Profound Christian Witness in a Profoundly anti-Christian Society

A. N. Wilson, British academic (and Young Fogey), who once "wrote a book, entitled Jesus, which endeavoured to establish that he had been no more than a messianic prophet who had well and truly failed, and died," announces his return to the faith with a powerful essay — Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity.

He calls his "a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious," whose "universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti." Of his return to the faith, he says, "Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block," naming by name the "cutting-edge novelists," "foul-mouthed, self-satisfied TV presenters," "and the smug, tieless architects of so much television output."

He mentions "in contrast to those ephemeral pundits of today... companions in belief such Christians as Dostoevsky, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson and all the saints, known and unknown, throughout the ages." He rightly says that "materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational," suggesting as it does that "we are just a collection of chemicals," providing "no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat."

"The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are," he concludes. "J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music. Most of the greatest writers and thinkers of the past 1,500 years have believed it."

[link via Crunchy Con and Catholic and Enjoying It!]