"[In] the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Europe turned to another vision of public truth, a vision inspired by the achievements of the new science and eventually embodied in the idea of a secular state. No one, surely, can fail to acknowledge with gratitude the achievements of this period of human history. But no one can be blind to the evidence that the liberal, secular democratic state is in grave trouble. The attacks on it from powerful new religious fanaticisms are possible only because its own internal weaknesses have become so clear: the disintegration of family life, the growth of mindless violence, the vandalism which finds satisfaction in destroying whatever is comely and useful, the growing destruction of the environment by limitless consumption fueled by ceaseless propaganda, the threat of nuclear war, and - as the deepest root of it all - the loss of any sense of a meaningful future. Weakened from within, secular democratic societies are at a loss to respond to religious fanaticism without denying their own principles. What could it mean for the Church to make once again the claim which it made in its earliest centuries, the claim to provide thepublic truth by which society can be given coherence and direction?"
-- Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

Brian's note: Lesslie Newbigin penned these words before the book was published in 1989!