Sociology and religion is Father Greeley's field of expertise. A prolific commentator on the contemporary scene, he fancies himself an individualist — but not a snob — apart from the intellectual mob. Let's just say that he marches to a different drummer. Or does he?
In strident tone, Father Greeley opens his new work with the trumpet call: "The thesis of this book, bluntly, Is that the basic religious functions have not very notably changed since the late Ice Age; where changes have occurred make religious questions more critical rather than less critical in the contemporary world." The secular man "come of age" was the fallacious construct of an intellectual minority who tried to tell the majority what's happening. Quoting Robert Nisbet's startling revelation that "fixity is more real than change," Father Greeley believes that religion is here to stay.
Quite wrongly, he has assumed that sociologists stressing the secularization of society believed that modern man gave up his religious instincts. Reading Martin Marty, Peter Berger and Harvey Cox — I find them in the Sixties talking about Americans making secularism a religious placebo. Religion never died — it just changed brand names!
As Greeley defines "religion," it is possible to include anything and everything in it: (1) meaning system, (2) community, (3) human sexuality, (4) vision of the sacred, (5) spiritual leadership. Modern man is more religious than his predecessors since he has more choices and deeply feels the impingement of evil, the presence of suffering, and the bafflement over life's meaning.
Greeley would have us steer a course between conservative denial of worldly events and a liberal identification of mission with the world. In other words, the institutional churches out to polish up their myths if they want their sons and daughters to come home. Reinterpret rituals and revivify sacrament because the kids want something to believe in, create a new religious language to meet the intuitive and psychic needs of the younger generation.