Sign in  |  Register

The New Criterion

The New Criterion is probably more consistently worth reading than any other magazine in English.
- The Times Literary Supplement

Features

March 2004

Religion in America: ancient & modern

by David B. Hart

On the distinctive state of religion in America. The seventh of our series “Lengthened shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-first Century.”

All culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief . . . no cultured person should remain indifferent to erosion of apprehension of the transcendent.
—Russell Kirk, Eliot and His Age

The herdsman who comes to Pentheus from Mount Cithaeron, in The Bacchae, tells how the Theban women possessed by Dionysus take up serpents without being bitten and fire without being burned. It is not unlikely, given how common such phenomena are in "enthusiast" and "ecstatic" religion, that here and elsewhere Euripides grants us some glimpse of the actual Dionysiac orgy, even long after its migration into Greece from Thrace, when the cult had been assumed into the soberer mysteries of the Olympians.

And other features of the rite, reporte ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase

Subscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions)

Subscribe to TNC (Online only)

Purchase article credit and clip this article

If you already have an account login first

David B. Hart


more from this author

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 22 March 2004, on page 5

Copyright © 2010 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Religion-in-America--ancient---modern-1563
rate this article for your user profile

E-mail to friend


The New Criterion

By the author

Con man

by David B. Hart

A review of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker

Beyond disbelief

by David B. Hart

A review of The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, by Alister McGrath.

You might also enjoy

Ayn Rand: engineer of souls

by Anthony Daniels

A critical account of the "Chernyshevsky of individualism."

Remembering Irving Kristol

by James Piereson

On the godfather of modern conservatism & his intellectual legacy.

Carlyle the wise

by Barton Swaim

On the political thought of Thomas Carlyle.

Most popular

view more >

download
first delivery

The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices

Webcasts

Elucidations & Corrections: Arts Criticism
The Goldring Arts Journalism Program S. I. New House School of Public Communications at Syracuse University honors "The New Criterion."


Swallow Anthology Reading at The Grolier


New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 4
"The Criminalization of Making Money" by Lionel Shriver, Recorded 9/25/09