Last month I ended with some words from Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Here’s the full quotation:
‘Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next, make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is.’
It’s one of Pascal’s many Pensees (Thoughts) published after his death. These tweet-length nuggets were intended for book-length treatment, but the philosopher and mathematician died aged 39. What remains to us are these fragments, but their wisdom rings across the centuries with as much relevance as ever. It’s so worth remembering that the ‘despising of religion’ is not a 21st-century novelty. It’s not as though Christianity ascended to cultural respectability with Constantine in 312AD, held steady for a millennium and a half and then, in the West, began its nosedive in 1963. That’s a surprisingly common understanding of history and it is utter nonsense. The ‘sea of faith’ has had many high tides as well as many lows. Pascal’s France was so faithless he could present hatred of Christianity as a universal fact: ‘Men despise religion.’
