So what is the connection between Friedrich Heers excellent book on the Medieval world and the Salvation Army?
Both the medieval world and the Victorian era sought a reformation of current christianity and its practice in the world.
Both succeeded and it is no surprise that everything needs refreshing after a while.
I gues Jurgen Habermass has reconsidered Heer if his later remarks are anything to go by.
Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an antonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.
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