RELIGION AS A SECULAR IDEOLOGY
503
trenched. It
is
infinitely harder to dislocate irrational prejudice
than it is to remove error for which one claims reasonable justi–
fication. There is no public reasoning and no public discussion of the
commonly used epithet "Godless" or "God-fearing." These are sali–
vary terms, which like Pavlov's bell produce an anticipated response.
Being unreflective terms they are, as all habit, most difficult to dis–
card. The ideology of the moment is dangerous because the motive
of the ideology
is
not expressed, perhaps not even recognized. This
motive, the buttress of the ideology, is, unfortunately, fear.
No society within our recent experience exhibits greater pros–
perity, greater success, and greater terror than our own. The terror
need not be documented in detail. One has only to consider our
current literature, the incredible rise of sexual and psychic disorder,
the persistent threat of war and catastrophe to find adequate state–
ment and exhibition of the fear that subsumes the national psyche.
Unfortunately, the religious are as terrified as the rest. They
wish the protection of the national authority as profoundly as the
national authority wishes the sponsorship of divine sanction. The
irony
is
that at this moment religion should be, as its vocation com–
mends, most profoundly courageous and most unterrified-for auth–
entic religion should not fear at the moment of fear, should not sub–
mit when the nation capitulates in spirit. To the extent that the
prophetic position survives in the West, it is precisely at the mom–
ent of national calamity that the prophet rebukes the people. When
does Amos, Jeremiah, or Isaiah speak-not at moments of religious
intensity and fulfillment, but during the days of complacency and the
days of terror. The religious position has classically discerned terror
within complacency, and despair at the table of the prosperous. Pre–
cisely
now
when religion should be most trenchant and unrelenting it
is officially most supine and conforming. At this moment when the
churches should be reasserting their unique claims they are pooling
their resources; when they should be confronting man with the exact–
itudes of judgment they are abnegating their independence. The
spurious popularity of religion cannot but make for its own debilita–
tion. It may one day find that it cannot return as easily to its authen–
tic doctrine, which is precisely to disconcert man, to cause him to
fear and to love profoundly.
