Modernism Christianity And Apocalypse

Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse stages an encounter between the fields of ‘Modernism and Christianity’ and ‘Apocalypse Studies’. The modernist impulse to ‘make it new’, to transform and reform culture, is an incipiently apocalyptic one, poised between imaginative representations of an Old Era or civilization and the experimental promise of the New. Christianity figures in formative tension with the ‘new’, but its apocalyptic paradigms continued to impact modernist visions of cultural revitalization. In three sections tracing a rough chronology from the late nineteenth century fin de siècle, via interwar conflicts and the rise of ‘political religions’, to post-1945 anxieties such as the Bomb, this thematic is explored in nineteen far-ranging scholarly contributions, outlining a distinctive and fresh interdisciplinary field of study.

This Book Will Answer the Question: What Happened to Our Country? The short answer is simple. Christianity has lost its authority in our culture. Although most Americans say they believe in God, this claim is not reflected in our laws, morals, politically correct attitudes, universities, schools, or entertainment. All levels of society point to the fact that we are rapidly becoming a post-Christian nation. In this important work, Thomas R. Goehle examines contemporary culture while providing a comprehensive understanding of the historical precedents that led our country to this point. Not only secularists, but both committed and nominal Christians, are largely responsible for allowing Christianity to be marginalized because it was Christians themselves who accommodated and retreated from the advance of secularization over the past 150 years. The book reviews how Christianity was marginalized in higher education, the public school system, science, and culture, while secular modernism took its place. Today, Christianity continues to fall out of favor in our PC culture. This is due, in part, to the Christian worldview not being passed down to the generations behind us. Our culture is increasingly embracing PC tolerance, narcissism, hedonism, and moral relativism. Christianity no longer provides the cultural authority or moral underpinning for our nation. The result is that the foundation of our once great nation is crumbling. Rather than looking only to the past or present, however, the author looks to the future to see how our folly of leaving God behind places our country and its citizens in great peril. Lies and deception will be ubiquitous as we move closer to the end time apocalyptic events described in the book of Revelation. Economic collapse, martial law, war, and a move toward a totalitarian system of government are clear and present dangers. Unless Americans turn back to the God of the Bible, Goehle envisions a nation that is heading for disaster- a post-Christian apocalypse. Nearly twenty years in the making, America's Post-Christian Apocalypse is a must-read for those who want a genuine understanding of how our country lost its way, and how it can recover its foundations before it's too late.

By theorising the idea of 'formative tensions' between cultural Modernism and Christianity, and by in-depth case studies of James Joyce, David Jones, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, the book argues that no coherent account of Modernism can ignore the continuing impact of Christianity.

By theorising the idea of 'formative tensions' between cultural Modernism and Christianity, and by in-depth case studies of James Joyce, David Jones, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, the book argues that no coherent account of Modernism can ignore the continuing impact of Christianity.

FOREWORD - THE last twenty-five years have seen as big a revolution in Christian theology as in science. Science, we might say truly enough, has given us a new view of the universe. The modernist school of thought has given us a new view, or a new interpretation, of Christianity. I have tried to tell it1 the following pages what modernism stands for and 11 have outlined the appeal it makes to intelligent people. As a foreword I need only repeat the substance of what I have said in a companion volume The Bible in the Light of Today. It is an attempt to tell in plain language what I myself have learned from scholars and experts. There are things about which many of us are not well informed. The Bible, and the origins of Christianity, are two of them. The mind as well as heart of many of us today has to be satisfied before the voice of religion is a real voice. No passive acquiescence is of much value where there is still a doubt, and less so when there is more than a doubt. I would not rate the general knowledge of my readers very highly if I supposed that they held the same views of the Bible and of traditional beliefs as were held twenty-five or thirty years ago. ....Most non-churchgoing people to-day, I think, are simply indifferent the newer knowledge has been withheld from them too long neither the Bible nor ecclesiastical discussion holds any interest for them. Both are, more or less, regarded as intellectual pursuits for the clergy. And yet both subjects throb with interest no intelligent person can neglect either. I have said that I have tried to tell in plain language what I myself have learned from the critics and the experts. I lay no claims to criticise wiser men. I Gave simpl tried to outline the conclusions they have conk. to about the Bible and its roblems in the liht of modern knowledge, modern science and historical criticism...

David Jones: A Christian Modernist? is a major reassessment of the work of the poet, artist and essayist David Jones (1895-1974) in light of the complex, ambiguous idea of a ‘Christian modernism’. His richly experimental and palimpsestic poetry, art and thought drew extensively on Christian tradition and symbolism as a key to the future: rejecting a technocratic and utilitarian modernity in favour of a revitalised culture of sign and sacrament. This volume examines historical influences on Jones’s development, his impassioned engagement with the idea of modernity and with modernist literature and art, the theological sources and resonances of his work, and contemporary or late-modern perspectives on his achievement.

With fascism on the march in Europe and a second World War looming, a group of Britain's leading intellectuals – including T.S. Eliot, Karl Mannheim, John Middleton Murry, J. H. Oldham and Michael Polanyi – gathered together to explore ways of revitalising a culture that seemed to have lost its way. The group called themselves 'the Moot'. Drawing on previously unpublished archival documents, this is the first in-depth study of the group's work, writings and ideas in the decade of its existence from 1938-1947. Christian Modernism in an Age of Totalitarianism explores the ways in which an important and influential strand of Modernist thought in the interwar years turned back to Christian ideas to offer a blueprint for the revitalisation of European culture. In this way the book challenges conceptions of Modernism as a secular movement and sheds new light on the culture of the late Modernist period.

In René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis, Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of René Girard’s controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard’s thought, the centrality of Christ in Girard's thinking, and, in particular, Girard's distinctive take on the uniqueness and finality of Christ in terms of his impact on Western culture. In Girard’s singular vision, according to Cowdell, secular modernity has emerged thanks to the Bible’s exposure of the cathartic violence that is at the root of religious prohibitions, myths, and rituals. In the literature, the psychology, and most recently the military history of modernity, Girard discerns a consistent slide into an apocalypse that challenges modern ideas of romanticism, individualism, and progressivism. In the first three chapters, Cowdell examines the three elements of Girard’s basic intellectual vision (mimesis, sacrifice, biblical hermeneutics) and brings this vision to a constructive interpretation of “secularization” and “modernity,” as these terms are understood in the broadest sense today. Chapter 4 focuses on modern institutions, chiefly the nation state and the market, that function to restrain the outbreak of violence. And finally, Cowdell discusses the apocalyptic dimension of Girard's theory in relation to modern warfare and terrorism. Here, Cowdell engages with the most recent writings of Girard (particularly his Battling to the End) and applies them to further conversations in cultural theology, political science, and philosophy. Cowdell takes up and extends Girard’s own warning concerning an alternative to a future apocalypse: “What sort of conversion must humans undergo, before it is too late?”