Recorded on 20 November 2025 for ICMDA Webinars.
Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with John Dickson
Is religion a pernicious force in the world? Does it poison everything? Would we be better off without religion in general and Christianity in particular? Many think so.
But the critics are only partly right: this is not what Christianity was at its foundation or on its best days. Jesus of Nazareth gave the world a beautiful melody - of charity, humility, and human dignity - and while many of its followers have been tone-deaf, many others have sung the tune and transformed the world.
Dickson provides an honest account of the mixed history of Christianity and asks skeptics to listen again to the melody of Christ, despite the discord produced by too many unbelievers. He also asks Christians to reflect soberly on their own participation in the tragic inconsistencies of Christendom and pleads with them to live in tune with their Maestro.
John started out as a professional singer-songwriter, he now works as an author, speaker, historian, and media presenter. John hosts the Undeceptions podcast and has hosted four television documentaries. The most recent documentary The First Hymn: Resurrecting a song buried for millennia, was released in April 2025.
John has published over 20 books, including Bullies and Saints: An Honest look at the Good and Evil of Christian History (2021). He has held a variety of teaching and research positions before becoming the Jean Kvamme Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies and Public Christianity at Wheaton College in Illinois in 2022. Before that, John had held positions in the Ancient History Department at Macquarie University (2002-2015), the Hebrew, Jewish and Biblical Studies Department at Sydney University (2011-2021), Ridley College Melbourne (2019-2022), and the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford (2015-2023).
A busy public speaker, he lives in Wheaton, Illinois, with his wife Elizabeth and the youngest of their three children.