Dr. Toynbee’s Homogenized Church

Arnold Toynbee has for some years been deeply impressed by the need for a common religious basis to inspire and energize the fight which all peoples must wage against the modem heresy of “our worship of ourselves in the shape of collective human power.” By this extremely unsatisfactory phrase he means, he explains, Communism on the one side of the Iron Curtain, Nationalism on the other. These are each “a creation of the same perverse theme: man’s self-centered worship of himself.”

At the end of his famous Study of History, Dr. Toynbee seemed to be expecting the development, and certainly to be urging the desirability, of a new syncretic religion.

DJ

About the Author

Douglas Jerrold

Featured Tags

Arnold Toynbee has for some years been deeply impressed by the need for a common religious basis to inspire and energize the fight which all peoples must wage against the modem heresy of “our worship of ourselves in the shape of collective human power.” By this extremely unsatisfactory phrase he means, he explains, Communism on the one side of the Iron Curtain, Nationalism on the other. These are each “a creation of the same perverse theme: man’s self-centered worship of himself.”

At the end of his famous Study of History, Dr. Toynbee seemed to be expecting the development, and certainly to be urging the desirability, of a new syncretic religion.