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Christianity and Culture
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Christianity and Culture
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Christianity and Culture
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Christianity and Culture

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Two essays on Western society’s deep interconnection with religion from the Nobel Prize-winning poet, playwright, and critic.
 
One of our most prized writers takes a poignant look at the powerful influences of religion and culture in the Western world in these two penetrating essays. The first, “The Idea of a Christian Society,” examines the undeniable link between religion, politics, and economy, suggesting that a real Christian society requires a direct criticism of political and economic systems. And in “Notes towards the Definition of Culture,” Eliot sets out to discover the true definition of “culture,” a word whose misuse and ambiguity presents a danger to the legacy of the Western world. Intellectually, Eliot was years ahead of his time, and these essays are an invaluable tool for analyzing and understanding the nature of society today.
 
“A substantial contribution to our understanding of the nature of culture, the nature of the relationship between culture and religion, and the role of what often are termed cultural pursuits—including literature, the visual arts, architecture, and the like—in making life worth living.”—The Imaginative Conservative
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2014
ISBN9780547538082
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Christianity and Culture
Author

T. S. Eliot

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT was born in St Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He moved to England in 1914 and published his first book of poems in 1917. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Eliot died in 1965.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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    I first read these essays while a senior at college. Now, about twenty years later, I reread them in a study on the English poet TS Eliot. Eliot uses language very carefully, as any poet should, but he is a poet approaching the world of an anthropologist. Further, he writes in an era (pre- and post-World-War-II) in which European culture was pulled apart at the seams and remade again.

    Eliot himself is an American transplant in England. He was largely self-educated, though he studied at Harvard and Oxford. He converted to Anglicanism from a vague Unitarian background. He writes about Christianity as the glue that stands behind European and Western culture.

    Eliot appreciates pluralism and diversity. He states just such in his first essay. He sees (correctly) that Christianity consists of a diverse culture which is interested in many things: especially in the education of both youths and adults and broadly in the worlds of the state, society, and the arts.

    One cannot help but wonder what Eliot would think about today’s increasingly pluralist world whose composition extends beyond Christianity into Islam, agnosticism, atheism, and other faiths. The future of the West seems more like India than Rome. Was Eliot merely one of the last gasps of Christianity or does he have something unique to contribute to our discussion?

    These themes are why I picked up this book again. I let my subconscious process his insights framed in history and set in a beautiful use of the English language. As always happens with these difficult and broad topics, I came to no definite conclusions. Nonetheless, upon concluding the book, I feel as if I have traversed these topics just a little bit more. Many talk about these issues, but few do so with as cultured and definite a voice as Eliot. That’s why it’s well worth the time to read him.