Headline Roundup • April 20th, 2025
Religious or Not, The Significance of Easter
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday, drawing media dialogue on the holiday’s significance.
Faith Guides Nations: Daniel Darling, writing for National Review - Opinion (Right bias), referenced historical events of the 20th century and cited Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who pinpointed the USSR’s main problem as the forgetting of God. He claimed, “America and other leading nations have been pushing Christianity to the margins while living off the fumes of its benefits.” Darling concluded that Easter “is not the story of humans perfecting themselves through moral improvement, but the rescue of morally deficient people from themselves” and that “modernity and science and technology” cannot provide for a nation what faith can.
Christianity Is For ‘Losers’: Giles Fraser, in an opinion for UnHerd (Center), cited the decline of the church and slowly rebounding attendance numbers but argued that “success as an ideology is absolute kryptonite to the Easter story… Christianity is for losers.” Fraser said he is irked by “successful churches” with patrons who “are just a little too pleased with themselves, particularly about how successful they are,” and have “sound finances, slick advertising, beautiful buildings.”
Secular Feelings: Paul Daley of The Guardian (Left) wrote that for Christians, “Easter is a remarkable time of new life… But those of a more secular persuasion can also find themselves beguiled by the restorative zeitgeist of this celebratory time of year.” Daley, who said he “hated” it as a child, said it is now his favorite day of the year, “because so little happens and because it kicks off four days of enforced R & R” that winds down the summer into autumn in his native Australia.
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission.
Featured Coverage of this Story
For Christians, Easter is a remarkable time of new life, of resurrection and spiritual renewal. But those of a more secular persuasion can also find themselves beguiled by the restorative zeitgeist of this celebratory time of year.
In the northern hemisphere it’s spring, with its green shoots and brighter light. Down here, deep in the southern hemisphere, the transition is of a gentle autumnal splendour – of softer skies and a flourish of bronze in the deciduous treetops.
Ian Forsyth/Getty Images.
I have just been reading my church’s annual report for the AGM and I’m feeling just a little too pleased with myself. Our average Sunday attendance has risen steadily over the last few years. During 2022 it was 138; 2023 it was 153; during 2024 it was 170. Other churches have also experienced a bounce back after Covid, though most of them haven’t yet returned to pre-Covid levels. But my little glow of inner vicarly smugness is made utterly ridiculous by the story of Holy Week, the days running up...
Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
Fifty years ago, just after Easter, the insurgent army known as the Khmer Rouge toppled the official government of Cambodia and initiated the devastating genocide that put Pol Pot on the list of history’s bloodiest rulers. What began with naïve hopes of peace and the end to the war that had spilled over from neighboring Vietnam soon turned into terror as the new regime pushed millions of residents out of the capital city. It soon hunted down anyone perceived as an ally of the government it had just toppled, including scientists,...
