RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/24/will-the-faithful-inherit-the-earth/

The elevation of the new pope from Chicago may have excited progressive ideologues with hopes for another wokeish papacy. But the rise of little-known Robert Prevost to his new status as Pope Leo XIV comes amid a profoundly unwoke recovery of religious feeling in the West. After generations of decline, Christianity is making a comeback.

To be sure, this revival is still tentative and faces enormous headwinds. The decline of religion remains a fundamental reality in most Western countries, particularly in Europe, where well over 50 per cent of people under the age of 30 do not identify with any religion. In the US, the trajectory has been similar, albeit at a slower pace. In 1965, 70 per cent of respondents to a Gallup poll said religion is ‘very important’ in their lives. Today, fewer than half of Americans – 45 per cent – say religion is ‘very important’.

This decline has led some religious conservatives, like Ross Douthat of the New York Times, to predict a coming ‘age of extinction’ – a world bereft of churches, community and families. Others, like Christian intellectual Rod Dreher, suggest that religious people, like the early Christians, should create their own separate communities – what he calls ‘the Benedict option’ – to cope with an increasingly post-religious world.

Yet the pessimists may be overstating their case. In America, at least, there is evidence of a lingering spiritual hunger: more than half of ‘religiously unaffiliated’ Americans, for example, still believe in God or some kind of universal spirit. Meanwhile, one recent survey shows that young people are increasingly embracing religion, with millennials among the biggest drivers of Christianity’s revival in the US.

There is even evidence of renewal in decidedly secular Europe. France’s Catholic Church claims to have baptised 45 per cent more people this Easter than it did last year. According to the Bible Society, the UK is undergoing a similar conversion. It reports that the number of 18- to 24-year-olds who attend church at least monthly has quadrupled, from four per cent in 2018 to 16 per cent today. The Bible Society said there are two million more people attending church now than there were six years ago.

https://www.commentary.org/articles/dan-senor/american-jewry-after-october-7/

For many of us, October 7 was a wake-up call of sorts, which gave birth to what some have taken to calling “October 8 Jews.” I prefer not to use that term, as it implies that they suddenly became Jews on October 8. 

Nonetheless, there was a crack in Jewish consciousness on October 8, 2023. Suddenly, many Jews began to think differently about their Jewish identity, their Jewish community, and their connection to Jewish peoplehood everywhere—especially in Israel.  Sociologists and Jewish leaders heralded a “surge of interest” in Jewish life. 

People started wearing Jewish stars for the first time. They went to rallies. They donated hundreds of millions to emergency campaigns and sent supplies to IDF units. And the new openness to Jewish identity opened them up to indignation and shock. Over WhatsApp, people forwarded articles by the score in chat groups. I call them the “Can You Believe!?” groups, as in: “Can you BELIEVE Christiane Amanpour aired that segment?” Or “Can you BELIEVE Thomas Friedman trashed Israel again in his column?” In truth, this wasn’t as much a Jewish awakening as an outpouring of Jewish adrenaline. 

And as with adrenaline, I think we can all feel the moment fading with the passage of time. It would be dangerous for us to return to the false sense of security we felt on October 6. 

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Since October 7, I have heard the following two comments more than any other from American Jews.

First: Jews have played key leadership roles in so many pillars of society: finance and Hollywood, hospitals, the environment and civil rights, the arts, symphonies, museums and elite universities. How could they turn on us?

We hear this all the time. We Jews have collectively spent so much, even named wings after ourselves at these institutions. But, historically speaking, none of this has mattered in stemming the tide of anti-Semitism. No, in fact, our perceived power is deployed against us in these periods. Jews in the Diaspora have too often been, as Douglas Murray says, prominent but weak. 

Murray’s observation calls to mind The Pity of It All, Amos Elon’s 2002 chronicle of German Jews from the mid-18th century until Hitler’s rise in 1933—timely today because it shatters so many of our comfortable narratives about progress, assimilation, and the supposed safety of living in an educated society. Elon shows how, over nearly two centuries, German Jews transformed themselves from marginalized peddlers and cattle dealers into the intellectual, cultural, and economic backbone of German society. They didn’t just assimilate—they excelled. A community that never was more than 1 percent of the German population produced bankers, journalists, artists, industrialists, and academics whose contributions to the flourishing of Germany are well documented.

They believed in Germany. They believed in Enlightenment values. They believed that reason and education would triumph over prejudice. They were wrong.

https://dianebederman.com/tyranny-of-islam/

We are told to pander to Islam so we are not accused of Islamophobia!

There are approximately 8 billion people on earth and almost 2 billion Muslims-one quarter of the world population. And 2.4 billion Catholics/Christians. Many researchers project that Muslims will outnumber Christians by the year 2050. There are 193 countries. Muslims are the majority in 49 countries which means these countries are ruled by sharia Law.

Muslims now live all over the world in countries that are based on the Judeo/Christian ethic: all people are born with equal intrinsic value, all life is sacred and we have free will– which is anathema to Islam.

How do I know? So says Islam:

“Is Islam compatible with the values of Western democracy?

“The political system of Islam is totally incompatible with western democracy.

“[Hadith]: 673. Abu Bakrah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: I heard Messenger of Allah (PBUH) saying, “He who insults the rulers Allah will insult him.”

[At-Tirmidhi].

“Commentary: To affront and degrade the ruler means to disobey him and to by-pass his orders. This impairs his power, honour and dignity.

“Believers have been told to obey and support rulers for the sake of national interest and welfare, understanding that they desist from committing an overt disbelief and maintain congregation Salat and other duties of religion.

“The concept of government party and the opposition is alien to Islam.