Saturday, March 13, 2004

On Mel's Cultured Despisers

we are not living in an age in which religious adherence has simply withered away before the parching wind of Enlightenment reason, but in one in which a new evangel has—over the course of a few centuries—displaced the old, and with it the cultural energy and rationale of Christian Europe: a new religion, whose most devout believers are as zealous, intolerant, and absolutist as any faith has ever produced, and whose vast silent constituency is as unreflective, passive, and pliant as any enfranchised clerisy could desire. It is good for Christians to grasp that, even in this hour, we struggle not simply with disillusion and demystification, but with strange gods.
- David B. Hart, First Things, December 2003
We really shouldn't get too indignant over all the neighsayers of TPOTC. They prefer their Christ swimming in piss, which I suppose is their eucharistic drink. But like many nomadic peoples, I'll take blood over piss any day.