“It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernity at the very moment when modernity itself is undergoing a kind of spiritual collapse….”

—  Irving Kristol

Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995), pp. 36-7.
1990s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernit…" by Irving Kristol?
Irving Kristol photo
Irving Kristol 35
American columnist, journalist, and writer 1920–2009

Related quotes

David Bowie photo

“Never gonna fall for
Modern love — walks beside me.
Modern love — walks on by.
Modern love — gets me to the church on time.
Church on time — terrifies me.
Church on time — makes me party.
Church on time — puts my trust in God and man.
God and man — no confessions.
God and man — no religion.
God and man — don't believe in modern love.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Modern Love —  YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt8vhgGpKu4
Song lyrics, Let's Dance (1983)

Lin Yutang photo

“Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 397

Jacques Ellul photo

“This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 37
Context: People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it. Thus from the moment that technics, the State, or production, are facts, we must worship them as facts, and we must try to adapt ourselves to them. This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.

“In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends — anything that will drag in a few more people.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Author Says Messiah Could Be a Woman".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Everett Dean Martin photo

“The attainment of spirit today requires the very most uncompromisingly critical analysis and revaluation of ideals and enthusiasms, ancient and modern, of which the awakening modern mind is capable.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Civilizing Ourselves: Intellectual Maturity in the Modern World (1932), p. xi, Foreword

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Vera Rubin photo

“I'm not a theologian, and I must say honestly that Vatican astronomers' views [on astronomy] are entirely in accord with ours. I'm not aware of any Church positions that contradict modern science. In my own life, my science and my religion are separate. I'm Jewish, and so religion to me is a kind of moral code and a kind of history. I try to do my science in a moral way, and, I believe that, ideally, science should be looked upon as something that helps us understand our role in the universe.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

As quoted in Pontifical Science Academy http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/STELLAR.TXT

Edith Hamilton photo

“They were the first Westerners. The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery; and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

On the Greeks, in Ch. 1
The Greek Way (1930)

“Great art is never extreme. Criticism moves in a false direction, as does art, when it aspires to be a social science... In this world modern artists form a kind of spiritual underground.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Motherwell's writing in 1944; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory'
1940s

“A garden should be natural-seeming, with wild sections, including a large area of bluebells.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

Related topics