Word: secularized
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rudderless Ship. Several theologians, in fact, have quite soberly wondered aloud whether the situation of the church demands the shock of another Luther. Even as it gropes toward ecumenical union, Protestantism stands threatened by secular inroads and spiritual indifference. Ranking church leaders openly question the relevance of Christianity, while old denominational quarrels have been upstaged by a new threat of schism: crisis-centered activists who see the church's function as worldly service, against heaven-glancing traditionalists who argue that Christ's message was to save souls not nations...
Meals in Common. The institute community forms a kind of interfaith family monastery, worshiping together, eating in common, and pursuing community actions and study projects. While most members of the community work full time at the institute, several have daytime secular jobs. They turn over their salaries to the institute, which in turn provides them with a living allowance based on marital status and family size. A portion of the funds is set aside for the college education of members' children. There is also a travel fund, which enables two couples to travel abroad for three months each year...
...Luther? He was three sheets to the wind on German beer a good part of the time. John Wesley? You'd be sexually frustrated if you had a wife like his." Religious irreverence, insists the institute's dean, Joseph Mathews, helps "retool the minds of clergymen" to secular realities...
...movement has been harshly criticized by other intellectuals, both Catholic and secular. Douglas Woodruff, editor of England's leading Catholic weekly, The Tablet, has dubbed the New Left thinkers "the church's Red Guards" and dismissed their Christian Marxism as "nefarious nonsense." Cambridge's Raymond Williams, a radical, non-Christian socialist, notes a certain irony in the fact that the Catholic Left is espousing Marxism as an ideology precisely at a time when Communist governments in Eastern Europe are becoming more pragmatic. The Red Guards admit that they are open to criticism, but still insist that...
...Accordingly, he is as likely to use a passage from Camus or Albee as a parable to bring home to his congregation an aspect of God's message. Well aware that pulpit time is dropout time for many churchgoers, more and more ministers are not only turning to secular sources as an inspiration for sermons but are trying more dramatic ways to vary the format of their preaching...