Why this Blog?

Christian civilization is being attacked both from inside and outside its traditional borders. It seems to be that Marxist ideas hold unusual sway with western intelligentsia.



Marx had called religion, the "opium of the oppressed". Actually, this is a condensed version of what he actually said. But it does capture his basic idea pretty well. In his view, religion must be done away with for it is a painkiller and not a cure for the disease (for him capitalism) that afflicts the world.



Regardless of how much members of the Left adhere to his ideas, it seems that the secular left in the West often portray religion especially Christianity in a negative light. While Christianity is relatively strong in the US, it lacks and elite that defends it.



What I would like to promote is an elite that recognises that Judeo-Christian civilization has been beneficial for mankind and is willing to defend it. This is more urgent in Europe where the influx of Muslim immigration threatens to turn it into Eurabia. The strange thing about the Left is that they are reflexively defensive of Islam.



I would like to coin a new word - the Christianist - which I define as someone who sees good in Judeo-Christian civilization and wants to preserve it. There are two groups. Those who are believing Christians are automatically Christianists because they presumably want to preserve Christian civilization. But there is a second group.


A example of this group would be Oriana Fallaci who called herself an atheist Christian. She sees value in preserving Christian civilization against encroaching Islamization. Another would be Jurgen Habermas (another atheist) who said:

"Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity].We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else ispostmodern chatter."

For the Christian believer, I hope to provide you with a resource to defend your civilization against ignorant critics. In time to come, I hope to accumulate a series of articles explaining how the Christian faith has changed the world for the better. The first article is on how Christianity inspired the modern concept of human rights.

But it is the second group that I want to reach out to. I want to convince the post-Christians that Christian civilization is worth preserving.

As in my other blog, 'Democracy Reform', I welcome contributions from others. Those who consider themselves Christianists, please click the 'comment' button and write a short remark.

Christianity and Human Rights

In the year 1321, there was an obscure quarrel between Franciscan monks and Pope John the 22nd.

The Franciscans were monks who took a vow of poverty. They believed that Christ and his apostles owned no property and wanted to do the same. But they had a problem. What about the monastery they lived in? How can they fulfill their vow of poverty when the order owned a fine monastery. In 1245, Pope Innocent IV helped them out by decreeing that all their properties belonged to the church but gave the Franciscans the right to use them.

This went along till Pope John the 22nd thought all this was nonsense. He argued that the property for all practical purposes belong to the Franciscan Order and that it is impossible for anyone to claim not to own any property. If you ate a piece of bread, you cannot claim that you do not own it but are merely making use of it. Once consumed, its gone and no one else can make use of the bread.

William of Orkham was in Avignon at the time and was tasked by his fellow Franciscans to refute the Pope. I won't go into the tedious arguments which soon spilt over to other issues. Those interested can refer to the excellent book, "The Idea of Natural Rights", by Brian Tierney.

In his arguments, William of Orkham attacked the doctrine of papal power. The Pope claimed that people owed him obedience even if they consider what he asked them to do was wrong. This included the pesky Franciscans. So if he decided that the property belonged to them, they must shut up and accept it. But getting the Franciscans to accept ownership of a valuable property was like getting them to swallow poison.

They had taken a vow of poverty and owning property would mean breaking their vow - a terrible sin. Orkham responded furouisly. Accusing the Pope of heresy, he said that such a doctrine would reduce them all to slavery. He put his views in an essay called, "Breviloquium de potestate tyrannica".

Quoting the Bible (James 1:25; Galatians 2:4; 2 Corinthians 3:17), he argued that Man was born free and possessed God given rights which even the Pope cannot take away.

The words he actually used was Ius Naturale or Natural Rights. Just as there are a vocabulary of meanings, there is also a vocabulary of assumptions associated with the meanings. In the pre-Darwinian world it was taken for granted that nature was created by God. Thus natural rights was understood to mean God given rights.

Brian Tierney (see page 185 of his book) wrote:

"One could make a good case for regarding the Breviloguium as the first
essentially rights based treatise on political theory."

The case for natural (ie God given) rights was later expanded by theologian Francisco de Vitoria in the early 16 century to include the Indians in the newly discovered Americas. He was successful in his debates in Spain but his work unfortunately did not make much difference on the ground in the New World. Another passionate defender of Indian rights was Dominican monk Las Casas who actually spent time in the New World and saw the horrors inflicted on the Indians.


But the idea of Natural (ie God given) Rights lived on through the centuries till it finally bore solid fruits in the American Revolution. The idea of God given rights can be found in the first two lines of the US Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

From their perspective, man is the most special of God's creation. Alone of all God's creatures, he is endowed with a soul and is made in God's image. Thus man must be accorded special rights and held to a higher standards than animals.

This is in sharp contrast to the philosophy that sprang up about 100 years later on the assumption that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist. In the 19th century, following the publication of Darwin's theory of Evolution, a group of European atheists thought that human morality and ethics needed an overhaul. The leaders of this group were Haeckl, Carneri, Stocker, Chamberlain, Ploetz, Galton and others.

For them, Man is no longer a special creature endowed with special God given rights. There is nothing special to differentiate Man from other animals. He does not possess a soul nor is he made in the image of God as Christians believe. Man is simply a product of chance and is subject to the Laws of Nature. Their ideas are well described in the excellent book, "From Darwin to Hitler", by Richard Wiekart.

Nature is not the creation of a benevolent God but a blind impersonal force which gives survival only to the fittest. Therefore Christian compassion for the weak is misplaced and is in fact harmful for it ensures the survival of the unfit. Man need not be held to a higher standard than other animals in nature and deserves no special rights.

Thus if one is born with some disability, it is right for him or her to perish, as would happen if we are still living in the jungle. Christian compassion allows the weak to survive and even extoll them. In the beatitudes, Christ has said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

For them, it is the fittest and not the meek who shall inherit the earth. Death of the unfit is something to be welcomed. Moral virtues, like altruism , courage, diligence and honesty, are also heriditary, in their view. Darwin, his cousin Galton and Haeckl shared this view.

Thus they divided people between superior and inferior ones. The superior ones were the healthy, the intelligent and the virtuous. The inferior ones were of course the reverse. From here, it was a small step to classifying humanity into superior and inferior races. It was the superior races - the most intelligent and virtuous - that could improve the world.

To Europeans of the late 19th century, it seemed that the white race was the most superior. Wars and genocide were seen as simply part of the Darwinian struggle for survival. It is not something shameful as Christian morality would have it, but actually something good for it gives living room (lebensraum) for the best members of the human race. This kind of thinking led to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Thus the Second World War was not just a clash between the Alliance against the Axis powers. It was not just a war between democracy against dictatorship. It was also a war of civilizations - between Judeo-Christian one against a materialistic atheistic one.

America, because it internalized this concept of God given rights, is in my view the summit of Judeo-Christian civilization. The world is better off today because Judeo-Christian civilization won the Second World War. Today, the concept of God given rights are enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights which would not be the case if Hitler won.

Both trajectory of ideas (the Christian one vs the materialistic atheistic one) are logical based on their starting assumptions. One assumed the Judeo-Christian God exists while the other does not. One led to a more humane world while the other led to blood and death. Perhaps, some atheists are begining to see the value of Christian civilization.

Philosopher and atheist, Jurgen Habermas wrote:

"Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks
of western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity].
We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is
postmodern chatter."