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And those who suggest that these communist regimes were quasi-religious in their zeal and, therefore, provide further evidence of the pernicious effect of religion have abandoned sincere investigation into the problem and have settled on crass anti-religious apologetics. Better to state the obvious: religion or irreligion can inspire hate. The claim that religion has started ‘most of the wars’ of history ought to cause embarrassment to thinking people. And yet it remains, as David Bentley Hart points out, “the sort of remark that sets many heads sagely nodding in recognition of what seems an undeniable truth. Such sentiments have become so much a part of the conventional grammar of “enlightened” scepticism that they are scarcely ever subjected to serious scrutiny.”1 1. David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies. Yale University Press, 2009, 5. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
Kicking, kneeing, and choke-holds are part of the show, as is fighters pouncing on opponents who have gone down, to bash them more. There is no shortage of the promised blood on the canvas. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Peter Fitzsimons, himself a former international rugby player and no shrinking violet, could barely contain his distaste for the event. ‘… it looks like we might have moved into an age when tens of thousands of people no longer want cups of tea. They want buckets of blood,’ he wrote. It does feel like a different era. I’ve always enjoyed watching the battles of fiercely contested sport. Even boxing, at its highest level, carries something of the noble pursuit in my mind. The folklore around Ali and Foreman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ still gives me goose bumps. But in its various permutations this cage fighting, looks more Colosseum than MCG. And the reaction of the people in the stands is what interests me the most. Curiosity might make it hard to turn away when we see a car crash, but what might we say about an impulse to revel in the carnage? Perhaps I’m being alarmist and melodramatic. To suggest that the arrival of UFC is a harbinger of the West going to hell in a hand basket might be taking things too far. But I can’t help thinking of the great historian Arnold Toynbee and his description of the common characteristics of great civilisations on their last legs. Rarely are they overrun, according to Toynbee, but rather they commit a kind of cultural suicide. Falling to a sense of abandon and lawlessness, once great peoples become adrift, unable to anchor themselves in any universal ground of justice, truth or reason. One of a number of characteristics Toynbee identifies is escapism and retreat into distraction and entertainment. Presumably that becomes more extreme the further down that path you progress. He talks about an indiscriminate acceptance of anything and everything - "an act of self-surrender to the melting pot ... in Religion and Literature and Language and Art as well as ... Manners and Customs." As I watched footage of jubilant fans leaving the arena sated from the experience of socially acceptable lavish violence, I couldn’t help thinking of a culture pushing further into a void; of something rotten in its spirit. An implosion. Or am I missing something? (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
Or take the iconic Northern Ireland conflict. It is widely known that the thirty-year ‘troubles’ led to the deaths of fewer than 4000 people. Again, one death ‘in the name of Christ’ is a blasphemy, but how did the Northern Ireland conflict ever come to symbolize the ferocity of the church? Compare it with the thoroughly ‘secular’ French Revolution. As many people were executed in the name of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ in a single year of the Revolution (the ‘Terror’ of September 1793 – July 1794) as were killed in the entire three decades of the ‘troubles’2. 1. This comes on the authority of Edward Peters, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading authority on the topic. See his Inquisition. University of California Press, 1989. 2. See William Doyle, The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less)
Ultimately there is a nagging question of whether even our best has any meaning if there is no God in which to situate and root our individual and collective stories. Perhaps surprisingly, it offers a positive vision made all the more conspicuous by the backdrop of horror in which it is placed. Read my article on the book here or listen to a podcast discussion I had with Greg Clarke. (We ask that you please keep all comments to 200 words or less) |
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