Twilight Sage by Ken Myers

Contours of Culture

Twilight Sage

by Ken Myers

There are some books that are remarkably insightful in describing and evaluating the forces that made contemporary culture what it is today. There are other books that force us as readers to ask whether we—as well as the books in that first group—are even asking all of the right questions. T. S. Eliot’s Christianity and Culture falls into the second category.

Christianity and Culture is actually two short books in one volume. The Idea of a Christian Society is a collection of lectures given by Eliot at Cambridge in March 1939 and assembled in book form before Britain’s entry into the war with Germany. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture is an essay begun by Eliot in the mid-1940s and completed in 1948.