Vanquishing modern gods in defense of religion

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THE GOD THAT DID NOT FAIL: HOW RELIGION BUILT AND SUSTAINS THE WEST

By Robert Royal

Encounter Books, $25.95, 311 pages

REVIEWED BY ERNEST W. LEFEVER

With brevity and charm, Robert Royal guides the modern reader through two millennia of Western history, deftly slaying one false god after another. He dispatches the illusions of the 18th-century Enlightenment, 20th-century Marxism, and postmodern cynicism by invoking the enduring truths of the central Judeo-Christian tradition.

He asserts "that religion has been one of the most consistently -- and profoundly -- dynamic elements in human history." And he notes that three key architects of post-World War II European unity -- "Robert Schuman in France, Konrad Adenauer in Germany, and Alcide De Gasperi in Italy -- were deeply inspired by Christian views of man and history.

Indeed, Adenauer went further. He called for a Christian party in Germany that "embraced all denominations" that valued the importance of Christianity in Europe, insisting that this "also applied to our Jewish fellow-citizens."

Prominent religious figures were also active in writing what became the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, including the French Catholic intellectual, Jacques Maritain, a French Jewish lawyer, Rene Cassin, and Charles Malik, a Greek Orthodox philosopher from Lebanon.

Mr. Royal points to the failure of several modern "gods" that "offered themselves as candidates to replace the old Deity." He mentions Arthur Koestler and other ex-Marxists who had lost their faith in "the god that failed." At the same time some previous disciples of Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud also surrendered their earlier faith in these men who saw no need for God and regarded all religion as atavistic.