The Catholic Weekly 4 July 2021

catholicweekly.com.au 24 NEWS 4, July, 2021 tity of human life is a Ju- deo-Christian notion which might very easily not survive [the disappearance of] Ju- deo-Christian civilisation.” The American social sci- entist and agnostic Charles Murray, too, told me in an in- terview that he believes the American republic is unlikely to survive without a resur- gence of Christianity. Echoing John Adams, he noted that the Constitution of the United States and the liberties it up- holds can only govern a reli- gious people. Historian TomHolland’s magnificent Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Re- made the World , published in 2019, makes a similar case. For years, Holland—an ag- nostic—wrote compelling his- tories of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but he observed that their societies were rife with casual, socially-accept- ed cruelty towards the weak, rape, and sexual abuse to- wards the massive slave class as an unquestioned way of life, and the mass extermina- tion of enemies as a matter of course. These peoples and their ethics, Hollands writes, seemed utterly foreign to him. It was Christianity, Holland concluded, that changed all that in a revolution so com- plete that even critiques of Christianity must borrow precepts fromChristianity to Intellectual atheism ebbs R ecently, I spent some time on the phone with Niall Ferguson, the Scot- tish historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stan- ford University’s Hoover Insti- tution, for a review I was writ- ing of his latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe . In the first chapter, Ferguson re- fers several times to religion as “magical thinking,” and I asked him if he had his own metaphysical framework for understanding events, or, if he did not, which one he pre- ferred people to have. His re- sponse was fascinating. “I was brought up an athe- ist — I didn’t become one,” he said. “I regard atheism as the religious faith I happened to be brought up in. It is, of course, as much a faith as Christianity or Islam— and I have the Calvinist brand, because my parents left the Church of Scotland. I was brought up, essentially, in a Calvinist ethical framework but with no God. This had its benefits — I was encour- aged to think in a very critical way about religion and also about science, but I’ve come to see as a historian that you can’t base a society on that. Indeed, atheism, particularly in its militant forms, is really a very dangerous metaphysical framework for a society.” “I know I can’t achieve religious faith,” he went on, “but I do think we should go to church. We don’t have, I don’t think, an evolved eth- ical system. I don’t buy the idea that evolution alone gets us to be moral. It can modi- fy behaviour, but there’s just too much evidence that in the raw, when the constraints of civilisation fall away, we be- have in the most savage way to one another. I’m a big be- liever that with the inherited wisdom of a two-millennia old religion, we’ve got a pret- ty good framework to work with.” For one of the most promi- nent historians in the world— himself an agnostic—to say that we should go to church is rather startling, but Fergu- son’s sentiments also appear to be part of a growing trend. The late philosopher Sir Rog- er Scruton began attending church himself despite strug- gling with belief, regularly playing the organ at All Saints’ in Garsdon. His secular friends say his faith remained cultural; other friends were not so sure. What we do know is that he thought Christianity was in many ways the soul of Western civilisation, and that the uniquely Christian con- cept of forgiveness was utterly indispensable to its survival. Scruton’s friend Doug- las Murray, the conservative writer who was raised in the Church before leaving it as an adult, has occasionally re- ferred to himself as a “Chris- tian atheist.” In a recent dis- cussion with theologian N.T. Wright, he described himself as “an uncomfortable agnos- tic who recognises the virtues and the values the Christian faith has brought,” and not- ed that he is actually irritated by the way the Church of En- gland is fleeing from its inher- itance, “giving up its jewels” such as “the King James Bible andThe Book of Common Prayer” in exchange for pro- gressive pieties. “My fear is that the Church is not doing what so many of us on the outside want it to do, which is preaching its gos- pel, asserting its truths and its claims,” he said. “When one sees it falling into all the latest tropes one thinks well, that’s another thing gone, just like absolutely everything else in the era. I’m a disappointed non-adherent.” Murray believes that Chris- tianity is essential because secularists have been thus far totally incapable of creat- ing an ethic of equality that matches the concept that all human beings are created in the image of God. In a col- umn in The Spectator , he not- ed that post-Christian society has three options. The first is to abandon the idea that all human life is precious. “An- other is to work furiously to nail down an atheist version of the sanctity of the individ- ual.” And if that doesn’t work? “Then there is only one oth- er place to go. Which is back to faith, whether we like it or not.” On a recent podcast, he was more blunt: “The sanc- My fear is that the Church is not doing what so many of us on the outside want it to do, which is preaching its gospel, asserting its truths and its claims.” Douglas