Author: Joseph Sobran

[Classic: December 2, 1999] – The world has long since forgiven Julius Caesar. Nobody today finds Socrates or Cicero irritating. Few of us resent Alexander the Great or his tutor, Aristotle. No, only one man in the ancient world is still hated after two millennia: Jesus Christ. This does not in itself prove the divinity of Christ, but it does show that his words and example haven’t dated. They still have an amazing power to provoke hatred as well as adoration. Of course the hatred of Christ usually pretends to be directed at side targets: St. Paul, the “institutional” Church, … Continue reading →

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Publisher’s Note: Today is the 72nd anniversary of Joe Sobran’s birth. Happy Birthday, Joe! Griffin Internet Syndicate, October 28, 2004 — I just got a message from a friend who nearly always disagrees with me. His disagreement usually takes the form of an irritable accusation: to wit, that I can’t really mean what I say. I know how he feels. It’s irrational, but we all tend to get angry when others disagree with us. That’s because we are so right that nobody in his right mind could honestly deny it, isn’t it? Accepting disagreement as sincere is one of the severe … Continue reading →

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A review of Christian Humanism: A Critique of the Secular City and Its Ideology by Thomas Molnar (Franciscan Herald Press, 1979) The National Review Years, April 27, 1979 — Secular humanism (as Irving Kristol has pointed out) is virtually an established religion, with the added advantage (as James Hitchcock has pointed out) that it doesn’t suffer the disabilities currently imposed on acknowledged religions. At one time it was plausible to say that this humanism was common sense, plus a little science and history: reason herself as she speaks when liberated from superstition and dogma. It was the light at the end of the tunnel … Continue reading →

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Publisher’s Note: This classic Sobran column was written eight years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The National Review Years, September 4, 1981 — Two decades ago the Berlin Wall went up nearly overnight, the most brutally unequivocal symbol of the division between our awed civilization and the clumsy barbarism that threatens it. In August the occasion was commemorated by two major American publications. Life did itself proud, with an astonishing 17 full pages of color photos of the 4,500-mile border of the Socialist Bloc, at every point of which soldiers stand ready to kill those who flee. If there is any political … Continue reading →

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Griffin Internet Syndicate,6/4/2009 – Jesus was far from being an old man when his earthly life ended. He was probably well under 40, roughly the age of Mozart, who died at 35, as his genius was still approaching its unimaginable peak. By contrast, nobody thinks of Jesus as having died prematurely, as if he had been killed before his teaching had been fully developed, and as if it might have ripened into something more profound and interesting had his life span been longer. There is about his life a sense of completeness; he had done what he had come to achieve. … Continue reading →

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[Classic: 11/28/1996] — Have you noticed? Our Lord has made the cover of The Atlantic Monthly, in an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Charlotte Allen. The article concerns the theories of contemporary theologians about the “Q” gospel, the supposed source of the Synoptic Gospels. The book, I gather, will show how the vain quest for the “historical” Jesus keeps producing a series of stripped-down images of an ahistorical Jesus whose actual teachings conform suspiciously to the political attitudes of modern liberals. The “Jesus Seminar”, for instance, consistently deems inauthentic those Gospel passages that make supernatural and messianic claims. Such “scholarship” … Continue reading →

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Griffin Internet Syndicate, 12/23/2004 — As always in our time, Christmas is provoking dissent from people who don’t want Christian symbols on public property or Christmas carols sung in public schools. Many Christians find this annoying and churlish. Some even feel that Christianity is being persecuted. The columnist Michelle Malkin writes, “We are under attack by Secularist Grinches Gone Wild.” Pat Buchanan goes so far as to speak of “hate crimes” against Christians. I disagree. In some parts of the world, from Sudan to China, Christians really are being persecuted, even murdered. But what is going on in America’s symbolic opposition … Continue reading →

