THE HISTORIC REALITY OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE: A Ray to the Renewal of Human Life

This is volume one of a series to be known as Religious Perspectives, and we can hope that future volumes maintain the high quality of Christopher Dawson's effort. It is not an easy book because the subject is not easy, but its tight-knit reasoning is clear and one who can think at the college level or better can follow it with profit. Anyone who is responsible for the goals and functions of education ought to grapple with the concepts presented here. The real appeal of the book will be to historians, clergy, and well informed people, whether or not they are Christians. Dawson makes clear the interrelation of various cultures, and the faiths that have conditioned or even produced them, treating Christian cultural history in terms of the six dynamic phases of Christianity, followed by epochs of stagnation. He calls attention to the peculiarity of our modern culture where the material success of our civilization has led us away from our spiritual center and destroyed our spiritual community. The author calls for a reform in education as the great key to the modern problem, nothing that every turning point in European history has been associated with a change in education, or a movement of educational reform. He feels it is possible to preserve the unity of culture in an age of technical specialization, and to maintain Christian culture despite the threat of secularism, as the two problems have a common answer. For maximum profit, the book deserves two readings.