Modern Christianity, then, has become as specialized in its organizations as other modern organizations, wholly concentrated on the industrial shibboleths of ‘growth',’ counting its success in numbers, and on the very strange enterprise of ‘saving’ the individual, isolated, and disembodied soul. Having witnessed and abetted the dismemberment of the households, both human and natural, by which we have our being as creatures of God, as living souls, and having made light of the great feast and festival of Creation to which we were bidden as living souls, the modern church presumes to be able to save the soul as an eternal piece of private property. It presumes moreover to save the souls of people in other countries and religious traditions, who are often saner and more religious than we are. And always the emphasis is on the individual soul. Some Christian spokespeople give the impression that the highest Christian bliss would be to get to Heaven and find that you are the only one there—that you were right and all the others wrong. Whatever its twentieth-century dress, modern Christianity as I know it is still at bottom the religion of Miss Watson, intent on a dull and superstitious rigmarole by which supposedly we can avoid going to ‘the bad place’ and instead go to ‘the good place.’ One can hardly help sympathizing with Huck Finn when he says, ‘I made up my mind I wouldn’t try for it.’.
-- Wendell Berry
Among other things, an interesting adjective is used here, in an effort to make a strong and (I believe) well-intentioned, if not astute, point. Note the use of the word 'modern' Christianity...as opposed to something else. Given the voracity of these charges, what is the Christianity that became modern?
There is risk here. A risk that such things take on a philosophical transcendence from which a return to the utility of daily living never occurs. What action is needed? What action is required? What keeps this from just being another amusement of intellectual controversy?
