A slightly strange book containing two essays: The Idea of a Christian Society, and Notes towards the Definition of Culture. The second essay, somewhat more substantial than the first, isn’t explicitly Christian, so the title’s a bit misleading. Both are carefully reasoned, original and thought-provoking, with Notes presenting an extended meditation on culture and a meticulously developed definition (which is sometimes rather surprising). Eliot’s analysis is complex and penetrating, his conclusions are elaborate and subtle, with a picture of culture that’s highly organic, diverse, complex and broader than conventional conceptions of culture. It’s one of those uncommon books that made me consider something more carefully than I had, reflect critically on the author’s ideas, and end up with a fuller and more rationally and consciously developed idea than I had previously. You don’t come across books that do that often. I’d liked Eliot as a poet, but after reading this I hope to get more familiar with his essays. ( )

The scholars of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE judge that T.S. Eliot's "interest in the great middle ground of human experience (as distinct from the extremes of saint and sinner) [was] deficient," while also recognizing Eliot's "poetic cunning, his fine craftsmanship, his original accent, his historical and representative importance as THE poet of the modern Symbolist-Metaphysical tradition".

T.S. Eliot's conversion from Unitarianism to high-church, Catholic Anglicanism discomfited many of the secular literati. Although Eliot expresses a Christian sentiment in much of his writings and rightfully casts fascist totalitarianism as antithetic to the spirit of Christianity, Eliot's work is marred by a few unmistakable, anti-Semitic statements, displaying the effects of the spiritual darkness of the pre-WWII period leading up to Hitler's attempted, global eradication of the Jewish people.

Despite Eliot's apparent antisemitism, Paul Dean concludes that "however much Eliot may have been compromised as a person, as we all are in our several ways, his greatness as a poet remains." ( )

I first read these essays while a senior at college. Now, about twenty years later, I reread them in a study on the English poet TS Eliot. Eliot uses language very carefully, as any poet should, but he is a poet approaching the world of an anthropologist. Further, he writes in an era (pre- and post-World-War-II) in which European culture was pulled apart at the seams and remade again.

Eliot himself is an American transplant in England. He was largely self-educated, though he studied at Harvard and Oxford. He converted to Anglicanism from a vague Unitarian background. He writes about Christianity as the glue that stands behind European and Western culture.

Eliot appreciates pluralism and diversity. He states just such in his first essay. He sees (correctly) that Christianity consists of a diverse culture which is interested in many things: especially in the education of both youths and adults and broadly in the worlds of the state, society, and the arts.

One cannot help but wonder what Eliot would think about today’s increasingly pluralist world whose composition extends beyond Christianity into Islam, agnosticism, atheism, and other faiths. The future of the West seems more like India than Rome. Was Eliot merely one of the last gasps of Christianity or does he have something unique to contribute to our discussion?

These themes are why I picked up this book again. I let my subconscious process his insights framed in history and set in a beautiful use of the English language. As always happens with these difficult and broad topics, I came to no definite conclusions. Nonetheless, upon concluding the book, I feel as if I have traversed these topics just a little bit more. Many talk about these issues, but few do so with as cultured and definite a voice as Eliot. That’s why it’s well worth the time to read him.

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Christianity and culture: The idea of a Christian society and Notes towards the definition of culture (A Harvest book) by T. S Eliot (1949)