Artist: Francisque Millet Today's religious right could sometimes be seen to be promoting a new puritanism. But, you know, it really doesn't work to impose one's belief system or moral code on other people:
In case you don't recognize the name Joy Davidman, she wrote a number of books including Smoke on the Mountain (from which the above passage is taken) and was also married to C.S. Lewis.Two thousand years of failure have not taught some reformers that you can't stop sin by declaring it illegal. Two thousand years have not taught them that you can't save a man's soul by force -- you can only lose your own in the attempt. Drunkenness and gambling and secularism and lechery -- various hopeful churchmen have earnestly tried to outlaw them all; and what is the result? A drunken nation, a gambling nation, a secularist nation, an adulterous nation. And, often, a ruined Church.
-- Joy Davidman
I wasn't aware that Joy Davidman was a writer even though I have read biogs of CS Lewis. I must track down some of her stuff.
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