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Rediscovering Christianity: A History of Modern Democracy & the Christian Ethic
Page Smith, the distinguished American historian, in Rediscovering Christianity confronts the United States of the 1990s as a society fractured by the dissolution of the family, adrift in a sea of moral and intellectual disarray, and crippled by the alienation of its young. Tracing Christian thought through Western history, Smith looks to see if it might have any solutions to offer to our present malaise. Pulling the idea of two distinct and separate cities of God and man from Augustine's The City of God, Smith molds the concept around history to discuss exactly where and when man began to stray from the basic Christian values of faith, unity, and spirituality. Tracing the two cities from the Roman Empire to the present day, we are able to see ourselves far off the path, lost in a quagmire of consumerism, decadence, and overindulgence.
The road Smith travels begins in Rome with the preachings of Jesus and moves onward through the collapse of the Roman Empire. After detailing the tenets of Christian philosophy, he moves past Rome, geographically north, on a stimulating historical adventure through Europe and the philosophies of Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, John Winthrop, and Descartes, among others.
As the centuries toll on, Christianity, plagued with corruption, exclusivity, usury, and blind worship, prompts the pure of spirit toward America, searching for an unsullied faith unavailable in Europe. In an examination of the political and religious origins of democracy in America, Smith contrasts the humble, and largely holy, motives of earlier generations of Americans, with the capitalistic ones that seem so prevalent today.
Page Smith separates Christianity from the tangled web of capitalism and calls for a return to values of decency, generosity, and piety, which have been with us since the beginning of time. By looking back through the past, he gives us a vision of a new future, for without it "society [will] slip into a kind of hell of selfishness and self indulgence...where all is decadence and disintegration." In this timely and seminal work, Smith not only reclaims our past, but he guides us on the way to a brilliant hereafter.
The road Smith travels begins in Rome with the preachings of Jesus and moves onward through the collapse of the Roman Empire. After detailing the tenets of Christian philosophy, he moves past Rome, geographically north, on a stimulating historical adventure through Europe and the philosophies of Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, John Winthrop, and Descartes, among others.
As the centuries toll on, Christianity, plagued with corruption, exclusivity, usury, and blind worship, prompts the pure of spirit toward America, searching for an unsullied faith unavailable in Europe. In an examination of the political and religious origins of democracy in America, Smith contrasts the humble, and largely holy, motives of earlier generations of Americans, with the capitalistic ones that seem so prevalent today.
Page Smith separates Christianity from the tangled web of capitalism and calls for a return to values of decency, generosity, and piety, which have been with us since the beginning of time. By looking back through the past, he gives us a vision of a new future, for without it "society [will] slip into a kind of hell of selfishness and self indulgence...where all is decadence and disintegration." In this timely and seminal work, Smith not only reclaims our past, but he guides us on the way to a brilliant hereafter.
- GenresHistory
212 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1993
About the author
Page Smith
85 books12 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Charles Page Smith, who was known by his middle name, was a U.S. historian, professor, author, and newspaper columnist.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Smith graduated with a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College in 1940. He then worked at Camp William James, a center for youth leadership training opened in 1940 by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Dartmouth College professor, as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Smith was awarded a Purple Heart for his service as a company commander of the 10th Mountain Division of the United States Army during World War II. (wikipedia)
Charles Page Smith, who was known by his middle name, was a U.S. historian, professor, author, and newspaper columnist.
A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Smith graduated with a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College in 1940. He then worked at Camp William James, a center for youth leadership training opened in 1940 by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Dartmouth College professor, as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Smith was awarded a Purple Heart for his service as a company commander of the 10th Mountain Division of the United States Army during World War II. (wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 29, 2020
A very readable and interesting book on the history of modern democracy and the Christian ethic, especially as experienced in America, through the prism of mainly Protestant Christianity, as well as Catholic Christianity. The author makes the strong case of dissociating Christianity from its support for capitalism as it's normally thought of due to the great opposition of Christianity towards Marxism. Here are a few excerpts of note:
"Although the word capitalist nowhere appears in the writings of the Founding Fathers, they, as we have noted, were uneasy about the tendency in societies for wealth to accumulate in the hands of the "the few" at the cost of "the many," and for luxury to undermine the moral fiber of a people, leading inevitably to their degeneration and downfall. They clearly considered "commercial liberty" an important aspect of that larger liberty guaranteed to all (slaves aside). If capitalism was not in the vocabulary of the Founders, it soon manifested in the real world. Banks were the essence of capitalism; no banks, no capital and hence no capitalism. But an essentially agricultural people feared and distrusted banks and bankers. It was one of the relatively few things John Adams and his friend Thomas Jefferson agreed upon--the perniciousness of banks and bankers. The trouble with banks was that they made money with other people's money."
