Culture and the death of God / Terry Eagleton.

In his usual engaging manner, cultural critic Eagleton (Reason, Faith, and Revolution) offers a tour-de-force survey of the changing relation of culture and religion. Moving from the Enlightenment--where the ideological power of religion is undermined by various philosophical forces--through idealism, romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism, he illustrates how various cultural forces--literature, for example--gradually replaced religion; by the time postmodernism eases onto the scene, he observes, "human history arrives for the first time at an authentic atheism," because people no longer feel a need to be redeemed. Why, then, the contemporary resurgence of religious fundamentalism across the world? Because, Eagleton points out, "religion provides a way of fulfilling certain emotional needs. and provides a degree of spiritual depth to otherwise shallow lives." In the end, he argues that religion's true purpose is to challenge the too-cozy relationships of religious institutions and politics and that a new configuration of faith and culture might arise if religions practiced solidarity with the poor and powerless.