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Griffin Internet Syndicate, October 5, 2006 – In the modern West, Islam is thought of as a violent religion, and I’ve done my part, along with some fanatical (but not necessarily typical) Muslims, to reinforce this view. It’s fatally easy to mistake the nuts for the norm. But I think there may be a better way to look at the situation. “Error has no rights,” said Pope Pius IX. And in the primary sense, this is not only true but self-evident. The difficulty lies in the practical application. Should the power and authority of the state be used to combat error? … Continue reading →

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GRIFFIN INTERNET SYNDICATE, OCTOBER 25, 2001 – Back in the 1930s, when white men were preparing for another round of mutual slaughter, few of them paid any attention to the Muslim world. They assumed it to be a backward region that history had long since passed by. One man saw it differently. The great Catholic polemicist Hilaire Belloc, an Englishman of French ancestry, remembered Islam’s past and predicted, in his book The Great Heresies, that it would one day challenge the West again. As late as 1683 its armies had threatened to conquer Europe, penetrating all the way to Vienna; Belloc believed that … Continue reading →

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GRIFFIN INTERNET SYNDICATE, JANUARY 27, 2004 – In 1960, when I was 14, I was nuts about JFK. The first one, John F. Kennedy, not the current one, John F. Kerry. I got about thirty JFK buttons from the local Democratic headquarters, pinned them all to my shirt, and wore them to school. Mr. Elliott, my former math teacher, who had a wonderfully dry sense of humor, took one look at me and said, “Why, Joe! Have you thrown subtlety to the winds?” I loved that man. His deadpan ribbing always made me feel like an adult, which is a … Continue reading →

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GRIFFIN INTERNET SYNDICATE, JANUARY 27, 2004 – In 1960, when I was 14, I was nuts about JFK. The first one, John F. Kennedy, not the current one, John F. Kerry. I got about thirty JFK buttons from the local Democratic headquarters, pinned them all to my shirt, and wore them to school. Mr. Elliott, my former math teacher, who had a wonderfully dry sense of humor, took one look at me and said, “Why, Joe! Have you thrown subtlety to the winds?” I loved that man. His deadpan ribbing always made me feel like an adult, which is a … Continue reading →

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GRIFFIN INTERNET SYNDICATE, OCTOBER 16, 2001 – This is a season of patriotism, but also of something that is easily mistaken for patriotism; namely, nationalism. The difference is vital. G.K. Chesterton once observed that Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of British imperialism, suffered from a “lack of patriotism.” He explained: “He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.” In the same way, many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America … Continue reading →

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[Classic: September 28, 1999] – Ignorance is often hidden behind an urbane surface. Many otherwise educated people lack the most elementary understanding of certain subjects. One of these is religion. When I was an aspiring Shakespeare scholar during my college days, I was surprised to find that most commentators on Hamlet missed the play’s religious aspect. Prince Hamlet is evidently a Catholic, but he has been a student at Wittenberg, home of the Reformation. He puns on the Diet of Worms. His father’s ghost laments that he was murdered without a chance to receive the sacraments, a fact Hamlet recalls … Continue reading →

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[Classic, February 19, 2008] — At this point it is probably futile to try to reverse the deification of Abraham Lincoln. Next year, if I know my countrymen, the bicentennial of his birth will be marked by stupendously cloying anniversary observances, all of them affirming, if not his literal divinity, at least something mighty close to it. No doubt we will hear from the high priests and priestesses of the Lincoln cult: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Garry Wills, Harry V. Jaffa, and all the rest of the tireless hagiographers of academia, who regularly rate Honest Abe one of our two greatest … Continue reading →

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[CLASSIC: 12/23/2004] — As always in our time, Christmas is provoking dissent from people who don’t want Christian symbols on public property or Christmas carols sung in public schools. Many Christians find this annoying and churlish. Some even feel that Christianity is being persecuted. The columnist Michelle Malkin writes, “We are under attack by Secularist Grinches Gone Wild.” Pat Buchanan goes so far as to speak of “hate crimes” against Christians. I disagree. In some parts of the world, from Sudan to China, Christians really are being persecuted, even murdered. But what is going on in America’s symbolic opposition to … Continue reading →

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