I suppose people could claim things like these are signs of some such:
- Orthodox Jewish shuls pop up in the suburbs of southern and western American cities.
- Young Azerbaijanis increasingly drawn to Islam.
And so on. Still, there have always been a lot of local revivals and ups and downs, and I keep seeing overall measures suggesting that the influence of religion continues to dissipate. At bottom, my impression is that religious issues loom larger because there are more determinedly secular people, so the presence of any religion at all becomes an issue.
Exactly. The militant
Exactly. The militant secularists are absolutely obsessed with religion. The latest issue of Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsmagazine, noted the trendiness of “Da Vinci Code”-like Biblical-revisionist novels out; there seem to be a bunch of them, and almost all obsessed with Mary Magdalene, giving feminist spins to the account of her.
They can’t help themselves; sometimes I think secularists are more obsessed with religious faith than believers themselves.