Silo on Religious Sentiment

Note: Silo’s talk was preceded by the following introduction given by a founding member of the Community for Human Development.

When one introduces a speaker, one generally notes that speaker’s prior presentations and the circumstances surrounding them, and so that is what I will do today.

Because of the state of siege that the military government of the 1960s had imposed, Silo’s first attempt to speak in public was banned. When the authorities were consulted about the possibility of his giving the speech at a location far removed from any urban area, they granted permission with the sarcastic comment that there was no ban on “speaking to the rocks.” And so, on May 4, 1969, high in the Andes at a place known as Punta de Vacas, Silo spoke before a small group of people who had been interrogated and harassed by armed security forces. Despite this, CBS broadcast the message beyond the rocks, and it reached 250 television channels around the world. On July 20 of that same year, in Yala, a town in Argentina in the province of Jujuy, the police dispersed those who had gathered to hear Silo speak outdoors in a field. There was no speech that day. On September 26, in Barrio Yapeyú, in the province of Córdoba, tear gas was used and sixty arrests were made, and again there was no speech. On October 21, at a press conference in Buenos Aires accompanied by harassment from the authorities, it was announced that Silo would attempt once more to speak publicly. On October 31, in Plaza Once in Buenos Aires, this attempt like the others was met with tear gas, thirty arrests, and again there was no speech.

When a new military regime came to power, authorization was received for a short course on specific subjects to be given in private. This course was to take place on August 16–19, 1972. Then came a supposedly democratic civilian government elected by the people. On August 15, Silo gave a private talk in Córdoba, at which the authorities arrested eighty people. On August 17 in Mar del Plata the police blocked another attempt to speak. Result: 150 arrests. And the final attempt, in that same auditorium, on September 13, 1974 resulted in five hundred arrests and saw Silo jailed in Villa Devoto. And all of this took place during the time of a “democratic government.”

On October 15, 1974 the house of a friend and participant in Mendoza was bombed. On July 24, 1975, in La Plata, eleven participants in the Movement were arrested and imprisoned for six months, and two others were murdered. As a result of persecution, hundreds of activists and friends were fired from their jobs and many were exiled, with the result that they and their message spread to many other countries.

Following a new military coup, there could be no thought of giving speeches, but word was circulating that Silo had been invited to give a series of talks in Europe and Asia, since it was not possible to do so in his own country. On August 12, 1981, just a week before he was to leave, shots were fired at Silo in an attempt on his life.

Upon his return home, Editorial Bruguera was just publishing one of Silo’s books, and he was invited to speak at the book’s presentation at the Eighth International Book Fair in Buenos Aires on April 10, 1982. But the authorities allowed only twenty people into the room to hear Silo speak because, as they explained, “the floor did not seem to be in good condition.”
Add to all this the continual, malicious distortions in the reporting of these events by the press under these past regimes, and it is clear with what coin the preaching of pacifism and the methodology of non-violence has been repaid.

As we have returned once again to a democratic government here in Argentina, on this occasion Silo will offer his thoughts on the religious sentiment in today’s world, on another occasion he will speak on politics, and in the future he will speak on still other subjects. We assume that we will not encounter any further interference.

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Of what use can it be to discuss the topic of the religious sentiment–the religious feeling or experience–in today’s world? That depends. For those concerned with the growth and development of social phenomena, any change in beliefs and the religious sentiment may be of interest. For the politician, the subject holds no interest whatsoever–as long as the religious sentiment is in decline. But it will certainly merit attention if the religious sentiment in people is on the rise. For us, common, ordinary people, a discussion of this subject may draw our interest if it can be seen to be linked to the search or aspiration for something beyond the here and now.

I do not think, however, that in my remarks today I will be able to address such diverse interests. And so I will not pretend to give a scientific discourse in the manner of a sociologist. I will simply try to illustrate my point of view on this question. Nor will I attempt to define either the religious sentiment or religion; instead, I will leave those two terms floating in the air, with their meanings basically as intuitively understood today by the average citizen. Nor will I confuse an individual religion, its church, its rituals or forms of worship, and its theology, with the religious sentiment or feeling in people, which is quite frequently found outside any church, ritual, form of worship, or theology. In any case, this state of consciousness, this religious sentiment, is surely related or linked to some object, since in every state of consciousness (and every sentiment or emotion) there is a structure in which acts of consciousness are linked to their corresponding objects.

From this point on, I hope that those of you who are experts in these subjects will take our somewhat naive thoughts with a tolerant smile and not a gesture of disdain. Let us, then, open the package of opinions and see if any of them serve for something.

It is my opinion that:

First, a new type of religious sentiment has begun to develop in recent decades. Second, underlying this religious sentiment is a diffuse sense of discontent and rebellion. Third, as a consequence of the impact of this new religious sentiment and, of course, as a consequence of the dizzying changes that are occurring in all societies, it is possible that at their heart, traditional religions may undergo reaccommodations and adaptations of substantial importance. Fourth, it is highly likely that people all over the planet will experience further psychosocial shocks in the coming years, and that this new type of religious sentiment I have been referring to will figure as an important factor in this phenomenon.

