"From the long range point of view, I do not know of anything we can do more important than to make some contribution to the preservation of religion as a vital force in America"
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There is a careful kind of urgency in Finkelstein's phrasing: he doesn’t plead for religion’s dominance, he argues for its durability. “From the long range point of view” is a strategic move, asking the listener to trade today’s partisan skirmishes for civilizational time. It’s also a quiet admission that religion’s public status is not guaranteed. The anxiety isn’t about theology losing an argument; it’s about religion ceasing to function as a live current in American life.
That’s why “preservation” and “vital force” matter. Preservation suggests something vulnerable to entropy, a tradition that can be archived, aestheticized, or reduced to heritage. Vital force implies the opposite: religion as an active engine that shapes moral imagination, community obligations, and public ethics. Finkelstein is not selling private piety. He’s defending a thick ecosystem of institutions and habits that produce meaning and restraint in a mass society increasingly organized by markets, bureaucracy, and spectacle.
As a 20th-century American clergyman, Finkelstein speaks from an era when “religion in America” was both intensely confident and quietly insecure: rising secular pluralism, the pressures of modern science, the trauma of world war, and the postwar push to frame the United States as spiritually distinct from atheistic totalitarianism. His subtext is coalition-building. “Religion” (not Judaism, not any sect) is an inclusive term aimed at sustaining a shared civic vocabulary without demanding doctrinal uniformity. The intent is less conversion than continuity: keep religion socially consequential, not merely personally comforting.
That’s why “preservation” and “vital force” matter. Preservation suggests something vulnerable to entropy, a tradition that can be archived, aestheticized, or reduced to heritage. Vital force implies the opposite: religion as an active engine that shapes moral imagination, community obligations, and public ethics. Finkelstein is not selling private piety. He’s defending a thick ecosystem of institutions and habits that produce meaning and restraint in a mass society increasingly organized by markets, bureaucracy, and spectacle.
As a 20th-century American clergyman, Finkelstein speaks from an era when “religion in America” was both intensely confident and quietly insecure: rising secular pluralism, the pressures of modern science, the trauma of world war, and the postwar push to frame the United States as spiritually distinct from atheistic totalitarianism. His subtext is coalition-building. “Religion” (not Judaism, not any sect) is an inclusive term aimed at sustaining a shared civic vocabulary without demanding doctrinal uniformity. The intent is less conversion than continuity: keep religion socially consequential, not merely personally comforting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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