"The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis"

How do we rebuild a community after horrific devastation? How do we pursue the common good to mitigate future disasters? Do religious traditions have a part to play in teaching us how to bear our griefs and to express thanksgiving in the midst of suffering?

Such questions arise in a new book by Alan Jacobs. Jacobs is an academic (Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University) writing with clarity and verve for a wider audience. Former Paradise resident John Wilson, who edited the now-defunct Books and Culture literary journal, published numerous articles by his friend Jacobs.

In 1943 it was apparent that the Allies would triumph in World War II. A number of writers, working separately but united by a Christian worldview, agonized about rebuilding. What kind of education would be needed to avoid the temptation toward authoritarianism or, alternatively, acquiescence in the idea that all values are merely socially constructed with the highest good "getting along"?

Jacobs considers the responses of five important literary and philosophical figures in "The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis" ($29.95 in hardcover from Oxford University Press; also for Amazon Kindle). In weaving together the central themes of these Christian intellectuals--Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil--Jacobs raises questions for our own times, and our own rebuilding.

For him, these writers "share the conviction that this restoration will not be accomplished only, or even primarily, through theology as such, but also and more effectively through philosophy, literature, and the arts. It is through these practices,which I believe are best called 'humanistic,' that the renewal--or if necessary the revolutionary upheaval--of Western civilization will be achieved. That was the project that these figures, in the various ways and with their sometimes fierce disagreements, shared."

The final chapter is devoted to French Reformed writer Jacques Ellul, whose seminal studies on the rise of technology and propaganda show there are no simplistic answers on the road ahead to rebuilding an enduring community. But we didn't expect there to be.