Matthew Roberts

During Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to London this September, Cardinal Walter Kasper noted two things about London: it’s secular and parts of it resemble a Third World country. While the politically correct were quick to condemn Kasper and the Vatican was even quicker to exhibit its pro-Third World, anti-racism bona fides, Kasper’s two statements taken together are noteworthy in that they demonstrate two antagonistic aspects of the modern world. The First World is secular; the Third World is religious.

How can London be both? What happens when you mix First World secularism and Third World religion? In particular, what happens when you import the Third World to the First—as in London? Often, the Third World tries to convert the First, regardless if the evangelizers are Christian or Muslim. While Westerns may be more shocked by Third World Muslims because they expect them to be different, they often are more disoriented by Third World Christians because they are so different from what they expect. The Christianity that the Third World brings to the West is unlike anything ever seen before—just as alien as Islam.

Highlighting this realization is the acknowledgement that Christianity is fast becoming a non-Western religion. Although not the first to make the point, and certainly not the last, Philip Jenkin’s The Next Christendom popularized the notion that Christianity is undergoing a metamorphosis. Jenkins, an Englishman and the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities at Penn State University, maintains that the heart of Christianity soon will be, if it is not already, Africa and Latin America. And the shift is not merely a demographic one, but an ideological one as well. Various African and Latin American expressions of Christianity are currently eclipsing the European version of Christianity. Eight years out from the first publication of The Next Christendom, now with a revised and expanded edition and two accompanying books in the trilogy, Jenkins’ observations in the first edition still hold true, a fact that he seems to celebrate in a pointedly anti-Western tone.

The Masque of Africa, a travel book by award-winning Indian-Trinidadian author V. S. Naipaul, although really about traditional African belief and not Christianity per se, often underscores Jenkins’ thesis, at least as it relates to Africa. Despite the conversions to Christianity, Naipaul maintains, the older world of African animism and magic persists, influencing and shaping modern belief systems.

Occidental Christians assume that Christianity is Western. After all, “Europe is the faith”, asserted Hillaire Belloc. Although by birth a Middle Eastern religion, Christianity, at least as Westerners know it, soon became a European religion in the sense that it melded with various forms of European paganism. Christianity, the story runs, cannot exist in a vacuum. It conforms to the various cultures with which it comes in contact. In its European manifestation (after syncretization with Celtic, Germanic, Greek and Roman paganism), Western Christianity became the religious expression we know today. Comfortable with pagan-Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, most Westerners could not conceive of Christianity any other way. (By “Westerner” is meant a European or someone of the European Diaspora.)

The French were recently outraged when an upscale British restaurant guide failed to include any French eateries in its Top Ten list. Jean-Claude Ribaut, a restaurant critic from Le Monde, called it a "farce" and "a swindle." Some critics have chalked this up to Anglo-Frankish rivalry, but the English long ago welcomed French cuisine, and the recent criticism of French culinary standards isn't limited to the English. For some time, restaurant rankings sympathetic to the French have come under attack from more globally minded food critics.

French cuisine, a marriage of science and art, has long been considered the standard of fine dining. In fact, French cuisine, in many respects, is fine dining -- at least in the Western world. The French so established culinary standards that no other country in the West remains untouched by French techniques and traditions.

Is it thus unsurprising that the influential Michelin and Mobil Travel (now the Forbes Travel) restaurant guides have given preference to French restaurants? Regardless, this understandable bias (especially considering that Michelin itself is French!) often comes under scrutiny. The New York Times and others have repeatedly criticized Michelin for its bias in favor of French restaurants. The UrbanSpoon, complaining about the lack of "ethnic diversity" in the Michelin rankins, notes that only one Chinese, one Indian, one Latin American and one Thai restaurant have received Michelin stars. The underlying narrative seems to be that European cuisine must make way for the dishes of Africa, Asia, India, and Mesoamerica.

Although political correctness can easily be attributed to multiculturalism and anti-Western tendencies, this phenomenon seems to have an underlying biological basis as well. Simply, French cuisine possesses a high dairy content, and most of the world is lactose intolerant.

Only Europeans (and a handful of others) have evolved the genetic disposition for lactose tolerance.  As stated at the website Food Reactions:

The prevalence of primary lactose deficiency varies according to race. In a review by Gudmand-Hoyer E in published on The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1994), it is lowest in Scandinavia and Northwest Europe (3-8%) and close to 100% in most of Southeast Asia.

Based on estimates, those with a high degree of lactose tolerance (where lactose intolerance is 30 percent or less) include most of those of European ancestry and a handful of others. Those with lactose intolerance levels at 40 percent or more include Africans, Amerindians, Asians, Indians, et al.

While it's perfectly understandable that most people around the world wouldn't want to eat something their bodies cannot comfortably digest, it'll be catastrophe if the West altered its own standards to please the lactose-intolerant Rest. Will French cuisine be the next casualty of multiculturalism? Many are already quite sensitive about this Western injustice, even going so far as to say that "lactose intolerant" is a "racist slur."