On eschatology and the \u27return to religion\u27

Abstract

We begin with Tony Blair\u27s July 2009 Australian visit. Mr Blair converted publicly to Catholicism in 2008. In Australia that year, he argued that the West was facing an internal crisis of confidence, as well as external threats. Blair warned in particular against what he called \u27aggressive secularism\u27 and the Western tendency to \u27see people of religious faith as people to be pushed to one side\u27. The Australian\u27s \u27editor at large\u27, Paul Kelly, responded enthusiastically. Blair\u27s position represented \u27the best argument against the rise of secular intolerance and its distorting of history in the education system by seeking to downgrade or eliminate religion in the West\u27s story\u27. This stood in contrast to the Australian Labour Party\u27s disastrous\u27 distancing from the Christian tradition. Kelly styled Blair as opposing \u27the fashionable Western idea that religion can be suppressed or confined to the private realm\u27 as \u27a delusion and dangerous\u27. The Australian\u27s position is not surprising, given the news paper\u27s long- standing, US-influenced neoconservative position