Word: paganism
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Francis John McConnell, Methodist Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh, stated a postulate that would surprise and shock all sturdy U. S. Fundamentalists: "I come from a Nation which is in some respects pagan. We subscribe to the doctrine of militarism and to the god of materialism, and we have given ourselves over to the pursuit of wealth. We should not be complacent regarding paganism. . . . Let this meeting become a challenge...
...talk about all the good things we have to offer backward peoples, when we cannot point out a single country in Europe where there is a real Christian civilization operating throughout its society. . . . We are trying the impossible in offering to save the individual, yet leaving the social structure pagan. ... It is not possible for men and women to accept one standard of social ethics in private life and another in economic life...
...good deal of what he says is patently untrue, or at least misleading, it must be admitted that his theses are never anything but plausible. The best traditions of English letters seem to present to him an endless and enchanting vista of abstract crockery to be broken with loud pagan snorts and bellows, and while he not infrequently builds an elaborate argument of disproof where a simple "What of it?" would suffice, there is always that much more amusement for the occupants of the ringside seats...
...from the hearse and borne into one of the huge, resplendent grand salons. An airplane droned overhead, scattering roses; and through a blue haze the sacred mountains Iztaccihuatl (White Woman) and Popocatepetl (Smoke Mountain) seemed brooding. Simple peons, kneeling in the lovely, verdant Bosque de Chapultepec, muttered prayers half pagan, half Roman Catholic to Iztaccihuatl who they fancy resembles the white, reclining form of a pagan goddess -now somewhat confused with the Virgin Mary...
Only two characters in this second novel of Miss Warner's assume any importance--Mr. Fortune and his maggot--Lueli. Lueli is a youth who is the literary counterpart of the cinematic "Moana". He is lithe, graceful, ingratiating, childlike--and quite pagan. Worse than any vampire bat, he destroys Mr. Fortune's placidity; he creates have in a heart which had thought itself immune from any emotion except a fervent hatred for the world, the flesh and the devil. His innocence precludes any anger and his simplicity demands friendship. As Mr. Fortune's man Friday he wanders through the book...