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Rod Dreher on Clerical Pacifism
I have been deeply concerned with how Christians in America will handle the war against terror. We do not withstand jihad with the songs “On Eagle’s Wings” and “Gift of Finest Wheat.” I recall being in Holland on Christmas Eve one year, days before the Gulf War began. Though not Catholic at the time, or even seriously religious, I went to Midnight Mass with my friends (that was the only time they went to Mass all year). I don’t speak Dutch, but they sang two English hymns, if that’s the right word. One was John Lennon’s “So This Is Christmas (War Is Over).” The other was a pacifist ditty from the World War II era, which contained the line, “Please Mr. Churchill, don’t send us off to war. . . .”
After Mass, my friends asked me what I thought. I struggled for something to say. All I could manage was, “Well, I don’t think those hymns are what got you all through the Nazi occupation.”
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Rod Dreher is a contributing editor to Touchstone. He is a writer and blogger and the author of several books, including The Benedict Option (2017) and Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020).
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