The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
legitimation crisis

The newest issue of IMPACT press does a service to remind us of a notion that one historian believes was the "scariest political heresy" of the mid-1600's: "that a civil institution could survive without the supporting arm of the church."

The notion suggests that modern wishful thinkers for the unification of state and church suspect that we may be reaching the end of one historical era and the beginning of another, when the secular institution of the "state" as Western modernity has known it is no longer sufficiently robust to stand under its own power and perform the tasks required of it, and cannot on its own merits continue to rely on bringing in the popular support or cash flow it needs to survive.

posted by TiR at 7:11 AM