On 29 October, 2004 in this most sacred Capitoline Hill, which is the citadel of this bountiful city and of the entire world, in this famous and August hall named after the Horatii and the Curiatii, the high contracting parties of the nations joined in the European Union signed a treaty about the form of constitution to be adopted, so that the nations of Europe might coalesce into a body of one people with one mind, one will and one government.’ (page 31)
Boris Johnson, author of ‘The Dream of Rome’
‘MOST SACRED CAPITOLINE HILL’
‘Most sacred Capitoline Hill’, it said. The Latin is ‘SACRATISSIMO’. Johnson misses that revealing adjective, referring as it does to the Temple of Jupiter. He also passes over the reference to the site being the ‘citadel’ not just of Rome but ‘of the entire world’.
Nevertheless, he asks: ‘One mind, one will and one government? When did the continent last have one mind, one will, one government? Not since the fall of the Roman Empire. And it is surely no accident that the plaque echoes the old Roman slogan plurimae gentes, unius populis – many nations, one people.’
EU Eurocrats love the idea of Europe being abducted and raped by a demon so much that they have put images of Europa on the Bull all over Europe. This statue is in Strasbourg.
It is worth noting that despite the prayers of Christians and the lobbying of both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, there was no reference to Christianity or Almighty God in the European Constitution. Mercifully, the Constitution was never ratified. The voters of France and the Netherlands rejected it. Undaunted, the Eurocrats put most of it into the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon anyway.
Continuing the pagan spiritual theme, they have also caused statues of Europa being abducted and raped by Zeus to be erected in Strasbourg and Brussels and the image of this mythical event to appear all over the European Union. Talk about their intentions being ‘hidden in the open’.
EU SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST
The Emperor Hadrian as a bust in the Altes Museum in Berlin.
Clearly, if the EU ever had been a Christian project or a Popish plot it had run out of steam by 2004. But of course, as we have seen, it was neither. Schuman’s dream may have been noble, but Spaak turned it into a secularist-cum-pagan nightmare. He made it a revived Roman Empire, one perpetually at war with the Kingdom of God.
Let us make no mistake. The spirit behind the original Roman Empire was the spirit of Antichrist. It had wormed its way from Babel to Babylon and on through Persia and Greece. It ended up in Urbs Aeterna, the ‘Eternal City’.
Rome itself was destroyed in a series of sackings during the fifth century AD. On one level ‘Jupiter’ or its Antichrist spirit if you prefer could not save it. But the 2nd-century Roman Emperor Hadrian suggested it was the spirit of Rome itself which was eternal. He said it would be reborn all over Europe. Hadrian may not have realised it, but he was speaking of the spirit of Antichrist.
For a pagan emperor, that man had some vision. And his empire was indeed reborn by Paul-Henri Spaak and the leaders of ‘the six’ he persuaded to sign, wittingly or unwittingly, on top of Jupiter’s Temple in Rome in March 1957.
THE LAMB SHALL OVERCOME THEM
So despite what Dr Summerton says, the European Union was never ‘at base’ or anywhere in its structure ‘a Christian project’. Nor was it ever a Catholic plot. It was a pagan/secularist scheme from the moment Paul-Henri Spaak got his hands on it. And it remains so to this day.
It follows that the EU is dangerous for any nation to be part of, marked as it is for God’s judgment. The Revelation to John addresses the demise of Hadrian’s and Spaak’s revived Roman Empire in chapter seventeen:
Rev 17:12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. 13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. 14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
It would be sensible for any nation to be on the right side in that battle.
View our EU themed videos:
Firstly, The European Union’s Tower of Babel
Secondly, The European Union’s Woman on the Beast
Thirdly, The European Union’s Pagan Foundation
Fourthly, European Union- Does the Lord Keep the City?
Lastly, The European Union’s Roman Empire
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Thank you Stephen, for all the good work you have done to expose the EU.
Fortunately we are working in parallel with the Protestant Truth Society and Pastor Peter Simpson of the Penn Free Methodist Church.
Interesting article but the word that seems to be missing is “Jesuit”. Since all the past and present drivers of the European project have been Jesuits or at least Jesuit-educated, I believe this is the prime principality here. Unfortunately since this organisation is secretive, details have to remain unclear.
I have just been reviewing the current Bilderberger material on the web. Needless to say no BREXITEERS are invited but they have listed comments on BREXIT from certain invitees. The sheer venom in these comments shows that we are indeed in a spiritual battle.
