Religion: Alive and Well

WE may be grateful that the experts are always wrong—and wrong for a systematic reason. To be an expert is to know one subject or one perspective thoroughly. Trouble arises because life never hits us one subject at a time and from one angle only; so that expertise and life are mismatched. Thus the same experts who confidently predicted the evaporation of ethnicity as a force in world affairs have lovingly described, as well, the secularization of modern man, which also never happened.

In fact, the world in 1980 is breaking out in religion, in a way that must have seemed improbable in the quarantine of 1955. (Yet, even then, was not the now-beloved Eisenhower announcing that 98 per cent of the American people believed in God, no matter which God they meant?) The species “modern man,” it turns out, represents a rather staggering minority.

About the Author

Michael Novak

Michael Novak was a Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat.

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WE may be grateful that the experts are always wrong—and wrong for a systematic reason. To be an expert is to know one subject or one perspective thoroughly. Trouble arises because life never hits us one subject at a time and from one angle only; so that expertise and life are mismatched. Thus the same experts who confidently predicted the evaporation of ethnicity as a force in world affairs have lovingly described, as well, the secularization of modern man, which also never happened.

In fact, the world in 1980 is breaking out in religion, in a way that must have seemed improbable in the quarantine of 1955. (Yet, even then, was not the now-beloved Eisenhower announcing that 98 per cent of the American people believed in God, no matter which God they meant?) The species “modern man,” it turns out, represents a rather staggering minority.