The Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph originated a cartoon that demonstrates how the secular in this age tends to usurp the role of legitimate religion.
In the cartoon a couple of fanatics in long, hooded robes march with signs that ominously proclaim, “The End Is Near! Repent!” Two media-types in the same panel of the cartoon scoff at the crudity of the fanatics’ message. “Look at that!” they hoot. “How gullible do they think we are?”
Next panel. The TV reporters berate the prophets: “You religious fanatics make us sick! How many times have your predictions turned out to be wrong?”
“We’re not religious fanatics,” the sign-carriers explain in Panel #3. “We’re environmentalists!”
“Really?” the reporters reply in the last panel. With cameras rolling, they hang on every word from the mouth of the people they had just disdained. Earnestly they inquire, “How long do we have?”
Environmentalism is not the only pseudo-religion masquerading among us, of course, but it provides a heady alternative for modern souls with no ear for hymns and no tolerance for sermons.
Other social causes serve equally well. How many women in
the past decade or so, do you suppose, have traded in their faith for feminism?
How many civil rights protesters in the 60’s mistook racial protests for
religious fervor? How many hooded KKK-ers replaced the love of
We have a misguided tendency in this secularized age to identify any strong feeling as a form of religious expression. We are, after all, the children of the generation who confused LSD trips with visions of Almighty God.
When
I’m afraid he’s typical of a generation who haven’t seen enough of the real thing to know if they have it or not. Or what to call it if they do.