Schmemann anticipates Milbank: “Secularism – we must again and again stresss this – is a ‘stepchild’ of Christianity, as are, in the last analysis, all secular ideologies which today dominate the world – not, as it is claimed by the Western apostles of a Christian acceptance of secularism, a legitimate child, but a heresy .”
And channels de Lubac: “It is indeed much easier to live and to breathe within neat distinctions between the sacred and the profane, the natural and the supernatural, the pure and the impure, to understand religion in terms of sacred ‘taboos,’ legal prescriptions and obligations, of ritual rectitude and canonical ‘validity.’ It is much more difficult to realize that such a religion not only does not constitute any threat to ‘secularism,’ but on the contrary, is its paradoxical ally.”
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