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Reverend Moon's Vision: The Family of Man
| Article
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19791 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1991 |
7,098 Words |
| Author
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Richard L. Rubenstein
Richard L. Rubenstein is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished
Professor of Religion at Florida State University and
president of the Washington Institute for Values in Public
Policy. He is the coauthor (with John K. Roth) of Approaches
to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy |
When we ponder the likely course of events in the early decades of the twenty-first century, our initial inclination is to extrapolate from tendencies currently visible in our own turn-of-the-millennium decade. Insofar as these tendencies are expressions of the modernization process, that is, the ongoing rationalization of the world's economies and societies, we would expect to see a continuation and an intensification of the processes of secularization, urbanization, and industrialization--which have been all to apparent during most of the twentieth century. This would, in all likelihood, entail the further decline of religion as a cultural force, the spread of anomie or the loss of meaning associated with human existence, and a further loss of any sense of community among the inhabitants in the megalopolitan centers of the next century.
There is, however, the possibility that the negative effects of modernization may prove so disorienting that the majority of the peoples of the world will seek alternative forms of modernization in which religious values and spiritual experience would play an increasingly important role. In reality, the turn to religious fundamentalism in contemporary Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, as well as among other religious traditions, can best be understood as a postmodern response to the relativism of values and the psychological insecurities engendered by the modern, secular world.
There is yet another reason why the present worldwide turn toward religion is likely to intensify--namely, the coming of the year 2000 and the beginning of the third Christian millennium in the year 2001. Granted, the new millennium is based solely on the Christian calendar, but that calendar has a global influence that no other system of time reckoning can match. The idea of the onset of a new millennium is likely to impress deeply hundreds of millions of non-Christian as well as Christians, turning their minds and hearts to questions of ultimate concern.
Much good can come from a return to religion. Regrettably, so, too, can much evil. The twenty-first century could witness the return of wars of religion on a scale and with a bitterness that the world has not known for several centuries. We have already had a foretaste of such wars in the holy-war rhetoric that Saddam Hussein has employed in his attempt to enlist the support of Islamic masses for his conquests. Although Saddam Hussein is said to be a nonbeliever, he knows of no stronger appeal to the Arabic masses than religion.
Moreover, a global civilization can
...
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