Cover Image: Pagans and Christians in the City

Pagans and Christians in the City

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Member Reviews

I cannot review this book because I have been unable to access it due to the protected pdf file that is the only format it comes in from NetGalley. Therefore I can make no recommendations regarding what had promised to be a very interesting book.

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This book takes as its starting point a statement by T. S. Eliot to the effect that people are better off living in a Christian society than a pagan one. A hefty chunk of the book is taken up with defining what is meant by “Christian society vs. pagan society.” The author comes down on a basic definition of “transcendent religion (acknowledging or at least open to a God and objective ultimate good beyond the universe and in eternity) vs. immanent religion (finding ultimate good in this world and lifetime).

He purports to show how these incompatible views have constantly fought to be the dominant view undergirding society. He starts with the early Christians in the Roman Empire and then jumps to modern Western civilization in general and the US in particular. He examines how each view shapes society, what kinds of conflicts arise (and why), the meaning of religious freedom for each side (I found the historical and legal issues related to this to be especially interesting and relevant), and a host of other implications.

When someone talks as if they have discovered THE key to understanding a huge issue, I take it with a grain of salt, but overall this was a thought-provoking book. The hysteria and paranoia that frequently underlie “culture war” discussions is replaced with calm, relatively even-handed description of both sides of most arguments. I don’t necessarily agree with the author’s sometimes vague conclusions (I’m deeply suspicious of trying to “Christianize” society, especially via politics), and the book is pretty lacking in the “how shall we then live?” element, but there’s a lot to chew on here. If you’re looking for an academic analysis of the “culture wars” without the usual hysterical rhetoric, this is worth reading.

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I haven't been able to open this book in any of the apps I've installed from Google Play. Is it available in mobi, epub, or pdf? I was able to open another acsm file on Aldiko, but it won't open this one.

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Great book outlining how history shows the tension and fight between christianity and paganism and how those are the two ultimate realities that have always been at war. This book struggles with the same issue as most modern books, which is that it struggles with giving any solutions though or hope, for that matter, and therefore I would consider it incomplete.

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Much more scholarly and academic than I expected based on the description. Probably will not purchase for our public library, unless requested by a patron.

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First let me state my biases here: I study religious texts heavily (so I read a lot of nonfiction items), I study all religions in both past and present tense (so I have a large understanding of both the history and present structure of many religions), and I am a practicing, proud neo-pagan. Lastly, I try hard to leave my personal believes aside when reading religious text, but we all know it is impossible to be 100% unbiased.

With that aside, this text was hard for me to get into and to finish. I am not shy to heavily researched texts and even more so on texts that are historic in nature. This text was very dry and the author’s thoughts were stated clearly but it felt that ONLY his theories were stated. This happened many times in texts. An author needs to remember that there is always more than one side to things and not mentioning anything more than your theories are dismissive. I have many examples throughout this text that needed the author to not just support his thoughts to but to defend them. I felt this text was too dry of a read (that is saying a lot when it is from someone that reads historical texts for fun), that pieces of historical facts were being reused to fit into the author’s way of thinking, and that overall the claims that being made are undefended and easy to dismiss. However, the up side to this is that the topic of this text was enough to get me to read it.

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