In the last three years, there have been thirty-three Christian churches destroyed in Canada reportedly by arson and about twice as many more vandalized. Are modern Marxists to blame, perhaps?Some of these churches were on reservations. Thus, some of the reasons proposed for these burnings and damage are reaction to the residential schools, colonialism, attention grabbing for indigenous issues and symbolic acts by Indigenous people. There could be others. Without arrests, the motives are unknown. And no one has been charged in many of these crimes.However, the residential school system ended in 1996, so why a rash of church burnings more than 20 years later? Further, not all of the burned and vandalized churches were on reservations. So is there something bigger afoot?The US-based Family Research Council recently (February) published “Hostility Against Churches is on the Rise in the United States.” It reports that there have been 915 “acts of hostility against churches” in the US from 2018-2023. The hostile acts are increasing in number each year and the locations include 48 of the fifty states as well as Washington DC. In many cases the perpetrators were not caught, and motives are generally unknown. In a minority of cases the motives have been identified as political, personal, or theft.What's going on? Many explanations have been proposed to explain the destruction of monuments and statues recently in the West. Mostly these are birthed from Marxist critique of one kind or another. Interestingly, many of the media reports are much concerned that readers do not understand the destructive actions as “erasing history”. As Shakespeare noted, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Let’s look at two examples. Like many great leaders, Winston Churchill was a complex man of his times. No question, some of his views are out of step with contemporary attitudes. But even allowing that, he was the greatest individual in the 20th century without whom not only would England have fallen, but most of the world would come under the control of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and its allies. Even flawed, a person who saved the world is worthy of a statue. Yet, his was torn down from Parliament Square. Arlington National Cemetery (USA) is the final resting place of some Confederate soldiers since the cemetery’s establishment. President McKinley said that the Confederate graves were a tribute to American valor. And that is the point. It was not or is not an honoring of slavery. It is about those who fought with honor even if for the wrong cause. Honor is something greatly misunderstood. And so the Confederate Memorial was removed from Arlington.Western civilization and the miracles of its medicine, betterment of human lives through science, the removing of millions from poverty, preserving nature from natural and manmade disasters, and the brightening of lives around the world with its arts along with its follies, failures, and faults is an outgrowth of the unique combination of energies originating in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. This is not to denigrate the greatness of outstanding developments from Japan, China, India, aboriginals from every continent and all parts in between. Humans everywhere are absolutely amazing. Yet since a church was found in nearly every town across the west, it stands as a memorial, as well as a living tradition. And therein perhaps is the clue to the who and the why of Canada's church-burnings: Is desecration of these sacred spaces the ultimate self-hating anti-Western declaration by today's Marxists?Dr. A.W. Barber is the former Director of Asian Studies at the University of Calgary. He is internationally active and has wide-ranging interests.
