[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

Two very conspicuous developments are taking place simultaneously in Western Europe. For one thing, more and more Muslims are pouring into the region; for another, more and more churches are being burned to the ground. There is good reason to suspect that a connection exists between these developments, although it is hard to come to any definitive conclusions. Why? A recent report on anti-Christian attacks answers that question. It is difficult, declared the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC), to identify the firebugs, or to come to a definitive conclusion as to their motives, because “police tend not to disclose this highly sensitive information.” Meaning what? Meaning, very possibly, that just as men and women in the British corridors of power covered up the truth about Muslim rape gangs for decades because they didn’t want to antagonize Muslims and didn’t want to be accused of racism, public servants across Western Europe are choosing not to disclose everything they know about the identity of church arsonists because where Muslims are concerned, their first concern is not to intensify friction between Muslim “communities” and the mainstream population.

Take the 2019 blaze that almost totally destroyed Notre Dame in Paris. It was officially declared an accident, and although its exact cause has supposedly never been determined, there are those who firmly believe that it was a case of Muslim arson and that higher-ups in the French government, if they know the truth, prefer not to share it. This theory is hardly outrageous. It has been established that a great many of the arson attacks on churches in Western Europe – of which there were no fewer than 102 in France alone between 2018 and 2022, and over 200 in the UK between 2019 and 2024 – were indeed set by Muslims. Then there is the brazen murder of 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel, who was celebrating Mass at a church in Normandy in 2016 when two ISIS terrorists slit his throat.

Perhaps the saddest thing about the ongoing desecration of Western European churches is that the non-Christian, non-European perpetrators have fast allies among native-born believers. When Notre Dame burned down, some Parisians were quick to suggest that this disaster presented the republic with a splendid opportunity to bring the old cathedral up to date – to transform, in other words, what had for nearly 900 years been an exclusively Roman Catholic house of worship into an a sort of multi-religious bazaar where adherents of a wide range of religions, including Islam, could have their own prayer spaces and could engage in “interfaith dialogue” with one another. Yes, that proposal was shot down quickly enough, but the very idea that it could be seriously floated shows just how eager some native Western Europeans are to aid and abet the Islamization of their countries.

Which brings us to Western Europe’s latest ecclesiastical outrage. On October 10, Alex Greenberger of Art News reported on a “graffiti art installation” entitled “HEAR US” that is already in place and that will be formally opened at Canterbury Cathedral on October 17. This installation is credited principally to two people. Alex Vellis, identified by Greenberger as a poet, is described on his LinkedIn page as “an award-winning British-Greek spoken word artist, producer, and playwright, from Canterbury, Kent,” who “holds two world records in producing, ‘Longest continuous spoken word event – Producer’ and ‘Longest consecutive online poetry festival – Lead Producer.’” His collaborator, Jacqueline Creswell, is the installation’s curator; on her website, she writes about her career as “a visual arts advisor, curating and project managing exhibitions and installations at Salisbury Cathedral and other exceptional and challenging public spaces.” Vellis and Creswell have reportedly put together this appalling display with the help of “a team of skilled artists.”

To be sure, it is extremely misleading to describe what Vellis and Creswell have perpetrated as an “installation.” What they have done, in fact, is to deface the cathedral’s interior walls in a manner that, if not sanctioned by ecclesiastical authorities, would be considered a grave felony. The content of their scribblings, explains Greenberger, “was the result of community workshops that centered around the question: ‘What would you ask God?” The participants in these workshops, Creswell has stated, were members of “marginalized communities – including the Punjabi, black and brown diaspora, neurodivergent individuals, and the LGBTQIA+ population.” Among the questions that emerged from these workshops and that are now scrawled on the walls of the cathedral are these: “What is the architecture of heaven?” “Does everything have a soul?” “Does our struggle mean anything?” “Why are you indifferent to suffering?” “Why did you create hate when love is by far more powerful?”

By way of justifying this grotesque act of vandalism, Creswell offered up a blizzard of buzzwords: it “promotes inclusivity and representation” and “transforms the cathedral into a space where diverse voices can be heard, validating their experiences and fostering a sense of belonging.” The cathedral’s dean, David Monteith, served up a similar dose of PC prattle: “This exhibition intentionally builds bridges between cultures, styles and genres and, in particular, allows us to receive the gifts of younger people who have much to say and from whom we need to hear much.” Vellis, for his part, told the BBC that graffiti is the “’language of the unheard.”

I first set foot in Britain in 1980, and I will never forget it. For ten days I ran on sheer adrenalin from early in the morning till late at night. In London, I explored every nook and cranny of the British Museum, marveled at the glories of Westminster Abbey, and, standing inside Christopher Wren’s magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral, gazed breathlessly up at its incomparable dome. Taking the train to Cambridge, I spent a day walking among the ancient, beautiful buildings. And, yes, I traveled to Canterbury to see the thousand-year-old Cathedral. Its sheer beauty was overwhelming, the rich sense of history intoxicating. I didn’t want to leave. The notion of smearing its interior walls with graffiti would have seemed to me even more obscene than, say, throwing soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or smearing cake on the Mona Lisa (to reference two recent protests by environmental fanatics). The Cathedral has no need of “art,” whether legitimate or ersatz, to decorate its walls. It is a work of art.

Moreover, as a church of the Anglican Communion, which was founded on the principle that Christians who differ on fine points of doctrine should be able to worship together in peace rather than fight one another in bloody, pointless religious wars, it is by definition a place where “bridges” can be built. As for graffiti being “the language of the unheard” – no, it’s the language of barely literate hoodlums, of people who seek to damage, not to create anything of value or to communicate a serious point. Monteith himself acknowledged this when he said – approvingly – that the “raw…graffiti style…is disruptive,” adding, fatuously, that what makes it valuable is that it possesses “authenticity.” Does this mean that the Cathedral itself is somehow of questionable artistic value, or dubious authenticity, because it’s a work of sheer architectural mastery, noble and uplifting rather than “raw” and “disruptive”?

Then there’s this comment by Vellis: “’By temporarily graffitiing the inside of Canterbury Cathedral, we join a chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous.” How about the forgotten people, the nameless people, who, over the centuries, labored (in exchange for exceedingly modest pay) to build and rebuild, enlarge and extend, this truly wondrous edifice? As far as I’m concerned, Vellis and Creswell are spitting on those people’s achievements in order to promote their own unworthy names. “This project, at its core,” Vellis has said, “is about community, using your voice, and change.” What does this even mean? When are the overpaid, overly publicized creators of bad art going to get back to the idea that art should have something to do with beauty? And, furthermore, that art within a sacred space should also have some connection to the concept of the holy?

Of course, the answer to these questions is clear. Vellis and Creswell are the kind of Brits who voted for Remain, who hate Trump, who despise Tommy Robinson and his supporters, who view Britain not as the country that ended slavery in the West but as the foul remnant of the largest and most evil empire that ever existed, and who regard Christianity, and especially the Church of England, as the deservedly dying religion of the white Western oppressor and Islam as the vibrant, virtuous faith of the victims of centuries of cruel colonialism. The whole point of an exercise like “HEAR US” is, quite simply, to mock Christianity – with the full cooperation and support of a cleric who seems to have all sight of the fact that part of his job, as dean of a historical cathedral, is to defend the faith and protect the Christian heritage. Would any Muslim imam have ever permitted a couple of soi-disant artists to profane his mosque in the way that Vellis and Creswell have been allowed to profane the Canterbury Cathedral? Would it ever have occurred to the likes of Vellis and Creswell to have done such a thing to a mosque? Need one even ask?