A Debate for Our Times

Tony Blair, the most famous catholic convert of recent years, takes the stage with/against Christopher Hitchens, the most famous of anti-religion polemicists of recent years, before a sold out crowd in Toronto on Friday evening. “Be It Resolved Religion is A Force For Good in The World” is another provocative outing for the Munk Debate series. The Munk Debate organizers have a talent for combining hot button topics with even hotter button personalities. Blair, famous for his acceptance that in politics “We Don’t Do God”, converted to Catholicism almost as fast as a plane can get from London to Rome, and has since 2008 been a roving ambassador for the value of religion. Christopher Hitchens loves to ‘do religion’ and has taken on every one from Mother Teresa through to Mohammed in his effort to blame all the misery in the world on religion.

It has been a much-anticipated match since it was first announced in October and as the event approaches, the anticipation is growing. The British newspaper The Guardian couldn’t wait for the actual to and fro and even speculated 6 weeks in advance what the night might be like. The tone, the content is funny, hints at the event as spectacle. A legitimate point of view and the sense of most of the anticipatory coverage is akin to that which might accompany a world champion prizefight.

On the other hand Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes in the Independent that both sides, belief and scepticism deserve “better champions than these two”. Alibhai-Brown has a point. This is a serious debate, one working its way through a lot of different forums and touching on politics, science, medicine and even the simple accommodation of one another in society. There are important issues about truth and meaning at stake, issues unlikely to be explored deeply while trading barbs and one-liners. And there is the difficulty that this outing has a sense to it of special pleading in that both combatants are focused on religion. Let’s hope there’s a sense throughout the debate that it isn’t only Religion that needs to justify itself as a force for good.

Even though you can’t get a ticket, well you can from scalpers on Craigslist for 500 dollars, you can sign up for a live feed of the debate for 5 dollars or if you want to go cheap, you can take the twitter feed being promised by the Blair people. Odds are if you opt for a Blairite tweet you might be getting a one-sided perspective.

Next time out on The Scroller, catching up with the fall-out from a Pope speaking candidly and an assessment of the Great Debate.