Governor Landry recently gave a speech to the Louisiana Republican Party in Alexandria in which he listed the major accomplishments of conservatives in the State since the start of his administration:

• ‘Crime: “We took the handcuffs off police and put them on bad people.” Violent crime is down statewide, with New Orleans reporting a fifty-year low in murders.
• ‘Education: Louisiana’s fourth graders now rank first in the nation in reading and second in math.
• ‘Taxes: The largest tax cut in state history. “Mississippi says they’ll get to three percent by 2030,” Landry said. “We’re at three percent today.”
• ‘Jobs and Investment: 114,000 new job opportunities and $70 billion in private investment — the largest in Louisiana history.
• ‘Insurance Reform: Twenty companies have filed for rate decreases, including Farm Bureau’s 11% reduction — something the state hasn’t seen in three decades.
• ‘Infrastructure: Record numbers of bridges and roads under construction — and yes, the inspection sticker is finally going away’ (Michael Lunsford, ‘Jeff Landry on Louisiana’s New Era: From Opposition to Ownership,’ thehayride.com).

These are notable and praiseworthy.

And yet something is wrong.

Something gravely important is missing from that list:  There are no mentions of any cultural or religious achievements.

A State, a country, an ethnos like Louisiana is more than schools and businesses.  It is more than bricks and mortar and statistics.

It is at its core a spiritual reality that transcends time – joining together past generations with those of the present and those of future years – which is ultimately joined and held together by a common religion (Christianity in our case).   A country’s religion, practiced by a particular people in a particular place, manifests as a unique culture that is it’s cherished possession.

The horrible mistake of the West for the last four centuries or so has been to disregard this spiritual aspect of a country, putting nearly all focus on physical, material development.  The results of this imbalance were impressive . . . for a while:  a stunning development of machines, medicines, roads, bridges, etc.  But the spiritual impoverishment of the West is now causing an increasing number of catastrophes that is negating and overshadowing those material accomplishments.  One of them occurred ten years ago in France, Louisiana’s Mother Country, on 13 Nov. 2015:

‘A decade has passed since the night of November 13, 2015—the night when the heart of Paris was pierced by a wave of coordinated terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 130 people. Among the bloodiest of these was the massacre at the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 concertgoers were gunned down in cold blood.

‘A single photograph from that night has stayed with me over the years. It was taken just minutes before the attack began—an image of joy and abandon. The crowd is ecstatic. Arms are raised. Smiles are everywhere. The atmosphere is electric with freedom, pleasure, and anticipation. The American rock band Eagles of Death Metal is on stage, and the audience, caught in the height of their performance, appears to embody everything modern Western nightlife claims to be: liberated, exuberant, carefree.

‘But this seemingly ordinary concert would soon become the stage for one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in modern European history. Moments after that photograph was taken, three Islamist gunmen entered the venue and opened fire. What began as a celebration of life ended in a massacre. The photograph is haunting not only because we now know what came next, but because, when viewed in hindsight, the moment it captures seems loaded with meaning—perhaps even prophetic’ (Iben Thranholm, ‘Europe’s Spiritual Battle: The Bataclan Massacre 10 Years Later,’ europeanconservative.com).

France ten years ago was living under the illusion that religion was a side interest at best, something optional, something without real potency or importance:  A person or a society could take it or leave it.  Many in the West still believe that.  But the events at the Bataclan show otherwise:

‘That night, Eagles of Death Metal had just begun playing one of their most popular songs: “Kiss the Devil.” As the first chords sounded, many in the crowd responded with the well-known ‘devil horns’ hand gesture—index and little fingers raised, the others curled down—a symbol popularized in rock culture, once provocative, now largely emptied of meaning for most who use it.

‘The lyrics they were singing as the first shots rang out were:

‘Who’ll love the Devil?

Who’ll sing his song?

Who will love the Devil and his song?

I’ll love the Devil

I’ll sing his song

I will love the Devil and his song.

‘Did anyone in the crowd believe they were literally invoking Satan? Certainly not. It was all part of the performance—ironic, theatrical, unserious. And yet, because real evil entered the room in the form of armed men bent on slaughter, the symbolism becomes difficult to ignore.

‘To the modern mind, which sees the world in strictly materialist terms, such moments are written off as coincidence. The song and the massacre are but a grim alignment of unrelated events. But for those who still believe in meaning, in signs and symbols, in the spiritual dimension of life, the scene invites deeper reflection. The question lingers: when a culture empties itself of the sacred and flirts with darkness, even in jest, does it leave itself open to something more than just political vulnerability? Does it expose a spiritual vacuum—a house swept clean, but left frighteningly unguarded?’ (Ibid.)

When countries turn away from the Christian Faith, they invite malevolent spiritual forces to take the place of the Holy Trinity, the Mother of God and all the other saints, and the angels:

‘Just as we convinced ourselves that secularism had freed us from the grip of religion, we now face the enduring irony: religion does not disappear—it waits, it returns, and it reclaims the spaces we thought were neutral. No society has ever truly remained spiritually neutral. When one dominant worldview is rejected, another inevitably takes root. When the Roman Empire collapsed, Christianity filled the void. When Christianity arrived in Scandinavia, it displaced Norse paganism. And today, much of what was once Christian stronghold territory—from Asia Minor to North Africa—is now under Islamic influence. The question is not whether religion will shape society, but which religion—and what kind of society it will build.

