"For the Liberal the spiritual center of gravity was in the individual, and the realm of private opinion and private interests was the ideal world. Hence, when the Liberal spoke of religion as a purely private matter it was in compliment rather than in derogation. To separate the Church from the State — to keep religion out of politics, was to elevate it to a higher sphere of spiritual values. But today in the democratic world, these values have been reversed. The individual life has lost its spiritual primacy, and it is social life which has now the higher prestige, so that to treat religion as a purely individual and personal matter is to deprive it of actuality and to degrade it to a lower level of value and potency. To keep religion out of public life is to shut it up in a stuffy Victorian back drawing room with the aspidistras and antimacassars, when the streets are full of life and youth. And the result is that the religion of the Church becomes increasingly alienated from real life while democratic society creates a new religion of the street and the forum to take its place."
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Historians from EnglandCatholics from EnglandUniversity of Oxford alumniFellows of the British Academy
Original Language: English
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Christopher Dawson
Christopher Henry Dawson (12 October 1889 – 25 May 1970) was an English Catholic historian, independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and emphasized the necessity on how Western culture must be in continuity with Christianity to not stagnate and deteriorate.
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