It’s Friday, bless my soul. What a felicity. And the weather is much cooler up here, so I am now turning my attention to my annual paroxysms of anxiety about the changing of the leaves from green to many other colors.
So anyway, Apple decided to go full Pagan. I guess that’s the theme of the week, in case you were looking for one—We’re all Pagan now, whether we like it or not:
I’ve now watched this horrible virtue signal three times and I have seven thoughts because I’m a Christian. I like the Trinity and the Book of Revelation is my fave.
One
Louise Perry, in First Things, after describing the ancient, Pagan view of babies and infanticide, writes that:
In 1939 T. S. Eliot gave a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge in which he described a fork in the road. Western Civilization might continue along the Christian path, he predicted, or it might adopt “modern paganism.” Eliot, a Christian convert, hoped for the former, but he feared that we were already hell-bent on the latter. Eliot’s binary is the basis of a 2018 book by the legal historian Steven Smith titled Pagans and Christians in the City. One might reasonably ask why our choices should be limited to these two options, to be pagans or to be Christians. If we fully abandon Christianity, so say the secular reformers, shouldn’t that clear the way for some newer and better guiding philosophy? No, says Smith, because paganism never really went away, which makes its return all the easier.
I can’t remember quite, but I feel like Kwame Bediako made some similarly fascinating points about the way that Africa is becoming Christian. You can’t just fix your flag to the mast of pure reason and think everything will be fine.
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