More Reflections on George Grant
Christian Comment ed. by D. Gander
This column previously mentioned Canadian academic and religious thinker George Grant, who died of cancer 10 years ago this autumn. Grant was a practicing Christian who deplored abortion and euthanasia and the shallow "progress" of liberalism. And yet, as acquaintance Rev. Harry Robinson said (in BC Christian News, Oct.`98) he had a "great capacity to be joyful, ...because the truth, whether congenial or not, always seemed to delight him."
Grant regarded the ideals and values of modern society as gravely false. Even church leaders, he wrote, "don' t seem to be aware of how deeply the principles of modernity...make the believing of Christianity an impossibility". Robinson compared him with G.K. Chesterton, and described Grant as "a predecessor to the committed, learned and devout Christian lay people of Canada who are struggling to articulate what it means to be a Christian and Canadian. He walked with determination among the false hopes, the lies and pretensions of his day, confident that those walls would come tumbling down."
Political professor Thomas Bateman (of Augustana U. College in Camrose, Alberta) was shaken to the core of his previous "happy secularization" of belief, by three of Grant's books. Bateman summarizes that the author "dared to face secular liberalism and criticize it" because this age of so-called progress is "a disastrous forgetting of ancient truths."
And another reviewer says that "Grant constantly reminded us that those who ignore the past only become uncritical lapdogs of the shallow and destructive liberalism that dominates so much of how we live, move and have our being." Ron Dart is a political science instructor in BC. He praises George Grant as "a sure-footed guide in a church and world which are divided and fragmented in all sorts of tragic and serious ways. ...Grant offers us a radical traditionalism, a vision that reveals the roots of life."
Some books by George Grant include: Lament for a Nation: the Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (Carleton U. Press, 1965); Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (Anansi, 1969); and English Speaking Justice (Anansi, 1974). Works written about him include his biography by William Christian (U. of Toronto Press, 1993); George Grant: in Conversation by David Cayley (Anansi, 1995); George Grant: Selected Letters ed. by W. Christian (U. of Toronto Press, 1996); and The George Grant Reader edited by his wife Sheila Grant and by W. Christian (U. of Toronto Press, 1998).
This column previously mentioned Canadian academic and religious thinker George Grant, who died of cancer 10 years ago this autumn. Grant was a practicing Christian who deplored abortion and euthanasia and the shallow "progress" of liberalism. And yet, as acquaintance Rev. Harry Robinson said (in BC Christian News, Oct.`98) he had a "great capacity to be joyful, ...because the truth, whether congenial or not, always seemed to delight him."
Grant regarded the ideals and values of modern society as gravely false. Even church leaders, he wrote, "don' t seem to be aware of how deeply the principles of modernity...make the believing of Christianity an impossibility". Robinson compared him with G.K. Chesterton, and described Grant as "a predecessor to the committed, learned and devout Christian lay people of Canada who are struggling to articulate what it means to be a Christian and Canadian. He walked with determination among the false hopes, the lies and pretensions of his day, confident that those walls would come tumbling down."
Political professor Thomas Bateman (of Augustana U. College in Camrose, Alberta) was shaken to the core of his previous "happy secularization" of belief, by three of Grant's books. Bateman summarizes that the author "dared to face secular liberalism and criticize it" because this age of so-called progress is "a disastrous forgetting of ancient truths."
And another reviewer says that "Grant constantly reminded us that those who ignore the past only become uncritical lapdogs of the shallow and destructive liberalism that dominates so much of how we live, move and have our being." Ron Dart is a political science instructor in BC. He praises George Grant as "a sure-footed guide in a church and world which are divided and fragmented in all sorts of tragic and serious ways. ...Grant offers us a radical traditionalism, a vision that reveals the roots of life."
Some books by George Grant include: Lament for a Nation: the Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (Carleton U. Press, 1965); Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (Anansi, 1969); and English Speaking Justice (Anansi, 1974). Works written about him include his biography by William Christian (U. of Toronto Press, 1993); George Grant: in Conversation by David Cayley (Anansi, 1995); George Grant: Selected Letters ed. by W. Christian (U. of Toronto Press, 1996); and The George Grant Reader edited by his wife Sheila Grant and by W. Christian (U. of Toronto Press, 1998).
