Thomas Merton, self-loathing Christian

". . . The culture of the white men is not worth the dirt in Harlem's gutters."
    —The Seven Storey Mountain, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1998, p. 379.

In Merton, we seem to have a relatively deep Christianity—not just the usual leftover post-Christian ethical fragments—causally linked to liberal self-hatred. At the root of this may be an economic illiteracy which sees the rich as ipso facto guilty of causing the plight of the poor. (". . . the rich whose sins have bred this abominable slum.") At any event, it would not be surprising if such Christianity drove many people into paganism.