Description
Book SynopsisThe ongoing political muscle-flexing of diverse Christian communities in North America raises some deeply troubling questions regarding their roles among us. Earlier analyses including Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, Jew showed that these three branches of the Judaeo-Christian tradition correspond to three forms of the American way of life; while Kruse’s One Nation Under God showed how Christian America was shaped by corporate America. Willem H. Vanderburg’s Secular Nations under New Gods proceeds based on a dialogue between Jacques Ellul’s interpretation of the task of Christians in the world and Ellul’s interpretation of the roles of technique and the nation-state in individual and collective human life. He then adds new insight into our being a symbolic species dealing with our finitude by living through the myths of our society and building new secular forms of moralities and religions. If everything is political and if eve
Table of Contents
Preface Introduction A Secular Way of Life in Search of Spirituality? Where Are We and What Have We Done? Seeing and Listening People of a Time, Place, and Culture People of a Time, Place, and Universal Technical Order People of the Word 1 The Possibility and Impossibility of Living a Secular Life How Secular Have We Become? Language, Swearing, and the Sacred A Creation for Freedom without a Sacred A Creation for Love without Eros 2 The Roots of a Non-secular Life: Religion and Morality as Symptoms of Evil Uprooting and Re-rooting the Creation’s Fabric of Relationships The End of Secular Human Life God's Covenant and Humanity's Life Support The Beginning of Human History A New Beginning without God 3 Language, Myth, and History Making a Name The Word, Human Words, and Cultures Socially and Historically Naming Ourselves Culture and Revelation The Subversion of Symbolization 4 Born Neither Free nor Equal, but Loved An Enslaved Humanity The Flesh and the World A World Ruled by Principalities and Powers The Demonic Powers The Satanic Powers Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse The City as the Seat of the Powers 5 The Law, the Spirit, and the Kingdom of Heaven The Law and the Jewish People The Law of Freedom The Spirit The Kingdom of Heaven 6 Christianity in the Grip of Vanity and Chasing after the Wind Why Give the Last Word to Qohelet? Vanity and Myths Wisdom and Myths God and Our Myths Epilogue Notes Index
