RELIGION AS A SECULAR IDEOLOGY
497
There is little doubt that a "religious revival" is on. We must
distinguish between the role of popular religion and the appropriation
of religious concept and tradition which intellectuals have made for
some years now. I do not disclaim the by and large honest use which
many intellectuals have made of Roman Catholic, Protestant, and
Jewish tradition
in
the restatement of their position. Being often
literary men, they are victims of ideology in its authentic usage;
for generally they are theologically unskilled, applying dogmatic
formulations in contexts where they are improperly employed and
improperly understood. We hope that being intellectuals they can
profit by correction, that they are susceptible to the gentle reproof
of reason and history. Popular ideology is different. The intellectual
is neither employed nor wanted. He is not asked to clarify terms, to
form proper ideological usage. Ideology forms itself to suit different
ends-not
in
answer to Kant's fourth question: "What can Man
hope?" but in answer to society's desperate question: "What can we
do
now?"
There can be little doubt that religious leaders are not as un–
willing as perhaps they should be to receive and publicize the per–
sistent attention, flattery, and compliment paid their essential doc–
trine by administrators of higher education and government. The
atmosphere in the '50s is vastly different from what it was in the
'30s. During the '30s, theology was not respectable and religious
vocations were at an ebb. Though neo-orthodoxy was forming in
Europe, Brunner and Barth having revived the terms of theological
debate, the situation in the United States was different. The religious
communities of this country were either compelled by the Depression
and social unrest into passionate defense of their authentic concern
for society, or else were splintered off by the terms operative in public
debate: the reactionaries who concerned themselves with man's ul–
timate estate and regeneration and the radicals who wanted God's
grace here and now. This was the period when Roman Catholic
theologians in the United States turned their attention to the problems
of labor and social welfare (not to be sure at the compromise of
theological consistency), both from the left and right-for Bishop
Sheil and Father Coughlin were equally phenomena of the '30s; when
Protestant ministers preached more of the social gospel than ever
before; when the Rabbinate was taking the prophetic message out of
