244 religious revolution nowexample, by developing the institutional and educational basis for co-
operative practices of permanent innovation in every domain of social
life. Without the spread of such practices throughout society: and cul-
ture, the recognition of the prophetic powers of the ordinary person re-
mains an empty pretense.
In the fi ft h place, it must defy the two taboos that inhibit religious
revolution in the liberal societies of the present: the taboo against the
religious criticism of religion and the taboo against taking po liti cal po-
sitions on avowedly religious grounds. Th ese taboos are now justifi ed,
falsely, as requirements of pluralism and toleration.
Th e seriousness of a po liti cal project is mea sured by its engagement
with the institutional structure of society and with a vision of what the
relations among people can and should be like in the diff erent domains
of social life. To insist on giving such substance to politics is to eff ace
any clear contrast between politics and religion.
Th e right to form a public voice explicitly inspired by religious con-
viction is a requirement of seriousness in politics. It is also the demand
of any religion that, like all the religions that emerged from the reli-
gious revolutions of the past, takes seriously the dialectic of transcen-
dence and immanence and insists on seeing its vision realized in the
world. Legalism in religion represents a perversion of this demand.
Defi ance of the taboo against the religious criticism of religion has
the same basis and the same consequence. If politics is religious to the
extent that it is serious, to prohibit the religious criticism of religion is
to rule out part of the discourse on which the deepening of politics de-
pends. If our religion requires us to change society rather than just to
describe it, a religion has to be ready to confront other religions in the
space of public debate.
Th e taboo on the religious criticism of religion makes sense only if
we accept the privatization of religion: its confi nement to the conscience
of the individual and its renunciation of infl uence on life in society.
However, the privatization of religion not only hollows out much of the
substance of po liti cal life; it also stands opposed to impulses shared by
the world religions as well as by their secular sequels and counterparts.
By the same token, it is incompatible with the commitments of the reli-
gion of the future.