world, according to Cox, delivered mankind from "dependence on the fates" and "expelled the demons from nature and politics." Tribalism took root in fear and superstition, which would inevitably diminish as man became master of his destiny. The Secular City (1965) celebrated society's evolution from tribe to town to city, the progress from the "fishbowl of town life" and all the "cloying bondages of pre-urban society" to urban anonymity, with the new forms of "creativity" it made possible. For the first time, man depended entirely on himself. His "adolescent illusions" shattered, he had "come of age." Remnants of idolatry and superstition remained, to be sure. Thus communism, a powerful force for secularization and progress, was also an "ecstatic sectarian cult complete with saints and a beatific vision." Its "messianic utopianism" suggested the presence of "stubborn deposits of town and tribal pasts." The general trend of history, however, supported the hope that man would outgrow "juvenile" habits of mind. "Dependency, awe, and religiousness"—the "tribal residues" that led men and women to give unconditional allegiance to partial truths—would eventually be "exorcised" by man's growing "mastery over the world." Once people understood that man himself was the "creator of meaning," they would come to acknowledge the cultural relativity of values and give unconditional allegiance to God alone.
Cox's thesis—secularization as the path to true faith—did not lack ingenuity ; but it ignored the possibility that ultimate loyalty to the creator of being has to be grounded in loyalty to families and friends, to a particular piece of earth, and to a particular craft or calling. Man's collective mastery of nature, moreover—even if we could ignore the mounting evidence that this too is largely an illusion—can hardly be expected to confer a
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