Taken as a whole, the changing phenomenon of the world's religions displays the character of an enormous quest, an ongoing search for what is ultimate and whole. The critiques leveled against religion by modern atheism starting in the nineteenth century and continuing today gave rise to the idea that this quest for the living God was finished, that the march of technical progress would soon make religion wither in those naive outposts where it continued to cling to life. But ongoing history indicates that the death of God was greatly exaggerated.
Religion is not an unalloyed good. All too often groups have yielded to the temptation to make their deity into a god of their tribe, hostile to outsiders. This has instigated horrific bouts of violence. The religious philosopher Martin Buber wrote scathingly that the word 'God' has blood all over it and should be retired from our vocabulary, at least until it recovers from such misuse. This ambiguous heritage needs to be constantly kept in mind as a critical corrective to any smug, triumphal tooting of the religious horn. At the same time, the unexpected vitality of religion into the twenty-first century, for better and for worse, along with the emergence of new forms of spirituality outside organized religion, show that connection with the sacred still matters to a goodly number of people. The quest for the living God has been and continues to be a perennial activity of the human spirit.
— Elizabeth A. Johnson, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God