The Defining Quality of a Christian Civilization

 Reinhold Niebuhr "suggested that a Christian civilisation was a civilisation which always knew itself to be ethically un-Christian."  Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943, p. 32

Prosper, O Lord, our righteous cause?

 Prayer composed by Thomas Cranmer when England and Scotland were at war in 1548:

"Most merciful God, the Granter of all peace and quietness, the Giver of all good gifts, the Defender of all nations, who has willed all men to be accounted as our neighbours, and commanded us to love them as ourself, and not to hate our enemies, but rather to wish them, yea and also to do them good if we can: . . .  Give to all us desire of peace, unity, and quietness, and a speedy wearisomeness of all war, hostility, and enmity to all them that be our enemies; that we and they may, in one heart and charitable agreement, praise thy most holy name, and reform our lives to thy godly commandments."   HT:  Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943, p. 11)

Brutality's prestige

 "We should not think that because we are less brutal, less violent, less inhuman than those we are confronting, we will prevail.  Brutality, violence, and inhumanity have immense prestige . . . .  The contrary virtues, so as to have an equivalent prestige, must be exercised in a constant and effective manner.  Whoever is only incapable of being as brutal, violent, and inhuman as the adversary, yet without exercising the opposite virtues, is inferior to this adversary in both inner strength and prestige; and he will not hold his own against him."  --Simone Weil, quoted in Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943, p. 4