John
Author
Is there any evidence Paul-Henri Spaak was educated by Jesuits? I can’t find any at all.
You are right, it’s a spiritual battle. Interestingly, the only GB MP invited this year to Bilderberg was Labour’s Helen Goodman, environmentalist, and therefore probably for Remain. She is married to Charles Seaford of the New Economics Foundation. It would have been embarrassing for anyone higher up in Remain to be invited, and as for Leave people, as you say, personas non gratis.
I can’t any evidence on the internet in English or in French. In view of the political background of his family, it seems to me exceptionally unlikely that they would have had him educated by Jesuits who indoctrinated him in different views from their own.
Author
… would have indoctrinated him …
Picked up a second hand book some time ago. It is called ,Socialism from the christian perspective, The writer a catholic bishop recounts his visit to America .His mission had been to address catholic (and others) that they were being seduced by socialist thought. some confusing even equating socialism with christian teaching He is at pains to address the error he sees as a great threat to the church. This is a very old book must dig it out and check year it was printed. Obama a self confessed Marxist (a advocate of liberation theology ) received millions of christian votes and even now retains support amongst a large section of the co called christian community .Which considering his anti christ agenda shows the Bishop Vaughan i think it was ,warnings fell on death ears ..The sad fact is that many nominal christians here and in America are actually secular humanist with a socialist ethic and world view .The Christian Democrats were never influenced by catholic social thought or any other type of christian thought . They were humanists from day one .
Author
OK. In all fairness, Konrad Adenauer appears to have tried to build Christian Democracy on the concept of a Christian worldview and I should like to think he was at least acquainted with the work of Abraham Kuyper if not Herman Dooyeweerd. Obviously there is also influence from Catholic social teaching. ‘Humanists from day one’ may be a little unfair. The German Constitution at least begins ‘Conscious of their responsibility before God and men’.
This long description of the foundation of the EU is very interesting.
There are one or two little points which come to mind.
Easy travel is not a “vague sentiment”. It is practical and very useful to many thousands of people.
Adenauer must have realised that Hitler was elected in a Christian democracy, and so that was not going to be a guarantee of success for his project.
Benelux was formed not actually there in Benelux during the War, as if a Nazi invention, but by exiles in London for inauguration after the war.
Anybody who has in mind considerable expansion of their powers in Europe is naturally very likely to make comparisons with the Roman Empire and be inspired by it to a certain extent. There was Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, Mussolini, and some of the insignia used by Hitler. I don’t think such obvious comparisons in the case of the European Union should be taken quite so seriously as you believe.
There were even the Byzantine emperors (who called themselves emperors of the Romans), and neither they nor the western Holy Roman Emperors (not seated in Rome either) honoured Jupiter, or were anything but Christian.
The last Roman emperors themselves were Christians, after all. If Rome gets something of a bad press in the New Testament, that is because it was written before this great conversion was accomplished.
Excellent. Very similar observations to David Hathaways material. The Jesuits were & I believe still are behind the Counter Reformation to deceive the masses into believing we are on a spinning globe instead of stationary earth, as the Bible teaches, with the Lord on His throne above the firmament (Revelation 4 & Genesis 1) & with hell underneath the earth. They sought to discredit the Bible by teaching evolution through high up Freemason scientists. They also work hard to infiltrate governments, churches & other organisations to bring in a one world religion (all roads lead to Rome) headed up by the false prophet. Also to work towards one world government.
Author
The Bible actually says:
Psalm 93:1 The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.
Not specifically that it is ‘stationary’.
The same Hebrew word H4131 מוט (môt), is used of Leviathan:
Job 41:23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved (H4131).
It means they cannot be out of course, cannot be shaken. The word does not mean Leviathan stands still all the time.
This article requires many hours of study!! However, not having access to the equipment that allows this, there are comments to be made on the main ‘gist’ of what is being said.
