I Try To Be Objective. I Do

As A Social And As A Personal Force, Religion Has Become A Dependent Variable. It Does Not Originate; It Reacts. It Does Not Denounce; It Adapts. It Does Not Set Forth New Models Of Conduct And Sensibility; It Imitates. Its Rhetoric Is Without Deep Appeal; The Worship It Organizes Is Without Piety. It Has Become Less A Revitalization Of The Spirit In Permanent Tension With The World Than A Respectable Distraction From The Sourness Of Life.

Those In Authority Within Institutions And Social Structures Attempt To Justify Their Rule By Linking It, As If It Were A Necessary Consequence, With Moral Symbols, Sacred Emblems, Or Legal Formulae Which Are Widely Believed And Deeply Internalized. These Central Conceptions May Refer To A God Or Gods, The 'votes Of The Majority,' The 'will Of The People,' The 'aristocracy Of Talents Or Wealth,' To The 'divine Right Of Kings' Or To The Alleged Extraordinary Endowment Of The Person Of The Ruler Himself.

Seldom Aware Of The Intricate Connection Between The Patterns Of Their Own Lives And The Course Of World History, Ordinary People Do Not Usually Know What This Connection Means For The Kind Of People They Are Becoming And For The Kind Of History-making In Which They Might Take Part.

As A Proportion Of The Labor Force, Fewer Individuals Manipulate Things, More Handle People And Symbols.

The Economy - Once A Great Scatter Of Small Productive Units In Autonomous Balance, Has Become Dominated By Two Or Three Hundred Giant Corporations, Administratively And Politically Interrelated... The Political Order, Once A Decentralized Set Of Several Dozen States With A Weak Spinal Cord, Has Become A Centralized Executive Establishment Which Has Taken Up Into Itself Many Powers Previously Scattered... The Military Order, Once A Slim Establishment In A Context Of Distrust Fed By State Militia, Has Become The Largest And Most Expensive Feature Of Government.