Quotable: Practical Atheism

from Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight by Norman Wirzba

"Especially in a time of widely professed belief in God, we need to acknowledge that the patterns of our dominant culture pronounce and encourage practical atheism. In a time of practical atheism people are cut off from deep relationships with others, which means that we are cut off from God's life-giving and life-sustaining ways at work in those relationships. Having lost our contact with God, we turn to religious beliefs or pious sentiments that are forced, hollow, or merely ornamental. Though we desperately search form moments of peace and joy, we do not find them, for the structures of our living keep us trapped within a graceless world of our own or someone else's devising."