Murray, self-described ‘Christian atheist’ do so. (Without Christiani- ty, he writes, “no one would have gotten woke.”) He de- fended this thesis brilliant- ly in a debate on the subject “Did Christianity give us our human values?” with atheist philosopher A.C. Grayling, who seemed actively irritat- ed by the idea. Not so long ago, unbelievers like the late Christopher Hitchens claimed that “religion poisons ev- erything”—a sentiment that appears to be retreating as we advance further into the post-Christian era. Hitchens frequently claimed to be not an athe- ist, but an “anti-theist”—he didn’t believe in God, and he was glad that he did not. It is fascinating to see intellectuals come forward with precise- ly the opposite sentiment— they do not believe, but they somehow want to believe. The psychologist Jordan Peterson, who speaks about Christian- ity often, is a good example of this. Discussing the his- toricity of the Christian sto- ry with Jonathan Pageau, he said, fighting back tears: “I probably believe that, but I’m amazed at my own belief and I don’t understand that.” He went on: “[I]n some sense, I believe it’s undeniable. You know, we have narrative sense of the world. For me that’s been the world of morality, that’s the world that tells us how to act. It’s real, we treat it like it’s real. It’s not the objective world, but the narrative and the ob- jective world touch. And the ultimate example of that in principle is supposed to be Christ. But I don’t know what to do with that – it seems to me to be oddly plausible. But I still don’t know what to make of it. Partly because it’s too terrifying a reality to fully be- lieve. I don’t even know what would happen to you if you fully believed it.” Not so long ago, the athe- ists who retreated to their Dar- winian towers and bricked themselves up to fire arrows at the faithful wanted to be there. Their intellectual silos were a refuge from faith be- cause they didn’t want Chris- tianity to be true. They hated it and thought we’d be better off without it. Like Hitchens, they were thrilled to find argu- ments that permitted them to reject it. Increasingly, some in- tellectuals from across the dis- ciplines —history, literature, psychology, philosophy —are gazing out of what was once a refuge and wishing that, some how, they could believe it. They have understood that Christianity is both indispens- able and beautiful, but their intellectual constraints pre- vent many of them from em- bracing it as true. Viewing Western civilisa- tion with its Christian soul cut out, many are now will- ing to say: “We need Christ.” What they are unable, thus far, to say, is: “I need Christ.” But the political must become personal. Peterson appears to understand that — and is awestruck by the reality of it. For now, historians like Niall Ferguson recognise that Christianity is a fundamental bulwark of the fragile civilisa- tion we inhabit. “I think the notion that we can deal with these arrows of outrageous fortune without some kind of established and time-honoured set of con- solations is almost certainly wrong,” he told me. “I’m one of these people who didn’t come to atheism by choice, and I’ve almost come out of it on the basis of historical study. The biggest disasters that we likely face are actual- ly related to totalitarianism, because that’s the lesson of the 20th century. Pandem- ics killed a lot of people in the 20th century, but totalitarian- ism killed more.” “It disturbs me that in so many ways, totalitarianism is gaining ground today,” Fergu- son said. “Totalitarianismwas bad for many reasons, and one of the manifestations of its badness was its attack on reli- gion. When I see totalitarian- ism gaining ground not only in China but in subtle ways in our own society, that seems to be the disaster we really need to ward off. Why am I a con- servative and not just a classi- cal liberal? Because classical liberalismwon’t stop wokeism and totalitarianism. It’s not strong enough. Ultimately, we need the inherited ideas of a civilisation and defences against that particular form of disaster.” The survival of Christianity is essential for the survival of the West. The bad news is that this realisation comes when the day is far spent. The Good News is simpler. “Christen- domhas had a series of rev- olutions and in each of them Christianity has died,” G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Ev- erlasting Man . “Christianity has diedmany times and ris- en again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” - mercatornet.com Jonathon Van Maren is a freelance writer and communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. His work has appeared in National Review, The Fed- eralist, National Post, and elsewhere. His book, The Culture War , was published in 2016. St Peter’s stands overlooking the Tiber River in Rome. A new kind of atheism is taking shape - not the old reject-God-at-all-costs model but a new variety which recognises the remarkable contribution Christianity has made to human life. PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER CZERMAK/UNSPLASH A growing number of leading serious intellectuals are recognising the need for Christianity’s resurrection - but can’t quite bring the faith to life in themselves Jonathon Van Maren Canadian superstar psycholo- gist Jordan Peterson: publicly an atheist - but one clearly struggling with the person of Jesus and Christianity’s legacy. Is he on the brink of conver- sion? PHOTO: RELIGIONNEWS.COM NEWS