God, one of the most important political figures in Western history,
is dying.
The event, then, is not simply theological. With a few lapses into liberalism, or even radicalism, God has been a leading conservative in Judeo-Christian society. His death not only means empty churches and bereft individuals but also marks the rending of the social fabric. This insight is corroborated, not contradicted, by the recent revival of a fundamentalism whose desperate orthodoxy tries to will the departing deity back into existence. . .
The new religions that the social scientists are so fond of are, almost without exception, personal rather than social. They are part of what Daniel Bell has called a "retreat to the private world where religions have authority only over their followers and not over any other section of the polity or society." That is the definition of the abyss which lies between religion as the expression of the values of a community and religion as a matter of private belief. The latter may well be profound and even holy, but it is not the organizing principle of a civilization. That is what Judeo-Christianity was for several millennia. That is why it is so sorely missed now.
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