- pg. 138
"As early as 1874, Horace Bushnell, a Congregational minister, had made the same point. "Evil, once beginning to exist, inevitably becomes organic and constructs a kind of principate or kingdom opposite to God....Corrupt opinions, false judgments, bad manners, and a general body of conventionalism that represent the motherhood of sin, come into vogue and reign, and so, doubtless, everywhere and in all the worlds, sin had it in its nature to organize, mount into the ascendant above God and truth and reign in a kingdom opposite to God." This, in fact, was the condition of so-called American capitalism: "it wished to usurp God's kingdom and have no measure of its conscience but that of its own devising." The real task of Christianity was therefore not the defense of Christian orthodoxy against the assaults of skeptics and free0thinkers, but the extension of the teachings of Christianity ever wider into the world."
- pgs. 154-155
"The city of God is, of course, neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant. It is the city of all faithful Christians of whatever division or denomination. If the story of Protestant Christianity has been the most dramatic and significant story since the sixteenth century, we should bear in mind that for some fifteen hundred years the Roman Church held the world together. It preserved through tumultuous and desperate times the dogma, doctrine, vision, and the dream of the unity of mankind. It elevated the status of women through the cult of the Virgin, through nuns as the brides of Christ, through the ideal of chivalric love to a status far higher than that accorded women in any other of the great religions of the world. The vast hierarchy of the Church, however corrupt it became in the end, worked for a thousand years to keep scholarship and learning alive, and, in a hundred specific and identifiable ways, to lay the foundations for the modern world. It must be kept in mind also that the first Reformers--John Wycliff, Martin Luther, Jan Hus, and hundreds of others--were themselves priests trained in the teachings of the Roman Church and determined to restore it to health."
- pgs. 197-198
"Although the word capitalist nowhere appears in the writings of the Founding Fathers, they, as we have noted, were uneasy about the tendency in societies for wealth to accumulate in the hands of the "the few" at the cost of "the many," and for luxury to undermine the moral fiber of a people, leading inevitably to their degeneration and downfall. They clearly considered "commercial liberty" an important aspect of that larger liberty guaranteed to all (slaves aside). If capitalism was not in the vocabulary of the Founders, it soon manifested in the real world. Banks were the essence of capitalism; no banks, no capital and hence no capitalism. But an essentially agricultural people feared and distrusted banks and bankers. It was one of the relatively few things John Adams and his friend Thomas Jefferson agreed upon--the perniciousness of banks and bankers. The trouble with banks was that they made money with other people's money."
- pg. 138
"As early as 1874, Horace Bushnell, a Congregational minister, had made the same point. "Evil, once beginning to exist, inevitably becomes organic and constructs a kind of principate or kingdom opposite to God....Corrupt opinions, false judgments, bad manners, and a general body of conventionalism that represent the motherhood of sin, come into vogue and reign, and so, doubtless, everywhere and in all the worlds, sin had it in its nature to organize, mount into the ascendant above God and truth and reign in a kingdom opposite to God." This, in fact, was the condition of so-called American capitalism: "it wished to usurp God's kingdom and have no measure of its conscience but that of its own devising." The real task of Christianity was therefore not the defense of Christian orthodoxy against the assaults of skeptics and free0thinkers, but the extension of the teachings of Christianity ever wider into the world."
- pgs. 154-155
"The city of God is, of course, neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant. It is the city of all faithful Christians of whatever division or denomination. If the story of Protestant Christianity has been the most dramatic and significant story since the sixteenth century, we should bear in mind that for some fifteen hundred years the Roman Church held the world together. It preserved through tumultuous and desperate times the dogma, doctrine, vision, and the dream of the unity of mankind. It elevated the status of women through the cult of the Virgin, through nuns as the brides of Christ, through the ideal of chivalric love to a status far higher than that accorded women in any other of the great religions of the world. The vast hierarchy of the Church, however corrupt it became in the end, worked for a thousand years to keep scholarship and learning alive, and, in a hundred specific and identifiable ways, to lay the foundations for the modern world. It must be kept in mind also that the first Reformers--John Wycliff, Martin Luther, Jan Hus, and hundreds of others--were themselves priests trained in the teachings of the Roman Church and determined to restore it to health."
- pgs. 197-198
December 18, 2011
I'm not so sure I follow or maybe it's that I don't agree with or buy into much of what is put forth by the aunthor and yet there were sparks here and there which spoke to me of past moments in history and some which eerily enough or perhaps tellingly reflect upon much of what I sense as amiss in our current situation in not only our country but globally as a result of the huge financial crisis which has engulfed all in the recent years. I may find myself returning to this once it settles but as I'm a bit underwhelmed by it generally I can only give it an okay mark.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews