“The Christian Mind” by Harry Blamires:
These are some thought provoking quotes from a book I just started reading. Though the copy I have is very dated (1963) he has some good thoughts on the topic of the Christian mind. So far in my reading I have come to wonder if the Church and Christians are innovative or reactionary. I tend to think and believe that Christians and the church are reactionary and not very innovative. Some of these quotes illicited a reader-response from me in this vain. Why does most important and noted cultural criticism come from people with a secular mindset? Why don't Christians influence the public debate on topics (outside of morality)?! Why are Christians often so late to the discussion table?

Now for some of the quotes. Let me know what you think. What do you agree with? Argue with?

“There is no longer a Christian mind. There is still, of course, a Christian ethic, a Christian practice, and a Christian spirituality. As a moral being, the modern Christian subscribes to a code other than that of the non-Christian. As a member of the Church, he undertakes obligations and observations ignored by the non-Christian. As a spiritual being, in prayer and meditation, he strives to cultivate a dimension of life unexplored by the non-Christian. But as a thinking being, the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion—its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sees all earthly issues within the context of the eternal, the view which relates all human problems—social, political, cultural—to the doctrinal foundations of the Christian Faith, the view which sees all things here below in terms of God’s supremacy and earth’s transitoriness, in terms of Heaven and Hell” (pp. 3-4)

I definitely see this in some of my parishoners!

“My thesis amounts to this. Except over a very narrow field for thinking, chiefly touching questions of strictly personal conduct, we Christians in the modern world accept, for the purpose of mental activity, a frame of reference constructed by the secular mind and a set of criteria reflecting secular evaluations. There is no Christian mind; there is no shared field of discourse in which we can move at ease as thinking Christians by trodden ways and past established landmarks.
Perhaps most of the acclaimed thinkers and prophets of our day are non-Christians. A glance at some of the influential critiques of our culture that have made a popular impact in the last few years would suggest this view. Many writers who have recently probed the values of our culture, scrutinized the quality of current civilization with critical and penetrating eyes, have done so from a humanistic standpoint” (p. 5).

Are Christians today scrutinizing "the quality of current civilization with critical and penetrating eyes" from a theological standpoint?

“...though many of their books reflect a deep concern and unease over the present state of our culture and brood critically upon the sham values which commerce is imposing on modern man, generally speaking the judgments passed are not Christian judgments. They are not the products of Christian insight, Christian instruction, Christian vision. No theology lies at the back of what is otherwise an apparently healthy rejection of current materialism in its cruder manifestations” (pp. 5-6).

Is this also true of much of the current critique of modernism by post-moderns?

“The whole analytical process is carried out within a frame of reference which totally excludes the spiritual dimension, which totally ignores man’s primary nature as a religious being” (p. 8).

“Thus prophetic condemnation of salient features of contemporary secularism comes nowadays from secularists themselves whose ground of judgment is a humanistic one. It is clear that where there is no Christian mind to pass judgment upon society, those who care for human dignity and integrity on other grounds than the Christian’s will be provoked to rebel against the multifarious tendencies of contemporary civilization to depersonalize men and women. This rebellion must be regarded as a significant feature of the post-Christian world. It is good in itself. That is to say, the protest needs to be made. What is bad is that it should come from outside the Christian tradition” (pp. 8-9).

“In the same way, if we turn to the world of imaginative literature, we shall find that the deepest rejections of the shallowness and shoddiness of twentieth-century civilization are issuing from artists who are utterly out of touch with the Christian tradition” (p. 9).

“If Christians cannot communicate as thinking beings, they are reduced to encountering one another only at the shallow level of gossip and small talk. Hence the perhaps peculiarly modern problem—the loneliness of the thinking Christian” (p. 13).

“The mental secularization of Christians means that nowadays we meet only as worshipping beings and as moral beings, not as thinking beings” (p. 16).