Christians in the West have little reason to fear for their physical security. Their particular fate is to be sneered at by the left intelligentsia. However, on a worldwide basis, it is fair to say that, among all believers, Christians are the most persecuted.
And so it has come to pass that Judeo-Christian society – which is the historical basis of Western civilisation – is under attack of a physical or intellectual kind. Moreover, much of the assault is of the verbal kind by well-off and highly educated citizens who are alienated from their own societies.
The latest example of the assault on the West took place at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. It is well known that, at the end of the four-hour ceremony, there was what is best described as a version of The Last Supper meets a drag show.
Various performers in various stages of undress appeared behind a table – resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, which depicted Jesus Christ and his 12 Apostles not long before his death. Paris Games artistic director Thomas Jolly placed an actor playing Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, on top of the table.
To viewers, this looked like a mocking of Christ and his teachings. Little surprise, then, that there was widescale criticism of the performance that was led primarily by Catholic bishops but included other Christians and non-Christian believers along with secular types – all of whom condemned the sexualised event. Immediately, those responsible threw the switch to denial. Olympics organisers declared the performance was “an interpretation of the Greek god Dionysus” in order to make “us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings”. Really. Then came the non-apology apology. A Games spokesperson said there “was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group”, but added the familiar cop-out that the performance “tried to celebrate community tolerance”; however, “if people have taken any offence, we are really sorry”.
But the criticism continued. Writing in The New York Post on July 30, Eileen Reslen and Chris Neil reported that the organisers had admitted “Thomas Jolly took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting”. By the way, the parody was set to music by D J Barbara Butch, an LGBTQI activist.
Jolly’s mockery of Da Vinci’s portrait of Christ’s Last Supper is a sneer at Western civilisation.
In The Daily Signal on July 30, Dennis Prager wrote: “I am a Jew, not a Christian. Yet I found loathsome the mocking of the Last Supper – one of the holiest scenes in the New Testament … You don’t have to be a Christian to understand Christianity – more specifically, Judeo-Christian values and the Bible – made Western civilisation. Without Christianity and the Bible (ie, the Old and New Testament) there would be no West.”
The importance of Christianity to Western civilisation is increasingly recognised by atheists. British author and biologist Richard Dawkins, perhaps the best-known atheist in the English-speaking world, visited Australia in 2012.
It was a time when there was a degree of viewpoint diversity within the ABC that no longer exists. Dawkins debated the late Cardinal George Pell, then perhaps the best-known English-speaking Christian, on ABC’s Q+A program on the topic “Religion and Atheism”. Both men performed well in the discussion presided over professionally by Tony Jones. Nearly a million viewers watched.
As readers of Dawkins’ 2006 book, The God Delusion, will know, at the time he was an equal opportunity secularist – and dismissive of all religions. But Dawkins may have changed somewhat in recent times – or times may have changed him.
In April, Dawkins spoke to Rachel S. Johnson on the Leading Britain’s Conversation radio program. He was critical of the decision of Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, to light up the British capital for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – but not for the Christian holy week of Easter.
Dawkins told Johnson he was not a believer in the Christian faith. But he said Christianity seemed to be a “fundamentally decent religion”. Dawkins added that it would be “truly dreadful” if, in Britain, Christianity “was substituted by any alternative religion”. As to the symbols of Christianity, he said he would be most unhappy “if we lost our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches”, and went on to describe himself as a “cultural Christian”.
Dawkins’ contemporary position underlines this point. Those who mock Christianity as part of the Judeo-Christian tradition do so as part of a left-driven alienation from their own society – not due to secular views.
Modern societies are replete with atheists and agnostics, along with many religious believers. The attack on Christianity, for the most part, does not come from such groups. Rather the weapon-carriers for the attack on Christianity as part of Western civilisation come from alienated members of the extreme left.
For the most part, groups with lower income and less education tend to want to get on in the world and improve their lot and that of their families. As Karl Marx and his supporters found out over a century ago, what was called the working class is not prone to revolution.
The modern-day revolutionaries are embarrassed by their wealth. But not to the extent of giving it up or handing over their property to the dispossessed. It is easier to mock Christianity and bemoan Western civilisation while receiving handouts from taxpayers to perform on the River Seine to the applause of the left-intelligentsia.
Across the West, anti-Semitism is on the rise. It was evident before Hamas broke a ceasefire agreement on October 7 and engaged in a barbarous attack on southern Israel. And it has increased significantly since – so much so that some Jews feel unsafe living in some democratic societies, including Australia. Moreover, Hamas and Hezbollah are intent on destroying the Jewish state – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.