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The Solitude of the Saints - Comment Magazine

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In December of 1987, the famed evangelist Billy Graham approached a Denver stage with loneliness on his mind. Denver, at the time, was composed of a high percentage of unmarried persons, an urban centre on the verge of football greatness. Graham began his sermon by enumerating the various ways in which humans cope with the feeling of separation—alcohol, drugs, sexual activity—and said of the social condition, “The roots of loneliness were planted in the human soul and it has been inherited by every inhabitant ever. . . . Loneliness has never been a respecter of persons. The world’s greatest artists, writers and composers, kings and queens and carpenters and plumbers and everybody, have felt this terrible thing called loneliness.” In naming loneliness as a ubiquitous cultural condition, Graham was entering into a long train of those who have sought to theologically diagnose the increasing malaise and loneliness of the modern world. But what exactly is this loneliness? What is it caused

I In December of 1987, the famed evangelist Billy Graham approached a Denver stage with loneliness on his mind. Denver, at the time, was composed of a high percentage of unmarried persons, an urban centre on the verge of football greatness. Graham began his sermon by enumerating the various ways in which humans cope with the feeling of separation—alcohol, drugs, sexual activity—and said of the social condition, “The roots of loneliness were planted in the human soul and it has been inherited by every inhabitant ever. . . . Loneliness has never been a respecter of persons. The world’s…

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