Is there any case for religion? Christianity, Islam, atheism and my search for balance and truth

And yet, of course, there is the other side to the story. The tales of love and compassion, of giving and of sacrifice, of suffering even unto death, all done genuinely by Christians in the name of their Lord. Since we started the downside in England, let us return there for the upside. The earliest antislavery protests started in the New World in the late seventeenth century.

Soon they spread to England, and like many of the American protesters, the earliest antislavery campaigners were members of the Religious Society of Friends, Quakers. The first formal movement was the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founded in London in 1787. Nine of the twelve founding members were Quakers, the others Anglicans. As is well known, certainly to every schoolchild in Britain, parliamentary leadership was taken over by William Wilberforce (17591833), a man who had undergone an extreme conversion to evangelical Christianity and whose whole life was dedicated to what he thought was the directive of his faith. A member of the British parliament, he began introducing bills for the abolition of the slave trade, explicitly basing his actions on his Christian commitment. Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonou to this country (Speech before the House of Commons, April 18, 1791, in Clarkson 2010, 448). It took forty years for slavery to be abolished through the British Empire, and final success was only achieved days after the death of Wilberforce. But without the efforts of these deeply committed Christians, the abolition of slavery in the empire would not have occurred as soon (Hochschild 2006).

Wilberforce and his fellow campaignerswho included the Wedgwood family of pottery fame (to which the mother and wife of Charles Darwin belonged)could be dreadful prigs at times, as well as often showing a remarkable lack of interest in the well-being of their own native working population (Desmond and Moore 2009). Yet they were not alone in their Christian-driven urges to reform. Elizabeth Fry (17801845), another Quaker, labored incessantly for the betterment of the lives and well-being of women in prison. She also founded shelters for the homeless and started a training school for nurses (some of whom were to go to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale). Faced with criticism for her efforts as a womana role that stemmed naturally from the equality of the sexes in Quakerismshe found a formidable ally late in life in her new monarch, Victoria. The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (who so hated German theology) was a notable evangelical and social reformer, one who started by working for the reformation of how the mentally disabled were treated and then went on to play a major role in the improvement of the conditions of workers, especially children, in factories and related occupations. The Mines and Colliers Act of 1842 finally banned women and children from going down the mines, and boys under ten years old were also barred. It took another thirty years before Shaftesbury was able to ensure the elimination of boy chimney sweeps (like Tom in Charles Kingsleys Water Babies), a particularly vile occupation, dangerous in itselfa popular way of getting the wretches to move on was to light a fire under themand with horrible effects later in life, notably scrotal cancer.

Do we find parallels, stories of light and goodness in the other areas I showed the dark and evil side to religion? Of course we do. The story of Pastor Martin Niemller (18921984) is well known (Evans 2005). A First World War hero, he was a sailor in the U-boats, and he followed his father in becoming a Lutheran pastor. From a conservative background, initially he welcomed the rise of the Nazis, but soon he fell afoul of them over the Aryan policies, becoming one of the founders of the Confessing Church. For his outspoken opposition, he spent much of the Third Reich in concentration camps, Sachsenhausen and Dachau. He is best known for his famous statement that he and his fellows had stood aside and let the forces of evil have their waythey came for the communists, the trade unionists, the Jews, the Jehovahs Witnesses, the incurablesand then? Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. Pastor Dietrich Bonhffer (19061945) is an even greater Christian hero. Another founding member of the Confessing Church, he returned from abroad to work alongside his fellow Christians. Imprisoned by the Nazis, he died strangled by piano wire for his involvement in plots against Hitler. Always driven forward by his faith, Bonhffer explicitly saw the imitation of Christ here on earth as our first, foremost, and indeed only obligation. Deeply influenced by the Pietism movement in German thought and tradition, he argued that only by engaging as Christians within the world can we show our true allegiance to our savior. Among those greatly influenced by Bonhffer was Martin Luther King, Jr. And finally, if you want a third personor groupthere is the story almost too painful to recount of Sophie Scholl (19211943) and the White Rose group (Newborn and Dumbach 2007). A small band of ChristiansSophie was Lutheran but much moved by Catholic writing and preachingthey distributed antiwar pamphlets at the University of Munich in 1942 and 1943. Inevitably, they were discovered, condemned to death, and executed. As she walked to the guillotine, her last words were: How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action? (Hanser 1979).

