5 .sx Fundamentalism .sx For some reason , religious conviction in the modern world produces in us a mixture of surprise , fascination and fright , as if a dinosaur had lumbered into life and stumbled uninvited into a cocktail party .sx I remember , three years ago , taking part in a panel on the use of bad language in broadcasting .sx Everyone else addressed the subject of obscenity .sx I was asked to speak about blasphemy .sx No one had given blasphemy much thought for many years .sx The one exception - Mary Whitehouse's prosecution of Gay News - seemed to be just that :sx a stray pebble tossed into a sea of calm indifference .sx At the time I quoted T.S. Eliot who believed that blasphemy was no longer possible .sx He thought that you can only blaspheme if you profoundly believe in the reality of that which you profane .sx No one , according to Eliot , believed that strongly any more .sx Along with faith , blasphemy too had died .sx Everyone agreed , and the subject sank without trace .sx Few of us could have imagined that within a few months The Satanic Verses would make blasphemy front page news throughout the world and that eighteen people would die in religious protests about a novel .sx Here was religious belief very much alive in the way the Bible had once portrayed the presence of God :sx a whirlwind shattering rocks and uprooting the cedars of Lebanon , fascinating in its power , terrifying in its destructiveness .sx It was the hurricane our weather forecasters failed to predict .sx Why did the resurgence of religion take us by surprise ?sx And how shall we react to it ?sx We lamented the loss of faith .sx Shall we fear its rediscovery still more ?sx One picture dominated our understanding of religion in the modern world .sx Faith was being ousted from one room after another of its once stately home .sx Science investigated nature , history explored the past , businesses maximised profits , technology increased control and governments mediated conflicts , all outside the sacred canopy of faith .sx Religions might still be true , but they had lost what Peter Berger called their plausibility structure , their objective embodiment in society .sx Faith might remain a private consolation , but it could hardly govern the public domain .sx The priest , guardian of the sacred , was left stranded :sx the last amateur in a world of professionals , the last practitioner of the unquantifiable .sx For healing , we would prefer a doctor ; for catharsis , a psychotherapist .sx Welfare and education had been transferred to the state .sx And prayer had become what one churchman recently described as a list of ultimatums given to God when all other avenues had been exhausted .sx The human imagination would still need the narratives that explained ourselves to ourselves .sx But art and drama long ago declared their independence from religion .sx Our domestic parables and metaphysical myths are no longer told in religious texts .sx Instead they are played out on the screen as soap opera and science fiction .sx Wherever the man of God turned , he found someone else already doing his job .sx Religion was the ineffable become the unemployable .sx The most perceptive theorists of secularisation were well aware that none of this meant that the great religions were about to be eclipsed .sx But it meant that some hard bargaining would have to take place .sx Faith no longer had its mansion .sx Could it negotiate for itself at least a modest apartment in the tower of Babel ?sx And if so , which of its now cumbersome furniture would it have to throw away ?sx So began the varied strategies of religious liberalism and neo - orthodoxy .sx Religion would concede the loss of its empire .sx It would grant independence to the vast domains of knowledge and decision where once it had been the colonial power .sx But it would reserve some restricted territory for itself :sx as a mode of experience , or the voice of conscience , or a spring to social action , or as some immediate , self-contained , even mystical way of knowing .sx The very powerlessness of religion might be its salvation .sx In Hamlet's words , it could be bounded in a nut-shell and still count itself king of infinite space .sx Nowhere were these issues addressed more searchingly than in Protestantism , by figures like Schleiermacher , Bultmann and Bonhoeffer .sx But throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Judaism followed the same trajectory , as the sudden move from ghetto to Enlightenment strained the bonds of rabbinic tradition .sx Catholicism and Islam , too , had their modernist voices , who stressed the need for reinterpretation of doctrine and religious law .sx We can hardly understand religious reactions to modernity without appreciating the extent to which scientific rationalism seemed to carry all before it .sx From Hume and Voltaire onward , religious belief became a subject of ridicule and disdain .sx It was primitive , irrational , an opiate , a neurosis , an illusion for those who could not face reality .sx What John Murray Cuddihy wrote about Jews could be applied to believers of many other kinds :sx that before they could enter the modern world they had to learn a " consciousness of underdevelopment .sx " For Christians , the challenge was intellectual .sx It came from biblical criticism , Darwin and the relativising of belief .sx For Muslims it tended to be social and political :sx European colonial rule and the sense that Islam had been overtaken by the West .sx Some form of accommodation seemed necessary :sx the only way to recover self - respect .sx Modernity had won the battle , and religion had to salvage what it could from defeat .sx THE RETURN OF RELIGIOUS CONSERVATISM .sx That was the picture .sx The intellectual , social and political changes required by a modern economy meant the loss of that stable world in which alone religious faith could grow .sx Here and there , there might be groups still untouched by the process - rural communities , the American Bible belt , the Jewish town - ships of Poland and Russia .sx Some might even opt out of it altogether , like the Hassidim , the Jewish mystical circles of Eastern Europe .sx But that meant strict withdrawal , enclosed communities and a sectarian form of religious organisation .sx There might be occasional revivals , as there were in Victorian Britain and periodically in America .sx But these were no more than lingering pools left by the outgoing tide .sx Churches and synagogues had either to make their peace with secular values , as they did in America , or lose adherents , as they did in England .sx Either way , religion had lost