Sentries at Every Church Corner — The Cameronian Tradition | The American Spectator

For almost three centuries, the Cameronians were renowned as one of the toughest regiments of the British Army, with battle honors ranging from Dunkeld to Blenheim in the 17th and 18th Centuries to Gallipoli and the Western Front in World War I and globe-spanning service in Burma, at Anzio, and then Normandy in World War II. Recruited from Glasgow and its southern environs, famously tough neighborhoods, the regiment earned not only battle honors, but a reputation as hard men, a “tough mob.”

This uncompromising hardness came with the name, for the regiment owed its beginnings to a hard core of Presbyterian radicals, followers of the charismatic religious leader Richard Cameron. The 17th Century was notoriously the century of religious conflict, nowhere more so than in Scotland. Cameron would be killed by government forces, only the most notable of the deaths that marked the era as “The Killing Time.” Eventually, as the religious wars subsided, a regiment of Cameron’s followers became part of the British Army.

But the legacy of “The Killing Time” remained, enshrined in one of the regiment’s most hallowed traditions. Unlike every other regiment of the army, every member of the regiment was issued a Bible. When the regiment assembled for religious services, it kept its small arms close at hand inside the church. And until 1968, when the regiment disbanded, double sentries were always posted at the four corners of the church. For almost three centuries after the murder of Richard Cameron, the need for self-defense, even at prayer, remained a living part of the life of the regiment.

The Resurrection of ‘The Killing Times’

Reflecting this morning on the latest shooting outrage, the murderous assault on Catholic schoolchildren attending morning Mass at their church-affiliated school, I found myself thinking, with deep sadness, about the increasing frequency of assaults such as this. We’ve already seen how the mainstream media has attempted to downplay the religious and cultural aspect of the attack, how resolutely they’ve cloaked the shooter’s transgender identity, how obtuse they’ve become in the face of the simple fact that these were Catholic children who were gunned down.

I won’t try to explore the larger cultural issues exposed in this moment of horror. For that, I refer the reader to this morning’s essay by Scott McKay. Nor am I interested just now in trying to examine root causes or parse the predictable policy “solutions” that are already pouring forth throughout the news cycle. Red flag laws? Minnesota has such, and little good did they do. More gun control? Absurd on its face, not least because its proponents use gun control as an excuse for ignoring the real problems underlying the violence. (RELATED: The Demons Have Taken Hold of Minneapolis)

Instead, and simply stated, it’s time that we recognize that “The Killing Times” have come again, in this country and across the Western world. Let’s start by understanding that Christians have become a minority. Yes, I know that the usual surveys might suggest otherwise, at least in the U.S., but peel back the layers, separate out the genuinely dedicated and devout from the performative so-called “Christians,” and what is left is a genuine — and persecuted — minority.

We’ve seen the FBI engaged in the pursuit of “Latin Mass Catholics,” we’ve seen how the Bidens and Pelosis insistently flaunted church doctrine on abortion, we’ve seen priests and preachers — even, sadly, the last Pope — more interested in aligning themselves with secular fads than in upholding long-established Christian teaching. And what we’ve seen in this country is even more in evidence across the Atlantic, as anyone who follows events in Britain, France, or Germany can attest.

And, of course, we’ve seen institutional attacks on everyone from Jack Phillips and his bakery to the Little Sisters of the Poor, attacks that normalize hatred and contempt, and serve as the necessary precursors to violence. Moreover, we’ve seen this same dynamic increasingly at work in the dramatic rise of antisemitism in this country and around the world. As I’ve written previously, the Jews are the “canary in the coalmine for Western civilization.” We know well the slogan, “first they came for the Jews.”

We’ve watched this play out from the October 7 pogrom to murderous rampages in France and Germany and England. We’ve watched how the “Omnicause” aligns, in defiance of all logic, Islamist fanaticism with secular contempt for Jews and observant Christians. When the Southern Poverty Law Center can label traditional Latin Mass Catholics as a “hate group,” we see how this plays out. When parents who want transgender men kept out of their daughter’s restrooms are investigated as terrorists, we see the new secular religion at its ugliest. (RELATED: The Southern Poverty Law Center Is the Real Hate Machine)

Increasingly, we’ve seen it across the U.S., in the firebombing of churches and synagogues, in the beatings meted out to anti-abortion protestors, in the cold-blooded murder of a young couple — one Christian, one Jewish — outside an event in D.C. Reliable statistics on anti-Christian and anti-Jewish hate crimes are hard to come by. The same progressive dynamic that leads the mainstream media to obscure the characteristics and motivations of the perpetrators of such crimes also infects big city and suburban police departments, unwilling to capture data at variance with the left-wing prejudices of their mayors and city councils.

So let’s be honest with ourselves. The “Killing Times,” times akin to those of 17th-century Scotland, are just around the corner. Thinking about yesterday’s murders in Minnesota, it might be better said that such times are already here. It’s heartening that so many in this country and in Europe have begun to fight back, encouraging that a time may come when Western culture can be reclaimed. But in the meantime, perhaps we need to embrace the Cameronian tradition. Metaphorically, at least, we need to start bringing our weapons with us when we come to church.

And practically — and said with profound sadness — it may just be time for armed sentries to be posted at our churches, synagogues, and other religious facilities. We’ve seen the difference this can make. One can hate the very notion that such is needed, and I fully share the feeling. One can wish the world otherwise, and one can work to make such a difference. But tell that to the parents who mourn their dead children, and tell yourself, in your heart of hearts, that you’d trade an innocent child’s life for such fine and gentle feelings.

The epigram for both of my thriller novels has been attributed to George Orwell, and it seems utterly apposite in the aftermath of yet another horror: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Perhaps we need to take a leaf out of the book of a regiment of tough men, and, like the Cameronians, find rough men ready to take a stand.

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James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk find the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.