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The title that I have chosen for this article is far from being a gimmick designed to lure anyone with an eye for the unusual. Some years ago I tried to put together a paper entitled Theology of Leisure. I should like to think that the present title is a more precise attempt to tackle the same question that still lies at the back and bottom of my mind.
Leisure, of course, defies definition. A glance at The Concise Oxford Dictionary will verify the fact. What I call leisure other people receive good salaries for doing, and consequently they call it work. I have long nourished, for instance, a secret ambition to be an inspector for Diners Club or a member of the British Board of Film Censors.
Moreover, when one does attempt a clear definition of leisure, one is inevitably caught up in sociological technicalities which simply describe leisure activities as they exist in today’s society, without going on to probe the creative human values inherent in leisure as such. For this one has to turn not to the sociologist but to the poet, the philosopher and the theologian.
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- Copyright © 1973 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 A paper presented at a seminar on Christian Ethics Today at McGill University, Montreal, in February 1970.
2 Among other things are included: ‘free time, time at one's disposal’. 3 E.g. Leisure, a Suburban Study by Lundberg, George et all. (Columbia 1934)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Mass Leisure by Larrabee, and Meyersohn, (Glencoe, Illinois 1961)Google Scholar; Religion and Leisure in America, by Lee, Robert (New York 1964)Google Scholar.
4 This distinction is hinted at, though not directly applied, by Emile Rideau in his article ‘Theologie de Loisir Nouvelle Revue Theohgiqiie, 84, 1962, pp. 806–828).Google Scholar
5 My favourite anthology of humour is still Pierre Daninos' Tout VHumeur du Monde (Paris 1958)Google Scholar. 6 Proverbs. 8/22–31.
7 Homo Ludens: a study of the play‐element in culture (trans. Hull, R. F. C.), London 1970Google Scholar.
8 London 1922 (republished in paperback 1968). The antithesis of Babbitt can also be found in a Sinclair novel, Lewis, viz. Elmer Gantry (New York 1927Google Scholar, latest edition, London 1970).
9 p. 7 (Signet edition).
10 New York 1956. See especially pp. 11 ff.
11 Ftom: On the Margin: Notes and Essays, London 1923Google Scholar.
12 Miller, Arthur, The Bored and the Violent, Harpers Magazine, November 1962, pp. 5IffGoogle Scholar.
13 Cf. John. 17/6–19. The same theme is reiterated in John's first letter. Paul uses the same idea in Gal. 6/14. It is also very common in the early Fathers.
14 The clearest and best‐known example of this is in Thomas a Kempis' Imitatio Christi.
15 John. 14/8–11. For more examples of possible humour in the gospels, see the little‐known work of Jonsson, Jakob, Humour and Irony in the New Testament illustrated by parallels in the Talmud and Midrash (Reykjavik 1965)Google Scholar.
16 Which, as the Concise Oxford Dictionary tells us, ‘chiefly represents everyday life and with a happy ending’.
17 John. 9/1–41.
18 Luke. 23/34.
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