"Arousing an active and mythical belief" The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change… - Jacques Ellul

The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.

I hold that in every situation of injustice and oppression, the Christian — who cannot deal with it by violence — must make himself completely a part of it as representative of the victims.

The problem is not merely that of the transformation of Christianity into a state religion but of the diffusion of this faith that has stopped being a faith and has become a collective ideology, a kind of manifestation of thought that collects all the commonplaces, the legends, the miracles, the “prophecies,” the apocalypses, the thaumaturgies, and formulates for the people a facile, moralistic, and constructive set of beliefs.

The act of canonization itself demonstrates that these are exceptions not meant for ordinary believers. Ordinary believers should follow a path that conforms to what is natural and normal. Hence theology becomes increasingly a theology of nature and moves further apart from a theology of grace. The hard question put by Jesus: “What more are you doing than others?” is obscured. In accord with society as a whole, theology enters into a search for normality, for obedience to the “laws of nature.”