The Narthex
Soul of the West
The 'fusion' of Israel, Greece, and Rome has benefitted the whole of humanity
By David Daintree | April 5th 2021 7:05 PMGuardian journalist Van Badham has defined Western civilization in purely negative and derogatory terms: “a racist colonial project to crush, change, enslave, eradicate or genocidally erase other cultures.” It is difficult to regard a person who could write such a thing as quite sane. Christopher Dawson insisted that the Christian…
READ FULL BLOG POSTCredulous Christians
Certain secular beliefs demand much credulousness on the part of their 'believers'
By David Daintree | March 18th 2021 6:51 PMThe goal of Australia’s Dawson Centre, of which I am director, is not evangelization: that is a task for others to undertake. Our role is to revive and justify the Christian intellectual tradition, to argue for the essentially rational nature of belief based squarely upon Faith and Reason. Faith is not at…
READ FULL BLOG POSTRadicalized Youth
It is foolish to believe that dangerous mass movements 'can’t happen here'
By David Daintree | March 5th 2021 3:05 PMWith apologies for being prescriptive, I recommend that you watch the two-part documentary on the Hitler Youth movement, Hitler-Jugend. Its impact is terrifying, and it uses color footage that most of us have never seen before. But the important thing is that it demonstrates unforgettably the power and the naivety…
READ FULL BLOG POSTCOVID & Straw Men
National media are not meeting their obligation to inform the public about grave matters
By David Daintree | February 11th 2021 9:26 PMOn February 9th Australia’s SBS TV News ran a short segment that purported to allay some people’s concerns about the COVID vaccine. I cannot find a recording of the broadcast, but an SBS News article called "The most common myths about the coronavirus vaccine - and why they aren’t true"…
READ FULL BLOG POSTDeaths, in Context
We have a duty to be truthful in evaluating all the things that happened to us in 2020
By David Daintree | January 22nd 2021 3:16 PMOn average nearly 150,000 people die throughout the world every single day, from all causes, amounting to a total of more than 55 million each year. Those totals should be constantly in our minds as a sort of yardstick or backdrop to our consideration of the numbers reported slain by…
READ FULL BLOG POSTChristmas Joy
This holy day inspires wonder in believers and non-believers alike
By David Daintree | December 14th 2020 3:09 PMWhen you strive to defend the achievements of Christian civilization you encounter an awful lot of kickback, a lot of angry hostility towards Christian culture. It can be dispiriting. But Christmas is a time for absolute and entirely positive joyfulness. It is not the chief Christian festival, for that honor is reserved to Easter, the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTBetter History, More Honesty
Why don't protesters focus on the 40 million slaves in the world today?
By David Daintree | December 1st 2020 3:36 PMTaking 25 years as an average human generation, a quick calculation shows that each of you has had 4,096 ancestors in the 300 years since 1720. This fact is obscured by our obsession with patrilinear reckoning, which counts only the male line. Not only is that sexist, but it conceals…
READ FULL BLOG POSTOn 'Christian Soldiers’
Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture
By David Daintree | October 29th 2020 3:17 PMEngagement in the "culture wars," or striving to maintain the good name of Western and Christian civilization, runs the risk of pushing us over a line, forgetting our primary purpose and losing the plot. Someone once defined a fanatic as a person who, having once forgotten his original purpose, redoubles…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA Nation’s Psyche
COVID seems to have done to Australia what no other calamity did
By David Daintree | October 13th 2020 7:35 PMEvery nation cherishes an image of itself. We are often told that Australia’s was formed on the beaches of Gallipoli, but it’s older and more complex than that. Long before the Australian union, the people of the Australian colonies developed self-images of their own, in great variety. Few directly referred…
READ FULL BLOG POSTPresentism and Missionaries
On judging past actions by current standards
By David Daintree | October 12th 2020 5:01 PMIn liberal Western circles it has long been axiomatic that Christian missionaries were guilty of offenses against humanity. These include racial discrimination, genocide, the introduction of alcoholism and venereal diseases, the imposition of a sense of guilt onto innocent sexual relationships, and the heartless suppression of native cultures of great…
READ FULL BLOG POSTHistory’s Balance Sheet
Great is the inheritance of two millennia of Christian thinking
By David Daintree | September 25th 2020 4:02 PMNowadays many people hope for a multinational and god-free world. That is their “promised land.” For such people Christianity has brought more misery than relief, more gloom than joy, more war than peace, more hatred than love. And – let us be honest – they can produce evidence to support…
READ FULL BLOG POSTAm I Mad or Are You?
On journalistic malpractice and a false narrative
By David Daintree | September 10th 2020 4:02 PMI have written about the “COVID Crisis” before, earning the approval of some and disagreement of others. I remain convinced that the extraordinary measures being taken by governments to deal with it are excessively out of proportion to the real miseries – social, cultural, economic and medical – that they…
READ FULL BLOG POSTHope, the Anchor
When the theological virtues are in lockstep, they work wonders
By David Daintree | August 27th 2020 2:23 PMI suppose if Christian civilization were to adopt a Mission Statement, as most modern enterprises do, none better could be found than the simple list of the three “theological virtues”: Faith, Hope and Love. These sum up all our duties and our aspirations. Every human on earth understands in some sense what they…
READ FULL BLOG POSTIrony of COVID
In the dominant narrative, wealthy lives are preferred
By David Daintree | August 1st 2020 2:00 PMThese are frightening times. Sizable numbers of our population, including apparently most of our political leaders, are clearly terrified of COVID. This is becoming increasingly obvious in public places, where the mood is subtly changing: people are afraid of each other and show their fear not only by their avoidance of contact…
READ FULL BLOG POSTScience Is No Savior
Take God out of the equation and science can be dangerous
By David Daintree | July 9th 2020 2:37 PMHealthy human culture is inextricably linked to religion. Christopher Dawson and others have argued that ethical systems are unsustainable in the long term apart from a trust in the immanence of a good God:
Human nature always retains its spiritual character—its bond with the transcendent and the divine. If…
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