I guess that ‘religion’ has been in decline in the west since the 1850s! This is the time when Charlie Darwin (right Charlie he was!) started his evolutionary myth which the whole of the so-called civilised western world at the time swallowed hook line and sinker. You wonder at our ‘intelligent’ leaders, academics, etc. do you not?! Christian ‘religion’ has been trying to ‘accommodate’ this ever since. hence the weakness of the church in Europe. So, when we enter two massive world wars, both religion looses its influence further; the church compromises further, and we all try to come up with the ‘diplomatic’ solution of an ‘all in one’ religion that is ‘OK’ with most people. So, it becomes easier to ‘accommodate’ Roman Catholicism within the forming EU and get that crazy monstrosity of a statue outside, is it the European Parliament?! @The Woman Rides the Beast’ is the inscription: the one world religion. |By this time Biblical faith has been so diluted that it becomes an oddity for those who (I guess like ourselves) who actually pursue it and operate within it. The problem well pre-dates the formation of the EU. The EU is merely symptomatic of it. To me, Roman Catholicism is a false religion and those who adhere to it are in bondage to it. Protestantism is also false. So, genuine Bible believing Christians need to ‘come out from among them, lest we participate in all their sins’ This is surely where we need to be at this time, and, yes, use this platform in order to pray regarding Brexit, and all other issues that effect our nation to day.
Amen, amen to your comments re Roman Catholicism AND Protestantism – both are false religions – only Bible believing faith can be descibed as true – anyone holding to anything else needs to come out from among them.
Surely the Napoleonic wars were also massive, and just as worldwide as World Wars so-called 1 & 2 .
There had been other big and prolonged wars too, with lots of deaths.
So what I don’t understand is Michael’s casual “So”. Why did the theory of evolution make such a difference to wars causing religion to lose its influence (I assume he doesn’t really mean “loose” its influence) ?
An American perspective –
https://billyebrim.org/easter-in-brussels-belgium/
The title of your article is: EU – Christian Project or Catholic Plot?
Sorry, but the Catholic Church was the church our Lord founded. The various Protestant churches are breakaway movements. Without the original Catholic Church there could never have been any Protestant churches.
Not living on the European continent your readers obviously have a different attitude to Europe and the European union. As an Englishman living in the Czech Republic I note that people here see things somewhat differently. This small central European nation has in the past, depending on the momentary political situation, had to look towards various centres of government: Vienna, Berlin, Moscow and now Brussels. One bows to the source of power and thinks one’s own thoughts. In the border town of Vejprty everyone speaks Czech. If you walk up the main street you come to a notice saying Bundesrepublik Deutschland. On the other side in Bärenstein everyone speaks German, a totally different language. This is a phenomenon in Europe which is difficult to understand in the British archipelago. The sea does make a difference.
Having experienced two world wars, Adenauer and Schuman, both Christians, wanted to avoid a repetition of this phenomenon. The result was the EU. For Czechs Brussels is mainly a source of grants, if one can get through the rigmarol of filling up the forms the right way.
Falling away from the Christian faith, whether Catholic or Protestant, is a serious problem of the European nations today. Europe, including Britain, is being invaded by Moslems, who in Germany are actually being welcomed. Europeans are refusing to have enough children (Germany 1.3, Czech Republic 1.6, Britian 1.9 children per woman). Moslems have a much higher reproductive rate.
David Prentis
Author
I love your European perspective. And it is true Muslim women appear to better at obeying Gen 1:28 than most Christians.
I agree that the catholic (as in universal) church was what our Lord founded. His apostles went to the far corners of the known world to spread the Gospel. In the middle east, the first church was at Antioch in present-day Turkey. Other churches were founded around the Mediterranean and in India, Africa and Western Europe. In Britain and western France the Celtic church was founded in the first century by men like Aristobulus and Joseph of Arimathea.
We find the expression ‘catholic church’ arising in the second century. The Bishop of Rome (Stephen I) is only claiming papal primacy in the third century and basing it on Peter’s foundation (Damascus I) in the fourth. I have struggled to find when the Church of Rome was first called the ‘Roman Catholic Church’.
Today Anglicans and Lutherans are among those who adhere to the Nicene Creed of the 325AD Council of Nicea, which united all the branches of the church of its time. Emphasising unity, sanctity, legitimacy of succession and universality, it says: ‘I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.’
,Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Daniel 2:31-33, shows this huge statue referring to 4 great empires which will ultimately be smashed by a kingdom made without hands. Verse 43 refers to iron & clay not mixing, surely this is symbolic of the final empire, the E.U!? Verse 44 speaks of a kingdom which will never be destroyed, set up by the God of heaven & this kingdom, symbolised by the rock cut from the mountain by supernatural means, will crush all these pagan empires.
I see this as an army of spiritually reborn switched on Christians headed by the King of Kings & the Lord of Lords, a Kingdom which will stand forever. This army of believers, just like Gideons Army, Judges 1-8, will not consist of thousands, it will be whittled down to 300, those who were not afraid, those who knew their Lord & did exploits, not in their own strength but in His strength by the power of the Holy Spirit!