Culture and the Death of God

In his usual engaging manner, cultural critic Eagleton (Reason, Faith, and Revolution) offers a tour-de-force survey of the changing relation of culture and religion. Moving from the Enlightenment—where the ideological power of religion is undermined by various philosophical forces—through idealism, romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism, he illustrates how various cultural forces—literature, for example—gradually replaced religion; by the time postmodernism eases onto the scene, he observes, “human history arrives for the first time at an authentic atheism,” because people no longer feel a need to be redeemed. Why, then, the contemporary resurgence of religious fundamentalism across the world? Because, Eagleton points out, “religion provides a way of fulfilling certain emotional needs… and provides a degree of spiritual depth to otherwise shallow lives.” In the end, he argues that religion’s true purpose is to challenge the too-cozy relationships of religious institutions and politics and that a new configuration of faith and culture might arise if religions practiced solidarity with the poor and powerless. (Mar.)