20 April 2009

A.N. Wilson, British literary critic and (less-than-reverant) biographer of, inter alia, Hilaire Belloc, discusses his return to the faith:
My own return to faith has surprised no one more than myself. Why did I return to it? Partially, perhaps it is no more than the confidence I have gained with age.

Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block: cutting-edge novelists such as Martin Amis; foul-mouthed, self-satisfied TV presenters such as Jonathan Ross and Jo Brand; and the smug, tieless architects of so much television output.

But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.
You can read the rest here.

(On a tangent, read this amusing account of a hoax played on Mr. Wilson allegedly by his literary nemesis, resulting in a certain amount of embarrassment for both.)