Thursday, June 18, 2009

Moral Imagination In Religion

The Evolutionary Christian Church is applying the power of “moral imagination” (Burke and Kirk) in religion and not merely in art, we are expressing afresh the old standards while at last including the Evolutionary Outward Path within the traditional Involutionary Inward Path. We seek to revive the religious foundation but we also seek to unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution to God. We can be both new along with bearers of the old standards and the “permanent things.”

Revitalized religion can be imaginative and artistic even if it is more difficult to develop a great religion than a great work of art. Religion is greater than the arts and it should be portrayed better than a great novel or a great political philosophy. The Outward Path can work with what Burke thought of, negatively, as the “idyllic imagination” (eg. Rousseau), and even the “diabolic imagination” (the occult), making religion fresh and new while remaining grounded in the old dogmas and manners. This is Revitalized Conservatism.