Faith & Spirit Quote by Christopher Dawson

Dawson isn’t lamenting a gentle drift into secular modernity so much as naming an enemy he thinks prefers to stay unnamed. The line begins with a feint of sociological calm - a “vague tendency” to relegate religion to the margins - then tightens into accusation: the marginalization isn’t accidental, it’s strategic. His real target isn’t indifference; it’s the confident modern conviction that Christianity is not merely outdated but obstructive, and that “positive religion” (lived, institutional, truth-claiming faith) must be dismantled for culture to progress.

The phrasing does heavy lifting. “Strong body of opinion” implies something organized and respectable, the kind of consensus that quietly sets the rules of polite society. “Actively hostile” escalates the mood from neglect to antagonism, as if neutrality is impossible. Dawson is trying to expose a moral asymmetry: modern culture presents itself as open-minded, yet he suggests it demands religion’s retreat as the price of admission.

Context matters. Writing in the shadow of early 20th-century upheavals - world wars, rapid scientific prestige, ideological mass movements, and the growing authority of the secular state - Dawson, a Catholic historian of culture, argued that civilizations are built on spiritual foundations. This sentence is a warning shot to liberal moderns and revolutionary anti-clericals alike: if you treat Christianity as disposable, you’re not “liberating” culture; you’re rewriting its operating system. The subtext is anxious but also combative: stop pretending the secularization of public life is just common sense. It’s a campaign, and Dawson wants it recognized as such.