1. I believe a religious revival is likely-but not for everyone, and not in forms likely to please everyone. As the quasi-political faiths, which are actually surrogate religions, fade away somewhat (such as communism and Nazism and their shadow versions), some people will seek genuine religion-but will not always find it as we might like. Indeed, the ever-problematic character of religion in the modern age is likely to remain with us, even in the face of an essential and needed revival of our religious traditions.

2. The forms such religious revivals might assume are familiar. I would anticipate continued growth and ferment in fundamentalist, evangelical, or pentecostal Protestantism (i.e., of a conservative bent); in ultra-orthodox or hasidic Judaism; and perhaps in a revived, ultra-traditionalist Catholicism. These will attract ever-greater numbers of true believers or diminished adherents, as Western secularism displays signs of ever-greater decadence. The so-called new religions (also known as the "cults"), "new age spirituality", as well as Western versions of Eastern religions, will also continue to grow-although aspects of them must still be characterized in terms such as mind-control at worst, or as thought-free mysticism at best. And surely the twentieth century quasi-political faiths-the surrogate religions-which remain standing, such as feminism and environmentalism, will also not fade away in the twenty-first century.

However, in response to the unavoidable excesses of fundamentalist religion (as we continue to witness), I would not entirely discount the possibility of a limited revival of interest in a moderated form of traditional religion among Jews and Christians-moderated in the sense that this form of religion, while expressing fidelity to tradition, would also be intellectually and morally courageous as well as unafraid of reason. Unfortunately, I am not certain that this is likely to occur in Islam in the immediate future. Since Islam is just passing through its modernization, it will likely continue to differ from the other Western traditions (i.e., Judaism and Christianity) in the unfolding of its peculiar and often violent dynamics for quite a while still, with a continued conflict between a stronger fundamentalism and a weaker liberalism most evident. As of yet, no moderate or rationally conservative version of religious faith speaks with any decisive authority among Muslims.

Then again, I think there are also clear indications that those leading a fundamentalist revival in all Western religions will try to further separate themselves from everything deemed "modern", and hence will likely remain critical in the extreme of unavoidable aspects of modernity such as the following: i. Secularism: moderate religionists of all stripes will oppose secularism as a deceptive modern "faith", since they believe its limits have been well demonstrated by history; fundamentalists will link it with all modern decadence and will use the persistence of its faith in man to prove the need to abandon the modern altogether, gathering to its camp wounded refugees from the moral disorder and spiritual disarray of such secularism. ii. Science: positivism, the belief in Science, will continue to flourish and evoke worship, even if it will likely wane somewhat; fundamentalist critics will continue to use science and benefit from it, even while mistrusting it and trying not to face its challenges. iii. Philosophy, the arts, and the humanities: their secular protagonists will paradoxically either renounce reason as in "postmodernism" and so pose no threat to religion, or they will return to reason and so be capable of instructing religion toward intelligence and away from the morally extreme. iv. Western liberal democracy: it will surely still appeal to most people because of its freedom, but it will be treated with ever greater suspicion and hostility by religious fundamentalists. Some political expressions by such ultra-traditionalists suggest that they may tend to strive for power. If so, they will claim this defection from liberal democracy is legitimate due to the obvious lack of a sound moral compass in Western societies, which have themselves gradually been saying an unwise farewell to reason.

3. In my opinion, such a religious revival would be a good thing if people moved en masse to an enlightened religious traditionalism, perhaps something like what is known in Judaism as modern orthodoxy, or in Catholicism as John Paul II's blend of traditional-modern religiosity, or approximations to these. Enlightened religious traditionalism is what I would prefer to define roughly as follows: it is a thoughtful religious conservatism; it is willing to make such changes as are essential, but it remains firmly linked to tradition; it is expressive of full and free human intelligence, as well as limited by moral common sense. Connected with this would need to be the recognition that the advance, or even survival, of modernity is at present only possible if it is allied with such an enlightened traditional religion. Is this likely to be so? Not too likely a prospect from the present perspective, but I continue to hope. Even those moderately conservative forms of religion are and will likely remain on the defensive, and are not likely to prevail in the immediate future among the greatest number of people, who wander about undecided, unsure of which way to turn. The far right in religion will draw its growing strength from the excesses of a religious liberalism which embraces positions regarded by tradition as plainly immoral or humanly unsound, and from the evidence of growing decadence in secular society; and the far left in religion will draw its weaker appeal from the continued potential for dynamic change contained in the unfolding of modernity, and from the lack of intelligence and the moral confusions evident in much religious fundamentalism. Thus, while the twenty-first century may well be witness to a needed religious revival, much in such a revival will still react to the legacy of the twentieth. The twentieth century has been a century of false, but powerfully appealing, gods-paradoxically grown from the very heart of secularism.

Kenneth Hart Green is a professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. We reviewed his recent book, The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss, last June.