224 religious revolution now
of the sacred and romantic ideas of the greatness of the ordinary per-
son to the private and formulaic sublime of the established religions or
to the escapist fantasies of empowerment in the pop u lar culture— all
this provides bitter counterpoint to the message that the salvation reli-
gions, democracy, and romanticism deliver in common.
Arnold Toynbee described the “internal proletariat” of the imperial
states of antiquity as the prime addressees of the world religions, by
contrast to the “external proletariat,” the barbarians outside the impe-
rial frontiers, to whom the message was later carried. Now, however,
the distinction between the internal and the external proletariats has
largely vanished. Th e mass of humanity, aroused and frustrated in its
desire for ascent to a greater life, has become the chief recipient of reli-
gious innovation.
- Th e diffi culty that the educated classes experience in believing the nar-
ratives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and the consequent weakening
of the connection between the high and the pop u lar cultures of religion.
Th ese two cultures of religion have ceased to speak to each other.
For reasons that are directly related to their growing distance from
each other, each of these cultures proves inadequate to the work of pre-
serving the message. Th e execution of this task requires that a religion
sacrifi ce its formulas of doctrine and of practice to its core vision. It
also demands that a religion confront the beliefs and arrangements
that contradict its visionary impulse. Neither the high nor the pop u lar
cultures that result from the reciprocal estrangement has the means
with which to do this work.
In their attitude to the salvation religions, the educated classes re-
treat into a posture of half- belief. Th ey fi nd themselves unable to be-
lieve in the literal truth of the story of salvation and in the corpus of
traditional doctrine that claims to discern the implications of this story
for the conduct of life as well as for the understanding of our place in
the world. Th ey therefore decode both the story and the doctrine, rep-
resenting the message, embedded in the narrative, as an allegory of
moral and social ideas that can be grasped and justifi ed by reason, un-
aided by revelation.
Th is demythologized religion is expunged of anything off ensive to
the understanding. However, it loses, by that fact, the power to disturb.