The most important historical development in the last 200 years was not the splitting of the atom or the invention of the internal combustion engine or the spread of the computer chip, but the advent of a new religious mode.
The most illuminating person that I have known personally, my mentor for 24 years, Joseph W. Mathews, first called this history-changing event “the advent of the secular religious.” The four-day course that he and we who were his colleagues taught to thousands of clergy began with a lecture on the cultural revolution. The heart of that lecture was on what we called “the secular revolution.” In that talk we spelled out how the ancient two-story metaphorical thinking is being replaced by living in one and only one realm of reality. In that talk we also noted how the imagery of angels and demons was being replaced by imagery about historically unfolding relationships. We opened that course for religious leaders with this talk because we claimed that this revolution in religious sensibilities set the context for the renewal of Christianity and every other religion that one might want to renew.