Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8476 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 In a p l u r a l i s t i c w o r l d that views traditional faith with suspicion, what would a Christian society look like? What should Christians hope for their countries? R. R. Reno, editor of First Things, asks this question in his new book, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society. He borrows his title from T. S. Eliot’s “The Idea of a Christian Society,” an essay based on a series of lectures Eliot delivered in 1939, six months before Britain and Germany went to war. Eliot’s writing is marked by the shadow of hostility and unrest. It’s a feeling we have come to know in our own time: the uncertainty of imminent, unknown change. Eliot’s essay is loftier and more formal, while Reno’s book is grittier and more connected to the present struggles Christians face. They are worth reading together as we try to understand where we are and what we should do as Christians in post- Christian societies. In the 1930s, many Americans and Britons called their societies Christian, largely to distinguish themselves from the barbarities of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. For Eliot, that was not enough. He argues that the “idea” of a society is the end toward which it is ordered and the deep structure of its thought and culture. A Christian society, then, is “not the same thing as a society consisting exclusively of devout Christians. It would be a society in which the natural end of man – virtue and well-being in community – is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end – beatitude – for those who have the eyes to see it.” However, that no longer described the Britain in which Eliot lived. Despite talk of the nation as a Christian society, Eliot thought that his nation was in “a kind of doldrums between opposing winds of doctrine, in a period in which one political philosophy has lost its cogency for behavior, though it is still the only one in which public speech can be framed.” Britain was stuck between a positive culture, Christianity, and a negative one, rebellion against Christianity. More and more people were turning away from the Christian faith, but they lacked something of real substance with which to replace it. Eliot saw this lukewarm middle ground as closer to paganism than full-blooded Christian faith. He predicted that British society would continue in these doldrums and proceed into a gradual decline unless it took either a positive secular shape or a positive Christian one. If Britain did not rebuild its Christian foun- dation, and if secular liberalism continued its rise, Eliot predicted that standards for art and culture would suffer. He also thought that the common bonds of society would begin to fray. Nathaniel Peters is a doctoral candidate in historical theology at Boston College. Can Society Be Christian? Reviving T. S. Eliot’s Vision N AT H A N IE L P E T E RS R e v i e w E s s ay