The Real Aim of Utopias

Assumed audience: Theologically-orthodox Christians, or folks interested in things that theologically-orthodox Christians think.

But it’s worth reflecting that the real aim of utopias is not to give free rein to fantasy and certainly not to flee from assuming responsibility for the places and institutional structures where we find ourselves. Utopias afford us a vantage point from which we can see our present as it is in its relativity and contingency and from which we can therefore begin to consider the possibility that things could be other than they are.

 — John Webster, The Culture of Theology, p. 100