RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
237
PHILIP RAHV
The back-to-religion movement among the intellectuals is
scarcely to be understood without reference to the permutations of the
Zeitgeist-and
the
Zeitgeist
makes fools of us all. In the 1930's the
key-term was "revolution" while now it is "tradition." And it is tra–
dition which provides the leading motive, not belief in God.
There are currently but two positions among us worth talking
about: that of the secular radicals at one pole and that of the tra–
ditionalists at the other. Secular radicalism, in its multiple varia–
tions, is in a state of extreme crisis brought on by the cumulative
historical frustrations and calamities of the twentieth century. Having
lost confidence in the doctrine of progress, it is now more than
ever exposed to the criticism of its opponents. The traditionalists,
who attempted very little on the plane of historical action and who
mostly stayed put in their dusty corners, have now come forward to
speak their piece, with "I told you so" as the
leitmotif
of their quite
unoriginal presentation. This is their privileged moment, and they
are bound .to make the most of it. And why not? Still, if it is the new
religiosity that we are to discuss, then the first thing to be remarked
about it is that it is hardly distinguishable from the world-view of
traditionalism, with which it is far more deeply involved than with
the primary and crucial commitments of genuine belief.
What, concretely, does it mean to believe? When Stephen Deda–
Ius, in
Ulysses,
is asked whether he believes in "creation from nothing
and miracles and a personal God," that is to say, whether he be–
lieves "in the narrow sense of the word," his reply is that there is
only one sense of the word. It might be said of Stephen that he is a
casuist in everything but the essential: in all essential matters his
sincerity is unconditional. Unable to accept what is required of all
true believers, i.e., required in no strict sense perhaps by all the es–
tablished churches though surely both by the mind of conscience and
the conscience of mind, Stephen confesses to being "a horrible ex–
ample of free thought."
Of course, some modern thinkers tell us that one can be relig–
ious without believing, so to speak, in anything in particular, cer–
tainly not in the particulars of dogmatic theology. All that is neces–
sary is to re-interpret the concept of the divine as pure transcend-
