RETURN TO RELIGION
The cover story of the April 8, 1966, issue of the American TIME magazine was titled Is God Dead? This was more than half a century ago. But today, in the Western world, such books and articles are being published continuously, and their titles are just the opposite, indicating a growing interest in and return to religion. People increasingly turn back to religion because man’s ‘secular gods’ have failed. This return to religion is a return to man’s innate nature—that is, to the awareness of the God embedded in human nature—and not simply to some religious concepts of inherited religious traditions.
In the USA and several other Western countries, religion is again coming alive after a brief period. Religious Studies classes in colleges that were once empty are now filled. There has been an extraordinary increase in the number of readers of spiritual literature. Conferences on religion are currently being held in large numbers. There is a fantastic increase in interest in religion in many circles.
In an article by Fran Schumer titled ‘A Return to Religion’ published in the Span magazine (December 1984), Harvey R. Cox, Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, referred to a tremendous resurgence of religious interest. Cox’s bestselling 1965 book, The Secular City, suggested people lost interest in the sacred. A book he wrote later, Religion in the Secular City (1984), described the revival of religious concern. The article in Span, Dec 1984, p. 26, is reproduced here.
A Return to Religion
“There’s no doubt about it,” says Harvey R. Cox, Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, “There’s a tremendous resurgence of religious interest here. “It is not uncommon to see students wearing crosses or yarmulkes on campuses across the United States, and few hide that they go to a church or a synagogue. Not just students but the academic community, long a haven for sceptics, is now giving religion a second look. Cox’s bestselling 1965 book, ‘The Secular City,’ suggested people lost interest in the sacred. His new book, ‘Religion in the Secular City’ describes the current revival in religious concern.
A century that has seen the Gulag, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and the spread of nuclear arms has caused some who used to champion rationalism and science to humble themselves. Since their secular gods have failed, they are beginning to view more traditional gods with a new curiosity.
“There is a reaction against extreme individualism and self, a preoccupation with and a search for roots with a capital R, which takes people back to religion,” says Robert N. Bellah, Ford Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
“Tradition is back on the agenda with a positive force.” It would have been hard to imagine a similar revival 20 years ago. On April 8, 1966, Time magazine asked on its cover: “Is God Dead?” Among intellectuals today, God is not pronounced dead easily. Science and religion are not necessarily incompatible, and logical attempts to disprove God’s existence are viewed as somewhat arcane; this would have surprised our intellectual predecessors. At the end of the 18th and to the middle of the 19th century, almost every enlightened thinker expected religion to disappear in the 20th century,” Daniel Bell said in a seminal lecture, “The Return of the Sacred,” at the London School of Economics in 1977. “The belief was based on the power of reason.” The theory was that man could use his mind to overcome his problems, and religion would wither away. But that has hardly been the case. “We’ve gained enormous power over nature via technology,” Bell said in an interview. “And yet, the 20th century is probably the most dreadful period in human history.” For intellectuals, according to Bell, there have always been secular alternatives to religious faith: rationalism and the belief in science; aestheticism and the belief in art; existentialism as expressed in the works of Kierkegaard and the early Sartre, and politics—the cults of Stalin, Lenin and Mao. Yet, one by one, those alternatives, according to Bell, have exhausted their power to move individuals. “It is ironic that my generation should be the one coming—back to religion,” says Alan Dershowitz, 45, professor of law at Harvard Law School. “We were the generation that had all the freedom and all the choice.” And yet, it is the rootlessness of much of that freedom that has brought so many intellectuals back to religion. “I can’t say to you I believe in God,” says Coles, who might be described as a spiritual wanderer rather than a believer in any particular faith. “There are moments when I do stop and pray to God. But my mind boggles if you ask me who God is or what kind of image He has. I’m confused, perplexed, and confounded. But I refuse to let that confusion be the dominant force in my life.” (Span, Dec 1984, p. 26)
Some of the main arguments of the article are that a century that saw the Gulag, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and the spread of nuclear arms had caused some who used to champion rationalism and science to humble themselves. Since their ‘secular gods’ had failed, it argued, they were beginning to view ‘more traditional gods’ with a new curiosity. The article quoted Robert N. Bellah, Ford Professor of Sociology and Comparative Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, as saying:
“There is a reaction against extreme individualism and self, a preoccupation with and a search for roots with a capital R, which takes people back to religion.”
The article further said it would have been hard to imagine a similar revival 20 years earlier. A few years before, it was claimed that ‘God is dead.’ But things had changed. The article stated, “God is not pronounced dead easily. Science and religion are not viewed as necessarily incompatible, and logical attempts to disprove God’s existence are somewhat arcane.” The article commented, “All of this would have surprised our intellectual predecessors.”
The article has quoted Alan Dershowitz (then aged around 45 years), a professor of law at Harvard Law School, as saying that it was ironic that his generation should be the one coming back to religion, it having been a generation that “had all the freedom and all the choice.” The rootlessness of much of that freedom brought so many intellectuals back to religion.
This state of affairs has emerged among all peoples. Presently, there is also a new return towards religion among Muslims. However, this return is unrelated to any so-called ‘epoch-building thinker’ or ‘saint’ with a ‘special connection’ with God. It is entirely an embodiment of a changing era. It is for this reason that this happens uniformly in every community. It can be observed in all religious communities. In this regard, there is no difference between them at all.
The cause of this new situation is the despair of the ‘modern’ man that has emerged in recent decades. The 20th century was a century of rationalism and science. ‘Modern’ man came to believe that through his reason and science, he could obtain everything people had earlier hoped they could get through religion. But ‘modern’ man’s hopes were not fulfilled. His rationalism only took him to uncertainty, and his science became the black clouds of atomic war, global warming, and Covid 19 that began circling over his head. Because people’s ‘secular gods’ had failed, they began to look at the ‘traditional’ religious concepts more closely.
In this way, the present scenario has opened a new possibility for us. It has presented us with a new and favourable field for reaching out to people with the message of self-surrender to the One God. This was the message that all the Prophets of God taught. This is the message of the Quran, which has been preserved intact, free from any alteration.
Seeing the present conditions of the world, it seems as if God has drawn people to the doors of His mercy. The fact is that guidance for man has come from Heaven. Our task now is to convey the truth to the seekers of Truth.