‘Following the devastation of two world wars, many Europeans placed their hope in secular modernity. Science, democracy, and human rights were to form the new moral foundation. For a time, this vision seemed to work. Economic growth surged. Education expanded. Religion declined without immediate consequence. But over time, cracks begin to show. Without a shared spiritual foundation, society becomes fragmented. Loneliness, anxiety, and alienation surge. Families are fracturing. Political discourse grows increasingly bitter. In this vacuum of meaning, new forms of belief—some masquerading as politics, others as identity movements—are steadily taking root.

‘Islam is the most prominent example of what fills the spiritual vacuum left by the West’s rejection of Christianity. But it is not the only one. Others include the cults of identity politics, transhumanist dreams of technological salvation, climate apocalypticism, and nihilistic movements that glorify destruction for its own sake. These are not passing trends, but expressions of a deeper hunger—a hunger for identity and meaning that secularism cannot satisfy. In the absence of Christianity, these forces rush in to offer belonging, purpose, and truth—however distorted or incomplete’ (Ibid.).

Ms Thranholm speaks of coincidence in her essay.  There is yet another associated with the Bataclan Massacre that is also very striking.  The day of the attack, 13 November, is precisely the Feast Day of one of the greatest preachers and pastors in all of Church history, St John Chrysostom (+407).  A couple of passages will give just a hint of his greatness and holiness:

‘If gold is one of the most precious metals that never loses its value, then correspondingly Saint John Chrysostom, according to his Hymnographer, is considered perhaps the most precious of all people, because gold flows from both his soul and his body. And not only that, but he also gilds everything with his words, like that Midas of old, who turned everything he touched into gold. “Golden in both soul and body, you gild all things with your words.” It is understood, of course, that this gold, which the Hymnographer speaks of, is considered from a spiritual perspective, in order for him to emphasize the spiritual height of the Saint and the power of his words, while giving him the opportunity to express himself in such a poetic way the very epithet of the Saint: Chrysostom. What specifically does the ecclesiastical poet want to emphasize? Finding himself unable to properly praise Saint John – “To the Maker of all I bow my knee, to the eternal Word I stretch out my hands, seeking a gift of speech, that I may hymn the venerable one” – he understands that he is dealing with a man who, beyond his most holy life, expressed with absolute clarity the word of God and the dogmas of the Church: “Rejoice (John)…the precision of high theology; the clarity of the Scriptures of the Spirit.” And this because “he learned the wisdom from on high and the grace of words from God,” which means he lived as a “vessel of God,” “always living in His light”’ (Fr George Dorbarakis, ‘Saint John Chrysostom in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church,’ mystagogyresourcecenter.com).

And…

‘Adeltius, the Arabian bishop who received the exiled Chrysostom into his home in Cucusus, prayed to God after Chrysostom’s repose that He reveal to him where John’s soul was to be found. Adeltius then had a vision while at prayer. It was as though he were out of himself, and was led through the heavens by a radiant youth who showed him the hierarchs, pastors and teachers of the Church in order, calling each of them by name—but he did not see John. Then that angel of God led him to the passage out of Paradise, and Adeltius was downcast. When the angel asked him why he was sad, Adeltius replied that he was sorry that he had not seen his beloved teacher, John Chrysostom. The angel replied: “No man who is still in the flesh can see him, for he is at God’s throne with the Cherubim and Seraphim”’ (St Nikolai Velimirovich, ‘November 13,’ ochrid.org).

Imagine if the West were keeping the Feast Days of the great saints like St John, honoring their achievements, striving to imitate them, keeping them always in our thoughts, rather than befriending death metal bands?  Our situation would not be nearly so dire as it is now.

November 13^th shows us the stark choice before the West:  The satanic evil of Bataclan or the goodness of God in His Church and in His saints like St John Chrysostom.

Praise God, Louisiana’s Patron Saint, St Martin of Tours, was celebrated grandly on his Feast Day, 11 Nov., once again in St Martinville in 2025 (view photos of the event here).  We need a lot more of this in Louisiana.

Much of what we experience in the United States is a participation in the policy of purposeful secularization that has been exemplified in France and other Western countries.  Rarely, if ever, do politicians in the States measure progress in numbers of new baptisms, churches built, marriages performed, monastics tonsured, or similar things.  But that must change if Louisiana wants to avoid the evils that are afflicting her sister countries across the West who have spurned Christ their Bridegroom.  Are we not already suffering them?  The terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day will seem like a children’s tale if we continue down the road of normie, vaguely religious, Chamber of Commerce politics.

When we next hear proposals on how to improve Louisiana from Governor Landry, the Freedom Caucus, and other conservative politicians, we hope they will include measures to encourage the growth and strengthening of the Church.  For without the salvation of souls, without Christianity, without the culture that grows out of it, all our material progress will be for naught.