Sublime

And if this is generally true, and we believe it is, then we can logically say that not living in exile over the past few hundred years, having comfort and power in society as Christians, has hindered gospel progress.

we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world. Furthermore, what concrete aspects of our capitalistic culture can be traced to them.

That heresy seems to have died down almost completely in the second half of the eleventh century is possibly related to the fact that the Church was starting a programme of reform that had been initiated by Pope Leo IX (1049–54). The greatest of the reforming pontiffs of this period – and indeed one of the most significant of all mediaeval popes –

The growth of the religious right in the 1970s was in large part a backlash against the civil rights movement and women’s movement. To this day, in North Carolina, 65 percent describe themselves as very religions. Three-fourths say they believe in God with absolute certainty. And 77 percent of the adult population identify as Christian, the majorit

Only when priests used these fears and rituals to support morality and law did religion become a force vital and rival to the state.

Christians were characterized in great part by their sobriety, their gentleness, their fidelity to their spouses, their care for the poor, their willingness to nurse the gravely ill even in times of plague and for their ability to exhibit virtues (like courage and self-restraint) that were generally thought impossible for persons of low estate, wit

Converts are rarely atheists, but most are only very weakly attached to any religion. That is, most new religious groups draw their converts mainly from the ranks of the religiously inactive or alienated: the majority of converts to American ‘new’ religions report that their parents had no religious affiliation.35 As will be seen, that same princip

The Scholastic commitment to empiricism was one of the vital keys to the rise of science. Although the aim of science is to formulate theories to explain natural phenomena, it requires that theories be put to and survive empirical tests.