I have a few hunches about the revival of religion in this millennial period of time. Some of them I hope will be proven wrong.

Let me declare at the outset a belief, a conviction, or what some would call a bias. I believe that we human beings are deeply religious, that we seek meaning and purpose in our lives, that we long to give ourselves in service of something greater than ourselves, and that we are restless and unhappy until we situate our lives within the context of some transcendent reality.

Since the time of the Enlightenment, these deep religious desires have been psychologically, socially, and economically diagnosed, then dismissed and finally repressed. In the late twentieth century, the repression of the religious has returned. While the realities of sexual repression were the stuff of many nineteenth and twentieth century authors, the writers of the next century may find sexual tragedies and comedies less interesting and important than the religious drama which even now is taking place.

The main stage or context of this religious drama is the rapid and vast process of globalization which is transforming all familiar human points of reference. Until now, the new global order has meant only that the world is being controlled by ubiquitous transnational corporations and vast systems of global communications. These forces of globalization have no loyalty to any particular location or community. Even as national boundaries are being erased, the imperatives of time have been reduced to the few minutes or seconds required for global financial transactions.

Is it any wonder that so many peoples and cultures are retreating to some more particular location for a sense of identity and history? Witness the rise of forms of tribalism-ethnicity, culture, and even religion. One could easily point to the ethnic conflicts of Africa but there are also the more proper revivals of Celtic and Québécois cultures and the renaissance of aboriginal spiritualities around the world.

If the vast homogenizing process of globalization continues, religious identity and commitment, in all their various forms, will also grow stronger. The rescue operation in such a religious revival is already evident-the reclaiming of particular loyalties, of a sense of embeddedness in the context of history and a community, a conviction that human beings are more than consumers of goods and information.

At its best, such a revival of religious identity would provide a rootedness which would enable its adherents to address the vast impersonal systems which are overpowering their lives. It is just possible that the revival of what is best in all the great religious traditions may provide what Vaclav Havel sees as essential to the future of the world-a new sense of the spiritual unity of the world and a deeper basis for the respect for human rights.

At its worst, all of this religious revival could degenerate into vicious tribalisms which are not all that unfamiliar to Canadians. The "garrison mentality" as described by Northrop Frye is ever present in times when natural or socio-economic forces make survival imperative.

There is an important North American dynamic to this religious revival. I tend to agree with the Quebec film director Denys Arcand (and many others) that we are living in the time of the Decline of the American Empire. And we as the "nice" and big colony of that empire are part of its long, slow, but inevitable decline.

In times of historical decline, when an overarching sense of some transcendent social vision weakens, then people begin to search for some other source of meaning. When a society loses a sense of political development the people intensify their search for personal development and meaning. And so we have a plethora of new age spiritualities-the various forms of self-development in a time of political decline.

So the smart money in the publishing industry knows that there's lots to be made on the recovery of religion in all of its particular forms of loyalties (fundamentalisms old and new) and on the new age retreat to the self in the face of social disintegration.

Mary Jo Leddy teaches theology at Regis College, the University of Toronto, and is on the editorial board of Catholic New Times. She is the author of the recently released At the Border Called Hope (HarperCollins).