222 religious revolution now
revolution and the statement, in the last two chapters of this book, of its
program.
A revolution depends on circumstance. It is not enough for there to
exist provocations to a spiritual upheaval like those that I have just re-
viewed. It is necessary that par tic u lar events or conditions render these
provocations visible and potent and in this way help neutralize the
im mense inertial force of the existing world religions. Here is a sum-
mary list of such triggers. I mean the list to be illustrative rather than
exhaustive.
- Th e idea of the greatness, of the divinity, of the ordinary man and
woman, carried to unpre ce dented fervor throughout the world. Th is fer-
vor has three proximate and powerful sources. Th ey sometimes work
together. More oft en, they operate separately and even in tension with
one another.
Th e fi rst source is the core theology of the Semitic mono the isms:
their idea of the analogical relation between man and God, or of the
theomorphic character of a human being. It is not some special category
of persons that enjoys this analogical connection to God; it is every
person.
Th e second source is the cause of democracy, and its prosecution
through the reconstructive but now disoriented or defunct programs of
liberalism and socialism. Th e classic institutional formulas of the liber-
als and the socialists no longer carry conviction. Th e space that they
have left vacant is occupied by a series of compromises designed to
reconcile economic fl exibility and social protection within the frame-
work of the inherited and largely unchallenged social- democratic
settlement of the mid- twentieth century. However, the central demo-
cratic idea of the constructive genius of ordinary men and women,
readily related to hope for increasing their part in the divine quality of
transcendence, shines all the more starkly once bereft of the conven-
tional institutional blueprints.
Th e third source is the eff ect of the worldwide pop u lar romantic cul-
ture, with its message of the inexhaustible potential for subjective life of
the common person. Th at every person can share in the experience of
the romantic heroes and heroines of the soap operas and cultivate the
wild longings conveyed in pop u lar music is its central premise.
