“In coming to believe in Christianity, Chesterton, as he tells us, did not read a single Christian book in the process. Rather, he read book after book of those who maintained that Christianity could not possibly be true. After he had read many of these tractates, he suddenly realized that the intellectual opponents of Christianity were constantly contradicting themselves about what they were opposing. Chesterton, the most logical of men, figured that anything so odd as to be opposed for the exact opposite reasons must either be quite strange or, in fact, rather normal and true.”

A helpful introduction to a lovely book.

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It’s as if generations of sophisticated and complex theological and philosophical argument amount to nothing when compared to the emotional attitudes of a single individual living in a highly particularized time and place. . . .

Just as atheists and agnostics are often—perhaps way too often—tempted to assume that believers only believe for emotional or psychological reasons, so too, it seems rather obvious to me, every non-believer almost certainly has emotional and psychological reasons for not believing that will trump any and every legitimate argument posed against them.”

(extensive links from the article to the primary sources)

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And yet some kind of demurral is strongly indicated: some sign of recognition that no human society, whatever its good intentions and methods, has lived unburdened, unencumbered by the crushing weight of human fallenness. Good as life may appear to have been in the cities and universities of France and Italy in the thirteenth century, or amid the sweaty fervor of the camp meetings in nineteenth-century America, or among the fierce faith of the emancipators, always human pride and general nuttiness were there to spoil the broth.”

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Looked at from the anthropological point of view religion can be seen as an elaborate (and spontaneous) way in which communities remove what is most precious to them (i.e. all that concerns the creation and reproduction of community) from the erosion of the market.”

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I pretend to no expertise, let alone authority, in religious matters. However, I can’t resist the temptation of having a go, myself, at The Seven Deadly, Part II. (I once would have felt it was prideful to do so, but that was before building my self-esteem.)”

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Formenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.

When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.

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So when Suzuki conducts the “Christmas Oratorio” or – on Good Fridays – Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” the audience studiously follows the Japanese translations of the German lyrics in their programs. “After each concert people crowd the podium wishing to talk to me about topics that are normally taboo in our society – death, for example. Then they inevitably ask me what ‘hope’ means to Christians,” said Suzuki, who is also an organist in a Reformed church. “I believe that Bach has already converted tens of thousands of Japanese to the Christian faith.”

One famous convert is Masashi Masuda from Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. Curiously, it wasn’t one of Bach’s religious compositions that led Masuda to have himself baptized. He became a Christian after hearing a recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” played by Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist.

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