The notion of Christianity as defender of the status quo is one that always makes me laugh, whether invoked by a critic or a would-be supporter; to my mind, it's about the furthest thing possible from conservatism. I think that with Christianity comes an understanding (not an acceptance, though) of human fallibility, and so wars and other man-made tragedies are not surprising, which is of course what G.K. was getting at. This doesn't mean they shouldn't be rooted out and stopped, it's simply an acknowledgement of the types of obstacles which stand in the way of doing so.
\r\n\r\nIt is, of course, very easy to argue from a hard theism to the preservation of the status quo -- whatever is, is right, because otherwise God wouldn't let it be that way. But it is equally easy to reach the same conclusion from hard atheism -- given the rules of natural selection we can conclude that whatever is, is fittest. Both of these arguments fail, however, and for the same reason: they assume that their subject matter deals only with fixed states and never with processes or changes, while in truth Christianity and evolution are both entirely about ongoing change.
\r\n\r\nAnd I admire Russell's mathematical and philosophic work, but at times he reminds me of the rest of the Chesterton quote I posted:
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBut these people have got into an intermediate state, have fallen into an intervening valley from which they can see neither the heights beyond nor the heights behind. They cannot get out of the penumbra of Christian controversy. They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being anti-Christians. Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They still live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith.
\r\nNow the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.
And for what it's worth, the Twentieth was, if anything, really the century of secularism trying desperately to match religion in both stature and body count.