Christianity And Civilization.

Note: This editorial is from the British catholic weekly 'The Tablet'. It is a succinct account of the cultural problem in the West...ignorance of the history and culture of Western Civilization. The politicians and 'educators' over the past 40 years are to blame. The problem can be solved.






Christianity and civilization
Editorial 20 May 2006.


The Da Vinci Code rebuttal unit, set up to refute the view that there is a grain of truth in the novel and film of that name, has come up with a public opinion survey that plumbs the depth of human ignorance about Christianity. At face value, the finding that three out of five British people think there is “some truth” in the Code’s theory that Jesus was married and had children by Mary Magdalene is a measure of the public’s sheer gullibility and lack of knowledge. It is a pity that the survey did not also ask, “Have you ever thought about this before in your life?” or even “Had you even heard of Mary Magdalene before The Da Vinci Code came along?” The fact is that for an increasing proportion of the population, the more so the younger they are, religion is a blank piece of paper on which anyone may write anything. And then tear it up again; for what also characterises such people is the opinion that organised religion is so irrelevant to ordinary life that whether it is true or not has nothing to do with them.

And that is the real problem exposed by the Da Vinci affair. Western civilisation does not stand or fall on the proposition that the Order of Sion was a genuine medieval Church institution (as the Code suggests) or a twentieth-century fraud. But it does stand or fall by the proposition that the infinite worth of each individual, being God-given, is non-negotiable; that the construction of civilisation cannot ignore God’s plan for humanity; and that the human race is invited into a unique relationship with God in and through the person of Jesus Christ. These are fundamentals. Had there never been a belief system like Christianity, there would never have been the flowering of European (now called Western) civilisation that has spread its profound influence to the four corners of the world.

It is the argument of a new book by Chris (now Lord) Smith, former cabinet minister in Tony Blair’s Government, that at least a minimal commitment to Christianity is a necessary condition for Western culture to survive. Lord Smith, a keen Christian Socialist, argues in Suicide of the West (which he co-authored with Richard Koch) that this is also the source of the belief in the possibility of progress that is one of the West’s most enduring ideological strengths. It follows that such a civilisation will eventually wither and die if it is cut off from its roots in the Christian religion.

Pope Benedict XVI has already made similar concerns one of the themes of his papacy. The danger revealed by the response of some of the Church’s hierarchy to The Da Vinci Code is that the big guns are facing the wrong way, shooting at small foes that do not really matter and neglecting the real enemy. It is time they took on the secularists, for whom ignorance of religion is bliss. A major public education effort to remedy the public’s lack of understanding of Christianity, without any evangelistic ulterior motives, would reap rich dividends in strengthening its place in British society and culture. And it would reap dividends for Britain as a whole, by renewing the foundations on which everything else rests.



Comment: Australian governments must correct this problem by introducing a proper 'Civics' curriculum to all schools, public and private. This would encompass a proper study, in primary and secondary school, of the last 2500 years of Western culture. This is based on the three key Western civilizational structures: Greek philosophical rationality and the history of ideas; Judeo-Christian spirituality and the history of Jewish and Christian religious ideas; Roman Law and the history of the growth of law, personal freedom and parliamentary government.

Leave comparative civics to University. The students in our schools should use their time in primary and secondary school to acquire a strong foundation in understanding the system in the country where they will be living all their lives and raising their children.

Learning about Arabia or Nepal or China is useful. Australians wont be living in those countries, they will be living here. Leave other civilizations to later study, for those particularly interested.

Is anyone awake in Canberra?