religious revolution now 245
Religious toleration and religious pluralism must not rest on the im-
poverishment of politics and on the abandonment of society to the ir-
religious. Th eir practical requirements are the legal and constitutional
protection of religious freedom, the refusal to involve the state in the
establishment of any religion, and a civic culture that makes universal
respect and self- restraint compatible with the public discussion of what
matters most and touches us most deeply. Th ese requirements fail to
support the taboo against the religious inspiration of po liti cal vision,
which, by diminishing both politics and religion, undermines our pow-
ers of re sis tance and transcendence.
A tragic contradiction in the history of religion
A confl ict exists between the practical conditions for the worldly survival
and success of a religion and the requirements of its fi delity to its mes-
sage. Th is confl ict is not dissolved in the course of the history of religion;
it persists as the tragic element in this history. For the re orientation that I
propose, it presents a problem for which there is no apparent solution.
Th e practice of the religion of the future is powerless to solve it.
Consider again a model of the foundation of the historical religions,
defi ned broadly enough to include Buddha and Confucius as well as the
Jewish prophets, Jesus, and Muhammad. An individual teacher com-
bines visionary teaching with exemplary action. It must be a par tic u-
lar vision, with decisive implications for the conduct of life, not just a
speculative philosophy with indefi nite practical consequences. To guide
us in our way, it must respond to the fact of death, faced in the context
of our apparent groundlessness and of our unlimited longing. It must
demand more by way of the commitment of life in a par tic u lar direc-
tion than it can ever hope conclusively to justify.
Th e teacher gathers followers around him. He assumes an ambiva-
lent attitude to the established authorities. He neither acquiesces un-
equivocally and unreservedly in the order over which they preside nor
openly defi es their hold on temporal power. His message nevertheless
has implications for the or ga ni za tion of society. Once his followers be-
come more numerous and or ga nized, they may attempt to take power