Christianity In Culture

Christianity and Culture- The Idea of a Christian Society AND Notes towards the Definition of Culture By T. S. Eliot. Originally published in 1940. Contents include: The Idea of a Christian Society I Preface 3 Notes 52 Postscript 69 Appendix 71 Notes towards the Definition of Culture 79 Preface 83 Introduction 85 i. The Three Senses of Culture 93 n. The Class and the Elite 107 in. Unity and Diversity: The Region 123 iv. Unity and Diversity: Sect and Cult 141 v, A Note on Culture and Politics 158 vi. Notes on Education and Culture: and Conclusion 171 APPENDIX: The Unity of European Culture. Christianity and Culture has appeared too recently for me to have made use of it. And I am deeply indebted to the works of Jacques Maritain, es pecially his Humanisme integral. 1 trust that the reader will understand from the beginning that this book does not make any plea for a religious revival in a sense with which we are already familiar. That is a task for which I am incompetent, and the term seems to me to imply a possible separation of religious feeling from religious thinking which I do not accept or which I do not find ac ceptable for our present difficulties. An anonymous writer has recently observed in The New English Weekly ( July 13, 1939) that men have lived by spiritual institutions ( of some kind) in every society, and also by political institutions and, indubitably, by eco nomic activities. Admittedly, they have, at different periods, tended to put their trust mainly in one of the three as the real cement of society, but at no time have they wholly excluded the others, because it is impossible to do so. This is an important, and in its context valuable, distinc tion; but it should be clear that what I am concerned with here is not spiritual institutions in their separated aspect, but the organisation of values, and a direction of religious thought which must inevitably proceed to a criticism of political and economic systems. CHAPTER I: THE fact that a problem will certainly take a long time to solve, and that it will demand the attention of many minds for several generations, is no justification for postponing the study. And, in times of emergency, it may prove in the long run that the problems we have postponed or ignored, rather than those we have failed to attack success fully, will return to plague us. Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow: but our permanent dif ficulties are difficulties of every moment. The subject with which I am concerned in the following pages is one to which I am convinced we ought to turn our attention now, if we hope ever to be relieved of the immediate perplexities that fill our minds. It is urgent because it is fundamental; and its urgency is the reason for a person like myself attempting to address, on a subject beyond his usual scope, that public which is likely to read what he writes on other subjects. This is a subject which I could, no doubt, handle much better were I a profound scholar in any of several fields. But I am not writ ing for scholars, but for people like myself; some defects may be compensated by some advantages; and what one must be judged by, scholar or no, is not particularised knowledge but one's total harvest of thinking, feeling, living and observ ing human beings. While the practice of poetry need not in itself confer wis dom or accumulate knowledge, it ought at least to train the mind in one habit of universal value: that of analysing the meanings of words: of those that one employs oneself, as well as the words of others.

Originally published: New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978.

Based on groundbreaking Barna Group research, unChristian uncovers the negative perceptions young people have of Christianity and explores what can be done to reverse them.

This 50th-anniversary edition, with a new foreword by the distinguished historian Martin E. Marty, who regards this book as one of the most vital books of our time, as well as an introduction by the author never before included in the book, and a new preface by James Gustafson, the premier Christian ethicist who is considered Niebuhr’s contemporary successor, poses the challenge of being true to Christ in a materialistic age to an entirely new generation of Christian readers.

Without a uniform dietary code, Christians around the world used food in strikingly different ways, developing widely divergent practices that spread, nurtured, and strengthened their religious beliefs and communities. Featuring never-before published essays, this anthology follows the intersection of food and faith from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century, charting the complex relationship among religious eating habits and politics, culture, and social structure. Theoretically rich and full of engaging portraits, essays consider the rise of food buying and consumerism in the fourteenth century, the Reformation ideology of fasting and its resulting sanctions against sumptuous eating, the gender and racial politics of sacramental food production in colonial America, and the struggle to define "enlightened" Lenten dietary restrictions in early modern France. Essays on the nineteenth century explore the religious implications of wheat growing and breadmaking among New Zealand's Maori population and the revival of the Agape meal, or love feast, among American brethren in Christ Church. Twentieth-century topics include the metaphysical significance of vegetarianism, the function of diet in Greek Orthodoxy, American Christian weight loss programs, and the practice of silent eating rituals among English Benedictine monks. Two introductory essays detail the key themes tying these essays together and survey food's role in developing and disseminating the teachings of Christianity, not to mention providing a tangible experience of faith.

Christianity exists in relation to and interacts with its cultural environment in a number of ways. In this volume authors from a wide variety of backgrounds explore various facets of the relationship and interaction of Christianity with its cultural environment: politics, society, esthetics, religion and spirituality, and with itself. Divided into three main sections, Crossroad Discourses between Christianity and Culture looks at the interaction of Christianity with culture in the first section, with other religions and spiritualities in the second, and finally with itself in the third. The contributions engage in a critical examination of not only the culture in which Christianity finds itself but also in a critical examination of Christianity itself and its interaction with that culture. The editors hope that teachers, students, and readers in general will profit greatly from the critical articles contained in this book.

Foreword by Marcello Pera Written by Joseph Ratzinger shortly before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures looks at the growing conflict of cultures evident in the Western world. The West faces a deadly contradiction of its own making, he contends. Terrorism is on the rise. Technological advances of the West, employed by people who have cut themselves off from the moral wisdom of the past, threaten to abolish man (as C.S. Lewis put it)whether through genetic manipulation or physical annihilation. In short, the West is at war-with itself. Its scientific outlook has brought material progress. The Enlightenment's appeal to reason has achieved a measure of freedom. But contrary to what many people suppose, both of these accomplishments depend on Judeo-Christian foundations, including the moral worldview that created Western culture. More than anything else, argues Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, the important contributions of the West are threatened today by an exaggerated scientific outlook and by moral relativism-what Benedict XVI calls "the dictatorship of relativism"-in the name of freedom. Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures is no mere tirade against the moral decline of the West. Razinger challenges the West to return to its roots by finding a place for God in modern culture. He argues that both Christian culture and the Enlightenment formed the West, and that both hold the keys to human life and freedom as well as to domination and destruction. Ratzinger challenges non-believer and believer alike. "Both parties," he writes, "must reflect on their own selves and be ready to accept correction." He challenges secularized, unbelieving people to open themselves to God as the ground of true rationality and freedom. He calls on believers to "make God credible in this world by means of the enlightened faith they live." Topics include: Reflections on the Cultures in Conflict Today The Significance and Limits of Today's Rationalistic Culture The Permanent Significance of the Christian Faith Why We Must Not Give Up the Fight The Law of the Jungle, the Rule of Law We Must Use Our Eyes! Faith and Everyday Life Can Agnosticism Be a Solution? The Natural Knowledge of God "Supernatural" Faith and Its Origins