다음 인용글은 후란시스 후쿠야마의 “역사의 종말(The End of History and the Last Man)”에서 기독교 신자나 기독교의 근본에 관심을 갖는 이들이면 적어도 총체적으로 짚고 나가야할 점이라고 생각합니다.  더 간단히 얘기하자면 아래의 사실대로라면 집단종교(organized religion)라는 의미는 이미 그 한계가 명확히 제도적으로(그러므로 현대인의 사고 안에 체계화됨) “보장(?)”되어 있기에 그렇습니다.  남 상관하지 말고 나만 잘 믿으면 된다는 것은 예수님의 가르침에 근본적으로 멀고도 먼 생각이기에 말도 안된다는 것인데 말입니다.  이러할때의 집단종교의 대표적 형태라고 할 수 있는, 즉, 우리가 소위 지칭하는 교회라는 곳의 한계는 뻔한데 거기서 목회자나 신도들의 태도가 암만 좋고 높아도 시험에 들 일밖에 더 있겠느냐는 자괴감이 이미 제도적으로 깔려있다는 말이 되겠지요.

이곳 다비아에서도 한참 “서로” 진도나가다가 그래도 “각기” 잘 믿자는 그러한 결론이 나는 것도 물론 무관하지는 않겠지요.  사명감이 딴 것이겠습니까?  교회나 신학교라는 형태나 건물의 장애도 없는 대한민국의 다비아에서는 그 문제를 파볼 수 있을까요?

다음은 영어본문입니다; 한국에도 번역된 책이니 해당 번역문을 다른 회원이 올려줄 것이라고 믿습니다(Chapter 20 The Coldest of All Cold Monsters, Page 216).  한마디로 요약하자면 “자유진보주의(liberalism)가 부각할 수 있도록 기독교는 세속화를 통해서 어떤 면에서 기독교 그 자체를 폐지(abolish)하였다.  서양에서 그 역할을 한 것이 바로 프로테스턴티즘(Protestantism)이다.”

다양한 시각의 질문과 고견들 기대합니다:

“The second cultural obstacle to democracy has to do with religion.  Like nationalism, there is no inherent conflict between religion and liberal democracy, except at the point where religion ceases to be tolerant or egalitarian.  We have already noted how Hegel believed that Christianity paved the way fro the French revolution by establishing the principle of the equality of all men on the basis of their capacity for moral choice.  A great majority of today’s democracies have Christian religious heritages, and Samuel Huntington has pointed out that most of the new democracies since 1970 have been Catholic countries.  In some ways, then, religion would appear to be not an obstacle but a spur to democratization.
But religion per se did not create free societies; Christianity in a certain sense had to abolish itself through a secularization of its goals before liberalism could emerge.  The generally accepted agent for this secularization in the West was Protestantism.  By making religion a private matter between the Christian and his God, Protestantism eliminated the need for a separate class of priests, and religious intervention into politics more generally.  Other religions around the worlds have lent themselves to a similar process of secularization: Buddhism and Shinto, for example, have confined themselves to a domain of private worship centering around the family.  The legacy of Hinduism and Confucianism is mixed: while they are both relatively permissive doctrines that have proven to be compatible with a wide range of secular activities, the substance of their teachings is hierarchical and inegalitarian.  Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Islam, by contrast, are totalistic religions which seek to regulate every aspect of human life, both public and private, including the realm of politics.  These religions many be compatible with democracy – Islam, in particular, establishes no less than Christianity the principle of universal human equality – but they are very hard to reconcile with liberalism and the recognition of universal rights, particularly freedom of conscience or religion.  It is perhaps not surprising that the only liberal democracy in the contemporary Muslim world is Turkey, which was the only country to have stuck with an explicit rejection of its Islamic heritage in favor of a secular society early in the twentieth century.”