Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
For four hundred years, toleration has been considered the solution to sectarian violence. But by banishing questions of ultimate meaning from public life, toleration has, ironically, undermined the very peace it was meant to establish. Conyers attacks the superstition that our only choice is between destructive political conflict and the suppression of all transcendent concerns. A more authentic model of toleration is to be found in pre-Reformation Christianity, which preached humility rather than indifference.
-- Can we criticize toleration without supporting intolerance?
-- Why is it literally impossible to separate politics and religion?
-- Is traditional Christianity an obstacle to toleration -- or its savior?
Synopsis
A culture built upon the ideology of individual choice will be culture of alienation, loneliness, and violence. In a provocative new book, A. J. Conyers shows that Western culture was once informed by a sense of vocation, that men understood life as a response to a call from outside and above themselves. Beginning in the sixteenth century, however, the sense of vocation began to fade, to be replaced by the modern celebration of the unfettered human will. In such a society, Conyers argues, where relations among men are based on force, true community is impossible. The idea of vocation is of central importance in the Judeo-Christian tradition, of course, but Conyers shows how it has shaped non-Western societies as well. In every tradition, he find