Don’t Blame Us!
Been reading Patrick Allitt’s “Religion In America Since 1945: A History” and came across this tidbit in his chapter on the radical theologians of the 1960’s.
“[Harvey] Cox’s central insight, again taking a lead from [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer, was that Christianity had itself been a powerful force for secularization. Ancient religions had had a great pantheon of gods – one for the rivers, another for the trees, one for wine, one for marriage, one for war, and so on. The entire ancient world had been cluttered with supernatural beings, and every step you took was dogged by one deity or another. Judaism and Christianity, however, had swept away the whole lot and left just one remote, omnipotent God presiding over the world. People were then free to manipulate and organize the world without fear that they were stepping on the gods’ toes. And having learned that the world was not crammed with divinities, they had learned to take the logical next step of pushing back further and further their need for any god at all. Secularization and urbanization are not the enemies of Christianity, Cox declared, giving a surprising twist to the usual story, but its logical end product!”
An interesting theory to ponder in light of the recent claims that the “secularization” of America invites the evils of “paganism” into our modern “Christian” nation. Perhaps the monotheists have made their own bed, and now they are lying in it. Perhaps, if people want to re-insert the sacred into daily life, maybe they should be looking to us Pagans. Just a thought.
Here is some more info on Harvey Cox and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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