Modernization theory leads us to expect that religion will decline and disappear, as science and education advance and fact based explanations replace religious faith based explanations. But the expected trend of religious decline and disappearance has not come about, even when revolutions bring communist regimes to power and the official government position becomes atheist and antireligious. In discussing explanations for the continued centrality of religion in major societies, first the evolutionary roots of religion are considered in this chapter. One group of researchers believe that religion evolved as an adaptation, a behavior that confers advantages on an organism or species to become more successful in its environment. A competing explanation is that religion is a byproduct of human cognitive architecture. Also discussed are explanations of religion that focus on collective processes, such as Marxs idea of religion serving as the opium of the people, helping them to cope with the pains of everyday life. A similar idea underlies Terror Management Theory, which describes religion as a mechanism for people to cope with the knowledge that they are going to die. The continuity of religion is also associated with continuity in other domains of behavior.

From a formal theological point of view, it would be common to distinguish the experience I describe in Chapter 8 from revelation: it would be called ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ experience rather than revelation as such. However, if revelation is God's self-revelation, that is, if it is always personal, then that act of communication in relationship is always a self-revealing. For a Christian, if this is truly God's self-revealing, then the hermeneutic context of the Christian tradition will bring a degree of intelligibility to the experience. In Chapter 9, I consider this possibility through an examination of the spiritual tradition of Ignatius Loyola. Ignatius sets great store on experience as the place where one might find God. To ‘find God in all things’ is to reflect on where God has passed in experience. Ignatian discernment is about becoming attentive to feeling; I argue that this is not simply learning to be attentive to emotions but to be sensitive to moods as ways of experiencing God’s presence, although this distinction goes beyond the letter of the Ignatian text. Ignatius’ approach can be helpful for contemporary reflection because it is coextensive with everyday life.