Margaret Knight
January 5, 1955
On January 5, 1955, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired the first of two salvos against the Church by the humanist Margaret Knight at the height of Britain’s post-war Christian revival. The problem with Christianity, Knight argued, was that “most Christians have ceased to believe in the Devil”:
To regard the universe as a battlefield between God and the Devil . . . at least did not do violence to the facts. But now, most Christians have ceased to believe in the Devil; and the orthodox view is that the universe is controlled by a single, all-powerful and holy benevolent Power, and that everything that happens, happens by this will. And that raises insuperable intellectual difficulties. For why should this all-powerful and holy benevolent being have created so much evil?
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