"Religions played an increasingly dominant role in Toynbee's view as he grew older and advanced with his "Study of History." "The principal cause of … - Daniel J. Boorstin

"Religions played an increasingly dominant role in Toynbee's view as he grew older and advanced with his "Study of History." "The principal cause of war in our world today." he wrote on Apirl 9, 1935, in the Manchester Guardian, "is the idolatrous worship which is paid by human beings to nations and communities of states. This tribe-worship is the oldest religion of mankind, and it has only been overcome in so far as human beings have been genuinely converted to Christianity or one of the other higher religions....The spirit of man abhors a spiritual vacuum....People will sacrifice themselves for the 'Third Reich' ir wgatever tge Ersatz-Gotzen may be, till they learn again to sacrifice themselves for the Kingdom of God." After 1937, Toynbee flirted with Catholicism and he came to believe that the meaning of history would be revealed only in the slow and painful clarification of the relation between God and man."