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The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief QUOTES

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief QUOTES

1 " The critics of modernity were warning that one must be vigilant against the demands of hyperorganized commercial society and consumerism lest they undermine one’s true humanity. "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

2 " Lippmann declared that “if what is good, what is right, what is true, is only what the individual ‘chooses’ to ‘invent’, then we are outside the traditions of civility. "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

3 " the public role of mainline Protestantism was rapidly diminishing, the mainstream culture had no provision for encouraging a wider variety of religiously informed views in its place. "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

4 " Martin Marty, a young Lutheran scholar, offered further insights into the situation in The New Shape of American Religion, which appeared in 1959. The so-called revival of religion, Marty explained, was largely a revival of “interest in religion.” Unlike earlier American awakenings, this one was not primarily a renewal of Protestantism but “a maturing national religion "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

5 " Faith preceded understanding, and so faith informed and shaped understanding. Working from this principle, Kuyper insisted that reason, natural science, and methodological naturalism were not ideologically neutral. Even the most technical of natural sciences, he observed, operated within the framework of the faith, or higher commitments, of the practitioner. "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

6 " affluent Americans typically became quickly bored with their material things. So the rates of alcoholism and suicide in America were among the highest in the world, and escapist entertainments were everywhere. Modern societies promoted short-term “happiness,” but they did not cultivate truly humanistic lives characterized by relatedness, creativity, individuality, loving relationships, reason, and “a frame of orientation and devotion. "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief

7 " Mainstream liberal thinkers could thus, on the one hand, be consistent believers in a purely naturalistic universe that did not furnish any absolute first principles, yet on the other hand have a dedicated faith in the shared principles of the current American consensus. "

― George M. Marsden , The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief