Thursday, December 22, 2005
Amen
The Telegraph of London is rapidly becoming my favorite newspaper in the whole world. Consider this article in defense of Christmas by an atheist.
So, in common with many who have suffered from the secularisation of the European mind since the mid-19th century, I must make my way down the Cresta Run to the grave without the considerable comfort of religion. However, as I do so, I rejoice wholeheartedly as an atheist that I live in a Christian culture, and I know that, in that undeniably hypocritical act, I am not alone.I love this one
They might merit some of our pity: if they shut themselves off from the Christian culture, whether from the beauty of the liturgy, the serenity of church music, or from admiring the reticulated tracery of an east window, then their lives can only be deeply impoverished.This is telling
The modern Left exercises a militant anti-Christianity not so much because of a cultural cringe in the face of immigrant minorities, but because of its general wish to dismantle history. Once you have erased Christianity, you have erased (or at least made appear irrelevant) much of the past 1,400 years. "Modernisation" in all its political forms is about the tabula rasa, and there are few ways of creating one of those so effective as the destruction of the traditional faith.And he concludes
All of us, whatever our faith or lack of it, should see in Christmas a reaffirmation of a way of life that a few others wish to destroy, and the wonder of our benign sense of atavism. Atheist, Muslim and Jew can be part of this civilised, free-thinking resistance movement. And perhaps, if enough of us express this feeling now, our political leaders will feel it safe to jump aboard the bandwagon, with their usual lack of shame, in time for next Christmas.Here, here -- now, who in this country has the gumption to write something like that? I would, but I lack the credentials.
