Christianity and Culture

Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes towards the Definition of Culture by TS Eliot, 202 pages

 

This is a combo pack of two of Eliot's essays, The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, plus a lecture "The Unity of European Culture", which is appended to the latter essay.  The first essay was published in 1939, the second in 1948, and the lecture delivered in Berlin in 1946.

 

Eliot defines a "Christian society" as one which is animated by a Christian understanding of the nature and end of human life.  It is not necessarily even led by professed Christians, but is itself the product of a Christian culture.  Since culture, though it may be received by many, is ultimately always the work of a "creative minority" (in Ratzinger's memorable phrase), Eliot adopts Coleridge's concept of "clerisy", a community of learned laymen and clergy, as the root of a future Christian culture.  It is important to note that the author is not concerned with specific political questions, nor with the utility of Christianity in society - to the contrary, he expressly repudiates the Moral Rearmament movement of his own time.  The only justification for basing a society on Christian principles (or any principles, for that matter) is the belief that those principles are true.

 

"Culture", as Eliot defines it, is the sum total of what is handed down through history by a society, the accumulated treasure of the past.  As such, a culture is organic and can only be grown, not engineered or manufactured.  Culture grows best in local communities, in communication with other communities in higher agglomerations - his model here is the various parts of the UK and the whole, as well as the UK and the whole of Europe.  Since different people have different gifts, the development of culture will always be primarily dependent on some elite, however chosen.  It is no doubt Eliot's most controversial conclusion that attempting to make culture universally accessible will result in the degradation of culture.  Nearly as controversial is his observation, following Christopher Dawson, that a culture is inevitably founded on religion or a substitute, since it depends on transcendent meaning, and requires a connection with the dead who have gone before.

 

Not just one, but two classic, landmark texts.