Sublime
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The problem with nationalism lies not only in that it limits transcendence and sympathy to the national community but also in that it subordinates or devalues the links between individuals and other expressions of community at scales below and above the nation.20 A program of shared sovereignty – a new universalism – can gain meaning only if it dev
... See morePrasenjit Duara • The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Asian Connections)
And Menahem, who at twenty-five had been driven to consider truth for himself, threw back what would become the timeless answer of the Christian: “God intended salvation to be within the reach of anyone: even me.
James A. Michener • The Source: A Novel
King’s civil rights movement, at least, took on ontological assertions, calling us to honor the concrete humanity of our neighbor.
Andrew Root • Faith Formation in a Secular Age : Volume 1 (Ministry in a Secular Age): Responding to the Church's Obsession with Youthfulness
The first was the confessionalization of religion built around the self–other distinction, which was sensed as critical to the survival and advancement of nations in the new world.
Prasenjit Duara • The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Asian Connections)
Pocock argues that while humanists, such as Machiavelli, believed that the citizen fulfilled himself through civic virtue rather than through ecclesiastical sacraments, they were still unable to develop a theory of history, or what Pocock calls historicism.
Prasenjit Duara • The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Asian Connections)
This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined, constantly improved, accumulated and fed into a process, now called “decision-making.” This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people.
Ivan Illich • Tools for Conviviality
Jesus as a “teacher” is much safer than Jesus as the gospels actually present him. Most Christians today would, I suspect, see straight through that reductionism. But would they know what to put in its place? Or would they simply substitute some version of the first answer, that Jesus came to enable us to go to heaven?
N. T. Wright • How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
Christians will continue to say and to feel what people naturally say and feel about their spouses or lovers – “there is no other like him/her.” The reason why people are or remain Christian is (or should be) the experience that no one else has so touched them, spoken to them, enabled them to discover who they really are as has Jesus.