religious revolution now 273•••
Th e three scandals of reason fail to exhaust the preliminary and funda-
mental objections to any attempt to take Christianity (or Judaism or
Islam) as a point of departure for the religion of the future. Th ere is a
further objection. It might be described as a fourth scandal of reason,
except for the fact that it has an entirely diff erent character. It is so fa-
miliar that we can easily mistake it for an inconsequential platitude. Its
apparent subject matter is the psychology or sociology of belief rather
than the justifi cation of faith. Its implications for the truth of our situ-
ation, or for the incitements to hope, are oblique and obscure.
It nevertheless presents a diffi culty that no one who takes one of the
religions of salvation seriously can hope to escape. Engagement with
this diffi culty helps show the way and the sense in which Christian faith
would need to be revolutionized if it were to serve as a launching point
for the religion of the future.
It is a fact too obvious to be remarked, and too seemingly natural to
excite curiosity, that the followers of the world religions— the religions
generated by the religious revolutions of the past— usually hold their
faith because their fathers and mothers held them, or because they live
in a circumstance that makes the faith seem part of a person’s identity
and of his bond to his family, his community, or his nation.
To be sure, there are individuals who convert to another religion.
Th ere are missionary religions, especially Christianity, Islam, and their
off shoots. Early enough in the history of these religions everyone was a
convert. Nevertheless, in the established creeds, for almost as long as
they have existed, the characteristic experience of the convert is that of
joining a community of faith, the vast majority of the members of which
belong to it because their parents belonged to it.
Th e exceptions to this fact are both few and limited. Many millions
continue to move today from one branch of Christianity to another.
Many other millions slide slowly from faith to half- faith and from half-
faith to faithlessness. Th ose who move, however, move among and within
religions whose membership is set by the accidents of birth, the infl u-
ence of family, and the historical divisions of humanity.
No one would regard it as reasonable that our beliefs about how na-
ture works be determined, or even infl uenced, by the convictions of