There is often talk in certain political circles and in some press outlets of the “religious heritage” and “spiritual and moral patrimony” of Europe and France.
This semantics fuels the discourse that Europe has lost the memory of its religious roots and continues to lose the battle of founding “values” against Islam, filling the collective imagination.
The thesis can be summarized as follows: the supposed superiority of the white Westerner, of which racism is the blatant manifestation.
This “little tune,” the recurring evocation of “Judeo-Christian” sources, conceals an anxious and somewhat unhealthy nostalgia for the past.
However, this insistent reminder of the “Judeo-Christian roots” of France and Europe is neither historically justified nor legitimate (Christians have always excluded and persecuted Jews, a “deicidal” people until recently), and mainly serves to justify much more contestable moral and political attitudes—not just electoral ones—such as the rejection of immigrants and the disdain for Islam.
This fear is not contemptible, but it must be added that the obsessive invocation of “Christian roots” should not serve as a pretext for a desire for Christian restoration, militant xenophobia, or the rejection of a demonized Islam.
On the contrary, it should bring us back to the essence of Christian faith, namely the concern for others, for foreigners, for the most vulnerable, and then remind each person, believer or non-believer, to an additional humanity, to a tradition of integration that is known to have been handed down by 2,000 years of Christian and European history.
