The achievement of independence in tropical Africa temporarily checked the rise of nationalist sentiment. In most territories hopes gave way to a sense of anticlimax, a heightened awareness of social stratification and the resurgence of ethnic loyalties. The reactive process which produced the beginnings of organized mass followings and much wider popular acclaim for charismatic leaders had ended at least, in the clearly focused form of demands for one man, one vote, political independence and national development as opposed to overt colonial dependency.

My title calls the relationship of theology and the new American culture “problematic.” That relationship is a problem, I think, on many sides and various levels. The issue involves questions I do not even know how to ask meaningfully, let alone resolve.

With the dissolution of the Progressive Party in 1916, many of Theodore Roosevelt's followers parted company. Suddenly without a political home, they sought refuge in the two major parties that they had deserted four years before. Raymond Robins of Illinois and Edward P. Costigan of Colorado were key figures in that scattering of reformers as each attempted to lead Bull Moosers in a different direction. Searching for the party which could most effectively achieve the unfinished program which Roosevelt had launched in 1912, Costigan chose the Democratic party of Woodrow Wilson, while Robins argued that the Republican party best represented Progressive ideals. The purpose of this essay is to examine the manner in which these two leaders solved the Progressives' dilemma in 1916, and particularly the arguments they utilized in attempting to sway their former colleagues.

Areal cultural shift doesn't happen very often. Skepticism about whether one took place in the 1960's is quite natural, especially in view of the rapidity with which cultural fashions have come and gone in the past 15 years. The New Conservatism had hardly crested before it was succeeded by the End of Ideology, which was displaced with equal speed by the New Left. In the religious sphere, the revival of the early 50's gave way to the Death of God 10 years later. This proved even more ephemeral. With its companion, the Secular City, it was left behind in a welter of new movements—occultism, mysticism, and various forms of millenarian religious revolutionism. Paradoxically, the dizzying pace of change itself seemed to argue that nothing very profound was going on.

Norman mailer observed several years ago that American Protestantism, with the exception of Tillich and other Protestant existentialists, had become “oriented to the machine, and lukewarm in its enthusiasm for such notions as heaven, hell and the soul.” The religious tradition of the West had been preoccupied with the soul and had delineated its progress from earth to heaven and its struggling movement between darkness and light, Satan and God, as part of a cosmic and apocalyptic drama. Although Roman Catholicism had remained somewhat more concerned than Protestantism with such conceptions, argued Mailer, Christianity in general had left them behind and become tepid in the process.

When the question of a “new age” is put to a philosopher there are two quite different ways in which he can define the issue and accordingly respond. On the one hand, he might construe his task as that of a clarifier of some general claim about cultural revolutions. From this perspective he would set about the task of analyzing the concept of a cultural revolution in terms of some loose analogue of necessary and sufficient conditions. These criteria having been laid down, he could then make suggestions as to whether or not those conditions obtain which would justify the claim that we are in the midst of such a cultural revolution. On the other hand, he might construe his charge more specifically as that of assessing the present state of his own field to see if something like a shift in perspective is manifest in this narrower domain. In this paper I am going to take the latter tack. I will, first, briefly survey the contemporary scene in philosophy to illustrate the “changing temper” I am to talk about; secondly, locate these phenomena in a broader historical context; and, thirdly, try to get at the reasons underlying the changes on which I am focusing. The major part of the paper will be devoted to the third point.

Are we now in, or entering into, a new age? Is this a revolutionary period in the history of man? This paper will consider these questions, especially as they relate to science and technology.

Consider the following statements, all of which cite evidence in support of the thesis that a new age is upon us.