The Resurrection of Christian Humanism?(The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis)

• Published in: American conservative (Arlington, Va.) Vol. 17; no. 5; pp. 52 - 54
• Main Author: Birzer, Bradley J
• Format: Book Review Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arlington The American Conservative LLC 01.09.2018; American Conservative LLC
• Subjects: 20th century; Christianity; Conservatism; Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns) (1888-1965); Humanism; Lewis, C S (1898-1963); Merton, Thomas (1915-1968); O Connor, Flannery (1925-1964); Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (1892-1973)
• ISSN: 1540-966X

T.S. Eliot, Paul Elmer More, Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, Willa Cather, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, J.R.R. Tolkien, Nicholas Berdyaev, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Theodor Haecker, Aurel Kokiai, Bernard Wall, Sigrid Undset, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, and Russell Kirk After the latter's immense success with the 1953 publication of The Conservative Mind, the young author worried that conservatism could serve only as a critique of the previous age, not as blueprint for a way forward. Relying almost entirely on primary source material but filtered through the rather personal thought, intellect, and soul of the present author, Jacobs considers the fears and desires of five major but seemingly disparate figures in 1943 as they envision a post-war world after an Allied victory: Maritain is the only Catholic, while Auden, Eliot, and Lewis were faithful members of the Church of England, and Weil, though raised in a secular Jewish family, embraced what might be called a liturgical form of evangelical Christianity. Only in the ability to seek and find truth in the moral sphere, Hutchins argued, could true human flourishing occur. [...]Jacobs muses after his summation of Hutchins, "only a clearly articulated and rationally defended account of true justice can resist totalitarianism."