Word: seculare
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WILLIS'S ANALYSIS of fifties liberalism and its culmination in the secular theology of Harvey Cox and the pragmatic style of John F. Kennedy is right on the mark even as it is somewhat more caustic than either deserves. In The Secular City, Cox carried the theology of Reinhold Niehbur one step too far. Like Niebuhr, Cox recognized the need for "toughness" in the face of the 20th Century challenges. But unlike Niehbuhr who endorsed pragmatism with fear and trembling. Cox embraced it with enormous enthusiasm...
John Kennedy, according to both Wills and Cox, was the Secular City man par excellence. He was tough and grappled with problems without any ideological preconceptions. We know now that the problem with the Secular City, anti-ideological approach was its lack of any firm moral underpinnings...
...SURPRISE our distinctly secular age has become enamored of music conceived for a faith deeper than most of us profess. Our vague Enlightenment rationalism grants us a tolerance for a variety of religious expressions; and even the intense orthodoxy of a composer like J.S. Bach does not put us off, but perversely enhances our wonder at his accomplishments. The specifics of religious identification within a work like Bach's Christmas Oratorio are lost to us. Yet the sincerity of its conception (and of course the skill of its composition) are as evident now as in the 18th century...
...part, Peronism is also a personality cult-in fact, a split-personality cult-built around the twin legends of the deposed dictator and his dead second wife Eva, whom the Argentine descamisados (shirtless ones) have enshrined as a secular saint. "Perón y Evita," are an enduring political force in Argentina. Walls in Buenos Aires are plastered with fresh posters of a sleek and inspiring Evita Perón, "flag bearer of the workers...
Beneath the inescapable incantatory presence of Maoism, which comes close to being a fanatical, albeit secular faith, cultural life in China is desperately impoverished. "It is time we had a change," a Chinese friend told me. "There is not enough variety in our revolutionary operas." A graduate of a foreign-language institute, my friend had played the saxophone in the institute's orchestra. He also had had a fine collection of Chinese-made recordings of Beethoven's works, which he "lost" during the Cultural Revolution. How? "Well, perhaps my sister put them somewhere," he responded with a grin...