Recovering the Christian Mind II

"The question is, will the Christians of the next fifty years, over against a strengthened secularism, deepen and clarify their Christian commitment in a withdrawn cultivation of personal morality and spirituality, thereby achieving the kind of uneasy coexistence which Church and State appear to have arrived at in Russia? Or will the Christians of the next fifty years deepen and clarify their Christian commitment at the intellectual and social levels too, meeting and challenging not only secularism's assault upon personal morality and the life of the soul, but also secularism's truncated and perverted view of the meaning of life and the purpose of the social order? . . . [O]ne fears that by sheer tactical error Christians in the West may be gradually maneuvered into the position of Christians in Russia, content to say the best that can be said of a social system wholly and professedly committed to godless materialism, and meanwhile sincerely keeping alive the flames of faith and piety and moral virtue among a remnant that is tolerated so long as it holds back from any comprehensive criticism of the established system." (Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant, 1963), 189--90.)