Before We Begin

You may notice a new sender name in your inbox this evening, I’ve changed the name of this publication (and my name on X). Fear No Evil and Crush Secularism are both alright, but The Constantine Option really encapsulates what I’m about far better. I’ll explain more after we finish our present series, I’ve already touched on it briefly in an X post.​

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I know you’ve seen this map before…

but really, watch it carefully all the way through. There are 3 major events that secularized the West. Can you spot them? You should know the dates already.

The Three Advances of Secularism

I regret to say that the very founding of the United States, being a secular union of (mostly) Christian states, was indeed the beginning of truly secular states in the West. This wouldn’t have spread on it's own, however. It was spread as the results of three wars, that as wars tend to do, ended with the defeated states being reformed in the image of the victors. They were:

• The American Civil War
• World War I (and the related October revolution)
• World War II

Look at the map again, at the end of the 1860s, the 1910s, and the 1930s you see these three distinct floods of secularism across the defeated powers.

It’s not always the same story, though, the manner in which these three events shaped the defeated states’ structure were all distinct.

The American Civil War

You were taught about the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War, but you likely didn’t consider all its implications. For four years the southern states were ruled by northern Republicans. They convened constitutional conventions to redraft the state’s constitutions in their own image. Of course, some of these reforms were necessary (abolition of slavery, namely), but a ground-up rebuild does not stop there. The northern Republicans stripped the southern states of the Christian constitutions they had before the war:

By the end of Reconstruction, none remained:

World War I

The narrative of the First World War is convoluted across multiple conferences, treaties, and armistices, but it can be boiled down to one thing: President Woodrow Wilson’s demands. President Wilson led the democratization of Europe following the German surrender. Judging by the state of his nation by this time (as we just detailed), his understanding of democracy would be a secular one.

This only explains central Europe, however, Eastern Europe was also secularized during the war period by another man: Vladimir Lenin. Following the October Revolution, the murder of the Romanovs, and the establishment of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (soon to become USSR). That story goes without saying.

World War II

The Second World War is actually just an extension of the first for our purposes. In both cases, the Communists in Eastern Europe were aided by the Allies to help bring down Germany. The only difference is, this time the aid wasn’t to get them out of the war, but to get them in.

So the Soviets were in, on the winning team, and to the winner go the spoils. Their spoils were much more of Eastern Europe, virtually all of it, including half of Germany.

Join Me Tomorrow!

This will be the subject of tomorrow’s podcast episode, recorded live on X at 10 PM Central tomorrow. Join me there, afterwards anyone can come up on stage and talk about the unfolding of secularism in the West.

God bless you,

The Constantine Option