its power to shape societies .sx It had become the sacred fa c-cedille ade of an increasingly secular social order .sx By the close of the nineteenth century Oscar Wilde was already calling religion the fashionable substitute for belief .sx Preachers were left to lament the " melancholy , long withdrawing roar " of the retreating sea of faith .sx Pictures govern our expectations .sx The image of inexorable secularisation made any large-scale resurgence of religious fervour improbable .sx Even the unexpected appearance among students in the 1960s of mysticisms , cults and counter-cultural movements was no more than a minor parenthesis in the larger proposition .sx But it was just then that observers began to detect something else .sx In 1965 Charles Liebman published an article on 'Orthodoxy in American Jewish Life .sx ' Until then , it had been assumed that Jewish Orthodoxy was in a state of terminal decline .sx As Jews arrived in America , they set foot on the escalator of acculturation and left their religious baggage behind .sx The second and third generations joined progressively more liberal congregations , if they identified religiously at all .sx Now for the first time , Liebman's article drew a different picture .sx Far from being ready to expire , Orthodoxy was " the only remaining vestige of Jewish passion in America " and " the only group which today contains within it a strength and will to live that may yet nourish all the Jewish world .sx " .sx A few years later , Dean Kelley produced a strikingly parallel analysis of American Christianity .sx Documenting the growth and decline of various denominations , he found that those that were prospering were groups like the Southern Baptists , Pentacostalists , Seventh Day Adventists , Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons .sx What they had in common was that they rejected the accommodations of the mainline churches .sx They were absolutists , highly disciplined and zealous to proselytise .sx They demanded and evoked strong commitment .sx They provided clear answers to moral and metaphysical questions .sx The evidence since then confirms Liebman's and Kelley's analysis .sx The more liberal , accommodationist organisations have declined .sx Conservative and evangelical movements have continued to grow .sx It seemed as if a large-scale cultural conversion was taking shape , a turning of the tide .sx Secularised Christians were being born again .sx Assimilated Jews were taking the path of religious return .sx A more considered analysis showed that this was not quite so .sx Those who crossed denominational boundaries were highly visible but numerically few .sx A society-wide revival was not in the making .sx The millennium was not yet in sight .sx But what was happening was significant nonetheless .sx Those whose faith was most demanding had larger families and gave their children a strong religious education .sx They had low rates of attrition and were effectively raising a new generation who shared their values .sx Against the denominational drift , they were holding their own , and demography was in their favour .sx In an open society , the strongest religious commitments were those best fitted to survive .sx This gave confidence to once demoralised traditional voices .sx In the backlash against the chaos of the 1960s , their convictions rang out clearly .sx They knew what they believed , and their opinions had none of the complicating subordinate clauses of the religious liberals .sx They spoke with that rarest of modern accents :sx authority .sx They had learned the lessons of modern communication and organisation .sx Conservative and evangelical groups became the most enthusiastic users of radio , television and mass mailing .sx In America , the 'Moral Majority' became a significant force of political pressure .sx And from these long neglected circles came the unmistakable sounds of success .sx By the end of the 1970s , they could claim that they had now acquired the influence long yielded by liberals .sx It was a matter less of numbers than of mood .sx But it was a significant turn , and raised serious questions about the picture of religion in the modern world .sx Modernism , liberalism and rationalism no longer looked invincible .sx Going with the secular flow had ceased to be the best strategy .sx MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS .sx Why did it happen ?sx We can speak only in the broadest of terms , but we can surely say this .sx Our image of religion these past two centuries has been part of a larger picture .sx It is reflected in the key words that came to dominate social thought in the nineteenth century :sx civilisation , progress , evolution , even the word 'modern' itself as a term of praise .sx These words testify to the profound future-orientation of modern culture .sx The new is an improvement on the old .sx Optimism and anti-traditionalism go hand in hand .sx It was a compelling scenario .sx Science would fathom the mysteries of nature , and technology would harvest its treasures .sx Reason would replace superstition , and tolerance would triumph over prejudice .sx The modern state would bring participation and equality .sx The individual would have liberty of choice , freed from paternalist authority .sx So long as modernity delivered its promises , the voices of lamentation could be ignored .sx But at some stage in the 1960s , profound doubts began to be expressed .sx Technology had given us the power to destroy life on earth .sx Economic growth was consuming the environment .sx The modern state had the power to organise tyranny and violence on a scale hitherto unknown .sx Racial animosities had not disappeared :sx they had fired the ovens of Auschwitz .sx No utopia had yet been brought by revolution , and the free market was increasing inequalities between rich and poor .sx In the secular city there was homelessness and violence , and individualism had made the most basic relationships vulnerable .sx Robert Bellah caught the mood when he said :sx " Progress , modernity's master idea , seems less compelling when it appears that it may be progress into the abyss .sx " .sx No-one was so well prepared for these doubts as those long disattended conservative religious leaders .sx They had developed a deep pessimism about modern culture .sx They had preached against its excesses and idolatries .sx And now they could say :sx We told you so .sx They spoke directly to modern discontents .sx Against the fragmentation of knowledge they could offer wholeness of vision .sx Against an over-reaching civilisation they spoke a coherent language of restraint .sx