Every well-bred cocktail party guest knows this to be true: the fastest way to committing social kamikaze is to talk

about either religion or politics. And Heaven forbid, you bring up both in the same breath. To the most aggressive of secularists, those who wear their faith on their sleeves might as will join the ranks of the hopelessly nave or the dangerously delusional. From cult favorite author Ayn Rand to celebrity scientist Richard Dawkins, many of our most respected intellectuals are going out of their way to paint religion as the antithesis to progression, enlightenment and civilization. Their solution? Completely liberate society from all forms of religious symbols and to question the veracity of all religious beliefs. Interestingly enough, atheism born in ivory towers of high academia- as opposed to atheism in its visceral Communist form-has never been able to convince the masses as being a solution to the worlds problems. One reason-one that annoys hard-core atheists like Dawkins- is that so many rank and file atheists have adopted a faithless life for themselves not so much because they believe it actually serves a noble purpose but because they want to be liberated from the nuisance of having to adhere to ancient mores in the midst of their fun and revelry. After all, it is hard to take gratuitous pleasure in all things self-serving once you allow that Great Chaperone in the Sky to tell you what you ought to do. Curiously, such nominal atheist may even respect- and even secretly envy- those who live by faith. People mostly like having faith and all the benefits that come with it- they just dont necessarily want to take on the inconvenient yoke of faith for themselves. Few people actually believe that a world without any form of religion would actually work- a 1999 Gallup poll found that only 49% of Americans would vote an atheist for president. Moreover, the worlds brief dalliance with institutionalized faithlessness did not pan out well: inspiring and visionary as it was, despite having more than a century to prove itself, Communism showed that in a religious vacuum, misinformation, poor social economic policies, state-wide corruption and mindless massacres prevail. Russias gulags, Pol Pots Year Zero of Killing Fields, Maos Cultural Revolution and Kim Jung ILs legacy of starvation in North Korea all revealed that godlessness leads no community nearer to goodness. In fact, in these collectivized economies that depended on every comrade to uphold each other as equals, inevitable disagreements about the allocation of resources eventually encouraged consolidation of economic power into smaller and smaller groups of men. Eventually, coercion, bribery and other unscrupulous political tools were used instead to requisition resources. So in the face of anti-religion opposition, there has been a curious resurgence of pro-faith supporters from the most unlikely of quarters. The new proponents of faith as the panacea to the worlds problems are politicians and political commentators- some who are atheist evenwho speak less from a particular religious ideal and more, instead from an objective standpoint of the realistic value and benefits of God-fearing folk. In May 2008, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, an organization dedicated to proving that collaboration among the six different major religions was necessary to addressing the worlds most pressing social problems. Blairs conviction was that faith matters because it shapes our moral and intellectual frameworks for understanding the world and this dictates our behavior. To Blair, while faith has been used it is part of our future and faith and the values it brings with it are an essential part of making globalization work. Blairs goal in his post-Downing Street years is to rescue faith from being seen as irrelevant- or worse antagonistic- to global debate.

Controversial conservative thinker Dinesh DSouza wrote Whats So Great About Christianity in 2007 to remind the world how faith fostered civilization with core values of democratic-like respect for human dignity, human rights and human equality. Faith also inspired modern science by enforcing the ridiculous concept that the universe is lawfully ordered and rationally designed, following logical laws that are discoverable through human reason and persistence. DSouza points out that even the virulently atheist philosopher Nietzsche conceded that the Christian God was the very foundation of Western values and removing Him from the equation would mean the erosion and ultimate collapse of those values. But perhaps the strongest word on this belongs to former Conservative Minister of Parliament turned award-winning journalist Matthew Parris who headlined his December 2008 Op-Ed piece for The Times As an Atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God, subtitling with Missionaries, not aid money are the solution to Africas biggest problem-the crushing passivity of the peoples mindset. Parris admitted that he used to say he despised the fact that part of the equation of helping Africans was having missionary churches in Africa, but he was willing to tolerate them since the churches were helping other NGOs spread literacy, heal the sick and alleviate poverty. But eventually he changed his mind when he saw that the faiths that embolden the missionary to serve in such capacity was precisely the same faith, eventually transferred to his unbelieving flock, which differentiated the missionarys efforts form the charitable work of other secular NGOs, government projects and international aid activists. Parris observed that faith liberated and relaxed (the initially unbelieving Africans), giving them a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world, a directness in their dealings with others. He concluded that everyone in the know is fully aware that decades of providing mere material means and know how have not been enough to make a dent in the long quest to free Africa from crushing poverty. In particular, he highlighted Protestant Christianitys teaching of a direct two-way link between every individual and God, unmediated by the collective and unsubordinate to any other human being as the key element that could smash through the crushing oppression of groupthink, a totalitarian dictators charisma and centuries of cultural baggage. To solve the worlds problems, it comes down to whole belief systems that need to be supplanted. And only religious faith goes where we fear to tread Right into the inner sanctum of the human heart where every single person first formulates beliefs and carries out the decisions that radically heal or hurt the world around them. The cleverest solutions to global problems (smart cars, nanotechnology, one laptop per poor child) have always been limited by the outrageously simple premise that people are not automatons- they come with set beliefs and behaviors that dictate whether or not they become part of the problem or part of the solution. Or to put it in terribly unfashionable terms, people are incorrigibly sinful. We just do not want to do what we are supposed to do and sometimes it takes the very fear of an omnipotent God with authority over whole universes to change our petty minds.

Faith (and the charitable works that stem out from what faith teaches) offers a sustainable long-term solution to the worlds problems as opposed to doing charitable works divorced from any belief in God. Faith priorities a deep-set conversion of the heart-what Christians call a born again experience- where each individual renounces his former self-centered way of life to adapt a radically God-centered, other person-centered way of life. Faith is what brought together tens of thousands of activists, priests and punks to Cologne under the banner of Jubilee 2000, calling on the G-8 to forgive the debts owed by the worlds poorest countries as per Old Testament Jewish practices. Faith was what ushered in the worlds first bloodless revolution in the Philippines during 1986 where armies crossed over to join the people against the Marcos dictatorship, laying down their weapons when confronted with citizens armed only with prayers. Faith was what gave ordinary East Germans the courage to speak openly and passionately against political oppression, environmental degradation and corruption that eventually led them to take to the streets and peaceably bring down 40 years of totalitarianism and the Berlin Wall. Faith breeds resilience, longsuffering and hope-impossible traits to hold onto when the scope and complexity of global problems seem too overwhelming for even the most gifted and good-hearted of human beings to handle. Faith convinces ordinary people to do extraordinary things in hellish times because they believe they are not alone. God is with them. And it is thus, that Faith-above all things-can and will be our Deliverance from Evil.