On behalf of Theos and CCLA, this year’s Theos Annual Lecture was ‘Humanism: a Christian heresy’, given by Tom Holland and chaired by Nick Spencer.
Tom Holland is the best–selling author of many books including Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, winner of the Hessell–Tiltman Prize for History, Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom, and Dominion, which explores how Christianity made the modern world. He is co–presenter of Europe’s most downloaded history podcast, The Rest is History, and has written and presented several TV documentaries, for the BBC and Channel 4, on subjects ranging from ISIS to dinosaurs.
Tom’s lecture will be on the relationship between Christianity and humanism. In 2002, the World Humanist Congress affirmed “the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual and the right of every human being to the greatest possible freedom compatible with the rights of others.” Yet this – despite humanists’ stated ambition to provide “an alternative to dogmatic religion” – was nothing if not itself a statement of belief. From what, then, does the assumption that atheism and liberalism go together derive? The well–spring of humanist values lies not in reason, not in evidence–based thinking, but in history. What are the implications – for humanists, for Christians, and for Western society as a whole – of humanism’s status as a Christian heresy?
Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/11/24/theos-annual-lecture-2022-tom-holland
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