And so to the Catholic Church. Does one talk of Vincent de Paul (15811660), who founded charities, who built hospitals, who ransomed galley slaves from the Arabs? Does one mention the great teaching orders, most notably the Jesuits, who founded no less than twenty-eight universities and colleges in America, including Fordham, Georgetown, and Gonzaga? Do not forget Dorothy Day (18971980), devout Catholic convert, who served the poor and homeless during the Depression. Or does one speak of Maximillian Kolbe (18941941), the Franciscan friar who calmly took the place of a condemned prisoner and died in Auschwitz? Take the Christian Brothers. An Irish congregation, they have spread across the world, founding schools in all of the many countries in which they find themselves. In Canada, rightly, for the abuses that they perpetrated at an orphanage in Newfoundland, they have a dreadful reputation. (All too typically, the archdiocese had been aware of what was happening and simply covered things up until they exploded into the public domain.) Put this against the story of a man I am proud to call my friend, Michael Matthews (b. 1946), who virtually single-handedly has reformed science education by bringing to bear the insights of the history and philosophy of science. He was raised by a single mother in Sydney, Australia, and when he was on the verge of adolescence, the headmaster of the local Christian Brothers school announced that (without cost) Michael would be enrolled as a pupil the next Monday. And he was, and his life was launchedthrough the dedication of men for whom the life of a Christian was reason enough. No doubt telling this story will embarrass Michael, but I do so to deflect interest in my own parallel story involving the kindness of members of the Religious Society of Friends. My education was paid for by Kit Kat bars, produced by the Quaker philanthropists, the Rowntree family.

Does the Good Outweigh the Bad?

Christians will not be surprised by any of this, the bad and the good. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate (Romans 7: 15). We are made in the image of God, but we are deeply tainted by sin. But how are we to evaluate things? Does the good outweigh the bad, or is it the other way? Richard Dawkins will say that the bad far outweighs the good. Many Christians (not all) will say the good outweighs the bad. They will point out also that we are not just dealing with morality, but with culture generally, and this includes the arts. Could one imagine a world without the cathedral at Chartres, without a Raphael Madonna (or for that matter without a Grunewald Crucifixion), without the Bach Passions? Dawkins responds that there is no need of religion for any of this: the B Minor Mass, the Matthew Passion, these happen to be on a religious theme, but they might as well not be. Theyre beautiful music on a great poetic theme, but we could still go on enjoying them without believing in any of that supernatural rubbish (this was a series of talks and debates organized by the Science Network in association with the Crick-Jacobs Center at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, November 57, 2006). I confess that I am not entirely certain about this, although admittedly a purely secular and worthwhile culture is possible. My favorite opera is Mozarts Cosi Fan Tutte, which is about as non-Christian and Enlightenment cynical as it is possible to imagine. I find Parsifal very tedious, and the quasi-Christian mysticism is a major part of what makes it so.

The simple fact is that one is asking an impossible and unanswerable question. What kind of calculus is one to use to weigh Bloody Mary killing three hundred Protestants against the sacrifice of Sophie Scholl in Munich in 1943? Somehow, a simple body count seems highly inappropriate. How does one measure those going to their death absolutely secure in their belief in the hereafter and of Gods love and praise against someone who dies worried and scared and not completely sure, or at least was that way until the last momentsomeone like Blanche in Poulencs Dialogues of the Carmelites? For that matter, how do you measure the death of Sophie on the guillotine against the death of Jesus on the cross? Alvin Plantinga is convinced that the latter is overwhelmingly the greatest act of moral goodness ever. I am not so sure. New Atheists will argue that such calculations are irrelevant. As the example of one child suffering is argument enough against the existence of the Christian God, so the sexual abuse of one child is argument enough against the value of religion. The evils of religion are just too awful, and religion must be abandoned. This is the morally right thing to do. Others, not necessarily all Christians, will argue that evil things are going to happen whatever the state of societythink of what happened in the atheistic societies of Russia and Chinaand that perhaps on balance religion ameliorates this. The aim is not to eliminate religion but to improve it.

What about Islam?

Are we not missing the elephant in the room? The focus in this book is the Christian faith. Agree if you must that on the evil question it is a draw, or at least that there are arguments for and arguments against. But Christianity is not the only religious faith, and no contemporary discussion of whether religion is a bad thing would be complete without at least a brief look at the religion of Islam. Since the attack on the World Trade Centers towers, 9/11, a major theme running through the writings of those opposed to religion is that Islam presents a special and particular danger. So insistent is this theme that critics have suggested that a form of Islamophobia is at work, because surely no religion could be this bad, and, even if it is, the skimpy research (to be generous) of the atheists precludes them from having an opinion.

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Is there any case for religion? Christianity, Islam, atheism and my search for balance and truth