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Monday, August 24, 2009

random Tillich quote

We'll likely be moving soon so we've been going through our stuff and throwing junk out. I have Paul Tillich's A History of Christian Thought in paperback and it's literally falling apart. A random quote someone had underlined before it goes:
The churches were the representatives of the ideologies which kept the ruling classes in power over against the working masses. This was the tragic situation. It is a great thing that in America this tragedy has happened on a much smaller scale. But in Europe it has led to the radical antireligious and anti-Christian attitudes of all labor movements, not only of the Communists but also of the social democrats. It was not the "bad athiests" --as propagandists call them-- who were responsible for this; it was the fact that the European churches, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Episcopalian, were without social sensitivity and direction. They were directed toward their own actualization; they were directed toward liturgical or dogmatic efforts and refinements, but the social problem was left to divine providence.

p. 483 - ISBN: 0-671-21426-8