258 religious revolution nowcondition. It requires a commitment of life in a par tic u lar direction for
which the grounds it can supply must always seem inadequate by the
standards that we are accustomed to apply to less momentous deci-
sions. In demanding from us more than it can justify by argument, it
also requires us to put ourselves, in the course of actions motivated by
faith, into the hands of others. In overstepping the bounds of reason,
faith makes us vulnerable.
By all these standards, the change in thought and conduct that I here
defend is religious. It is not, however, religious in the sense of the beliefs
most characteristic of the Near Eastern mono the isms. In this sense, it
speaks in a profane rather than in a sacred voice, which is the voice of
religion understood on the model of those religions.
Before addressing, in the profane register, the religion of the future,
I consider the extent to which those monotheisms— or, rather, one of
them— could itself serve as the vehicle of the re orientation that I pro-
pose. An established religion, reinterpreted or reformed, would then
lay claim to being the religion of the future, or at least one of its expres-
sions. Th is conceptual experiment enables us to compare the sacred
and the profane versions of the program of religious revolution. Th e
diff erences between them will be real, but they will not be as great as
the diff erences between either of them and the conventional secular
humanism or the familiar faith and practice of the salvation religions.
To this end, I seize on the example of Christianity and ask by what
set of changes Christianity might become the religion of the future. To
become the religion of the future, it would need to respond to the expe-
riences that give cause for religious revolution today. It could not do
so without overcoming the estrangement from the present that has
marked it ever since its emergence two thousand years ago. Th e result
would not be a minor adjustment in belief. It would be a reformation of
Christianity more radical than the one that Luther began.
Th e reasons to choose Christianity as the religion in which to ex-
plore a sacred voice for the religion of the future are straightforward.
Th e struggle with the world remains the chief source of the religion of
the future. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were not only the principal
school of the struggle with the world; they have also continued to be,
despite the social and philosophical compromises that have tainted
their message and dulled their force, a fount of prophetic re sis tance.