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require immediate salvation. Most writers abroad have adopted a
secular faith, turning to politics for redemption, and have committed
themselves either to Stalinism or some variety of democratic socialism.
And those who still invoke a religious faith have either become en–
tangled in some kind of reactionary politics or, like Bernanos, have
added a Christian dimension to socialist values.
When it comes to such modern figures as Bernanos, Kierkegaard,
or even Silone, we cannot but be impressed by their seriousness. And
while I cannot connect myself with their faith, I must stand in awe of
their moral ambitions, their ruthless self-examination, their suffering.
In some way I am forced to measure myself not against their beliefs,
but against their complete humanity. Even their failures typify the
moral failures of our time, and help remind us that neither the clerical
nor the secular tradition has been able so far to lift human existence
to a moral plane.
But I would be more impressed by the new religiosity if it did
not preen itself so on its imagination and profundity. It looks down
on the secular mind, and is quite ready to dismiss scientific and
naturalist thinking as arid, schematic, and generally insensitive to
the mysteries of literary and human existence. And most writers
who have made their peace with religion seem to assume that creative–
ness and the power of the sensibility are somehow on the side of God
and tradition, and that they are therefore endowed with some
special insight into the forces of the human underground, particularly
into the nature of evil. Now there is no denying that many scientific
minds are quite insensitive to anything that cannot be contained in a
syllogism, while at its best what we call the literary mind takes in
areas of experience closed to the canons of logic and consistency.
But this is no reason to assume that all the struttings and confusions
of writers, especially in fields they are unequipped to handle, arc a
sign of superior wisdom, or that a confession of faith is necessarily a
mark of special profundity.
I do not mean to question one's right to believe, so long as one
is privately fortified by his belief. What I do question, however, is
the claim of the new religiosity to special insight into the problems
of art, morality and politics. When the new religionists dismiss secular
thinking as "village atheism," they are simply standing on its head
the history of modern thought. For it is the secular curiosity,
