Thursday, September 23, 2010

Ouch


Marilynn Robinson delivers an interview with a few spankings for everyone.

Here's one or two she had for Christians:
‎"Christianity has abandoned its intellectual traditions, ceding that ground to anybody in a white coat. Where it has tried to muster courage, it has too often tended to become irrational and shrill. Meanwhile, a great age in true science, an absolute catalog of wonders, passes by unnoticed."
"My interest is in the larger life of Christianity, in the fact, for example, that among my estimable students there is no way to distinguish those with a religious background from those whose experience has been entirely secular, in terms of their sensitivity to allusion, or their familiarity with essential narrative, or with the basic terms in which the faith is articulated and pondered. In the great majority of cases they have been taught little or nothing."
A challenge:
"Where have the sciences flourished as well, where has freedom of thought and inquiry developed so powerfully, as in Christian civilization? These things are not new to us, not alien, not threatening. They are properly the heritage of Christian people, and the institutions of Christianity should honor and preserve them, beginning with the seminary and the local church."

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