The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of CrisisBy early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others-sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world. In this book, Alan Jacobs explores the poems, novels, essays, reviews, and lectures of these five central figures, in which they presented, with great imaginative energy and force, pictures of the very different paths now set before the Western democracies. Working mostly separately and in ignorance of one another's ideas, the five developed a strikingly consistent argument that the only means by which democratic societies could be prepared for their world-wide economic and political dominance was through a renewal of education that was grounded in a Christian understanding of the power and limitations of human beings. The Year of Our Lord 1943 is the first book to weave together the ideas of these five intellectuals and shows why, in a time of unprecedented total war, they all thought it vital to restore Christianity to a leading role in the renewal of the Western democracies. |
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The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
User Review - Publishers WeeklyJacobs (How to Think), professor of humanities at Baylor University, explores the response of Christian humanists to the global conflagration of WWII in this precise survey. Jacobs focuses on five ... Read full review
Contents
Prosper O Lord Our Righteous Cause | |
The Humanist Inheritance | |
Learning in WarTime | |
Demons | |
Force | |
Other Pilgrims Other Paths | |
Approaching the | |
Stunde Null | |
Acknowledgments | |
Bibliography | |
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Common terms and phrases
Adler Age of Anxiety believe C. S. Lewis called Cathars Catholic century chapter Christian humanism Christianity and Culture Church civilization Collected Poems crisis critique democracy demonic Dewey East Coker Edited Edward Mendelson Ellul English Europe Faber faith force Function of Poetry genuine German Hideous Strength Hitler hope human humanistic Hutchins ideas Iliad intellectual Jacques Maritain later lectures Letters Lewis’s live London man’s means Mendelson mind modern Moot Papers moral nature Nazi Need for Roots Niebuhr one’s perhaps person Pétrement philosophy Poems of T. S. political Prose published question Raïssa religion religious Romanesque Romanesque Renaissance San Francisco Screwtape Screwtape Letters Selected Essays Simone Simone Weil spiritual T. S. Eliot technocracy theological things thinkers Thomism thought totalitarianism truth University Press Vocation and Society W. H. Auden Waiting for God Weight of Glory Weil’s words writing wrote York
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis |
| Author | Alan Jacobs |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2018 |
| ISBN | 0190864672, 9780190864675 |
| Length | 256 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Military / World War II Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century Religion / Christianity / Literature & the Arts Religion / History |
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