The news headlines are clear: religion is on the decline in the West as many people leave behind traditional religious practices.
Diana Butler Bass, leading commentator on religion, politics and culture, argues that what appears to be a decline actually signals a major transformation in how people experience God.
The distant God of conventional religion has given way to a more intimate sense of the sacred that is with us in the world. This shift – from a vertical understanding of God, to a God found on the horizons of nature and human community – is at the heart of a spiritual revolution that surrounds us.
The book concludes with the ‘Commons’ where Diana argues religion has abandoned its prophetic and creative vision of humanity’s common life’, in favour of an individual quest to get to heaven. In the process, community became isolated behind walls of buildings where worship experiences corresponded to members’ tastes, preferences and political views. A sad mistake, for at the very centre of every religion there stands some great communal vision of God, the world and humanity.
Diana will be a keynote speaker at the Common Dreams Conference, held in Queensland this September.
Richard Smith