It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.
Mary DouglasIt is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.
Mary DouglasJust in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.
Mary DouglasIf we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contrevention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.
Mary Douglas