History

‘I Believe Because It Is Absurd’: Understanding Christianity’s First Meme 0
- History
- April 9, 2018
Religious belief is often thought to evince a precarious kind of commitment, in which the degree of conviction is inversely proportional to correspondence with the facts. Exhibit A for this common characterisation of religious belief is the maxim of the third-century Christian writer Tertullian, who is credited with the saying ‘I believe because it is
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How Western Civilization Survived ‘By the Skin of Its Teeth’0
- History
- March 22, 2018
According to the 20th century theologian Georges Florovsky, Protestant historiography is one of “decay”. In the traditional Protestant view (by no means shared by all Protestants today), Christianity was in its purest form in its beginning stages, and over the centuries experienced a gradual distortion until its “Reformation” in the 16th century. Because of the
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Does Putin Want to Make Moscow ‘the Third Rome’?0
- History
- March 16, 2018
Russian athletes were conspicuous in their neutral colours during this year’s Winter Olympics and Paralympics due to a ban based on doping allegations. In Vancouver in 2010 and in Sochi in 2014, however, Russia’s Olympic hockey jerseys prominently featured a two-headed eagle exactly where Canada’s jerseys highlighted the maple leaf. This two-headed eagle is not
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This Priest Didn’t Back Down from the Nazis or the Communists 0
- History
- March 6, 2018
“There are times in our society when we have to act in faith on behalf of the greater good. And, unfortunately, this is one of them.” These lines come from a recent episode of ABC’s dramatic series called Designated Survivor (starring Kiefer Sutherland). They could easily have been spoken by the hero I choose to
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‘Get on the Right Side of History’: A Phrase G.K. Chesterton Would Have Understood 0
- History
- March 1, 2018
Sometimes, when reading G.K. Chesterton, one comes across a telling sentence buried in the middle of a very long paragraph. Here’s one from What’s Wrong with the World: “The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future.” We’ve heard a good deal of talk in recent years about something called the
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5 Reasons We Should Still Read Cicero 0
- History
- February 27, 2018
Marcus Tullius Cicero has a legacy as one of the most admired orators and statesmen of all time. Born in 106 BC, he lived through the most turbulent days of the doomed Roman Republic which was being torn apart by ambitious individuals’ lust for power and glory. Cicero was a man who defended the Republican
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