"It can sink no lower": On fanaticism and dogma.

Abstract

Our present discussion adds another layer. Dogma and normative ritual are not only the line of last defense against the etiolation of religious life. They are also the line of first defense against Judaism sinking, not only to the tepid indifference that R. Lichtenstein discerned in the Anglican establishment of three hundred years ago, but at the very same time to one-sidedness and to the very fanaticism and imbalance occasioned by the overthrow of dogmatic principles and normative action in the name of subjective preference disdainful of the objective floor of dogma. This is a danger within the nominally Orthodox community and an even greater danger among those distant from the orthodox way of thinking.