Furthermore, and even though it may seem contrary to the opinion of most social observers, I do not believe that religions have lost their force or impetus, I do not believe that they are increasingly cut off from power in political, economic, and social decision-making, nor do I believe that the religious sentiment has ceased to stir the consciousness of the peoples of the earth.

Let me try to support these opinions with some background.

The textbooks tell us that if we mark off a rectangle lying between 20 and 40 degrees north latitude and 30 and 90 degrees east longitude, we will find ourselves in a region of the globe in which great religions have arisen that have gone on to cover the earth. We are told, to be more precise, that we will find three points known today as Israel, Iran, and India, which for thousands of years have acted as “centers of barometric pressure of the human spirit,” generating what we might call spiritual cyclones, which have erased whole political systems, forms of social organization, and customs that have preceded them. In their beginnings, some of these centers have sent forth a faith and a hope for all those who felt failure in the face of the established power and the anguish of the world.

Judaism produced both the religion of its own people, its “national religion,” and a universal missionary religion – Christianity. The genius of the Arab people, in turn, wove together out of the diversity of its tribal beliefs a religion that was also missionary and universal in character–Islam (known sometimes as Mohammedanism), which in its origins was indebted to Judaism and Christianity as important bases of support. Today, Judaism as a religion of the Jewish people, and Christianity and Islam as universal religions, still live and continue to evolve.

To the east, in what is now Iran, the ancient national religion gave way to other missionary and universal religions. Of the mother religion there remain today only about one hundred thousand believers, and these are in India, particularly Bombay. In their country of origin these believers no longer have any relevance, since Iran has long been almost entirely Islamic. But down through the years, and as late as the fourth century of this era, the missionary religions of Iran advanced eastward and westward to such distances and with such strength that it appeared that in their competition with Christianity they would prevail. But in the end Christianity did triumph, and these other missionary religions were abolished, along with the paganism of the ancient world. Thus, the religions that had been generated in Iran apparently died out forever. And yet, many of their concepts and beliefs continued to have strong influence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, producing heresies within the orthodoxy of those religions. The Shiite sect of Islam, for example, which is the official religion of today’s Iran, has been strongly shaken by these elements, and in the nineteenth century a new religious force emerged in Iran, called Bâ, and later the Baha’i faith.

In India, the national religion produced several others, among which Buddhism, with its missionary and universal character, is perhaps best known. Both the mother religion and others from prior to this era are still vigorous today. And in this century, Hinduism–which was for so long only a national religion–has for the first time begun to move beyond India, sending missions to the West, among which we recognize the Hare Krishna faith. This is, perhaps, one of several responses to the arrival in India of Christianity as the religion of English colonialism.

Nor do we wish to overlook such important religions as those of China, Japan, and black Africa, or the religions that have disappeared from the Americas. However, none of these other religions managed to forge great supra-national currents in the way that Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism did. That is, after the expulsion of the Muslims from Europe, Christianity reached the Americas, was imposed on these continents, and spread across them. Islam spread beyond the borders of the Arab world and expanded throughout Africa and also into Turkey, Russia, India, China, and Indochina. Buddhism made its way into Tibet, China, Mongolia, Russia, Japan, and all of southeast Asia.

Almost from the beginnings of these great world religions, schisms arose. That is, these religions began to split into sects: Islam into Sunnis and Shiites; Christianity into Nestorians, Monophysites, and others, and since the Calvinist, Lutheran, Zwinglian, and Anglican reformations it has been seen as two large sects, generically called Catholic and Protestant, to which we must add the Eastern Orthodox Church. With the fragmentation of the large religions we see the emergence of different sects. And if the struggle for temporal power among the great universal religions was long and fierce (as in the Crusades, for example), the wars between the larger sects within each religion at times reached unimaginable heights of ferocity. Again and again, reformations and counter-reformations of every kind have been visited upon the world. And so it went, until the time of the revolutions that mark what in scholarly circles is called, generically, “the Modern Age.”

In the West, the French, the English, and the American Revolutions moderated the excesses of these sectarian struggles, and the new ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity impregnated the social sphere. This was the age of the bourgeois revolutions. New cults emerged, such as that of the Goddess of Reason, a form of rationalist religious sentiment. Other more or less scientific currents proclaimed egalitarian ideals, tending toward planned societies, and were often tinged with Social Evangelism. Industrialism began to take shape, and the sciences began to organize themselves along new lines. During this period, the official, traditional religions lost much ground.

In their Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels described the situation of those inventors of social evangels. This is from the third section of Chapter III: “The socialist and communist systems properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period. . . of the struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. . . . Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as such socialists find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions. Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an organization of society specially contrived by these inventors.”
Within these currents of the Social Evangel, there appeared the writer Auguste Comte. worked on Saint-Simon’s newspaper and also collaborated with him on “The Industrialists’ Catechism.” Comte is known for having begun the school of philosophy called Positivism, and also for having formulated the concept and invented the name of the social sciences, which he called “Sociology.” He was the author of “The Positivist Catechism” and founded the Religion of Humanity. In England some traces of this religion still remain, but in France, its country of origin, it no longer exists. Still, it did manage to transplant itself to the Americas, reaching Brazil, where it put down roots and has influenced the education of several generations of positivists, though less from a religious than from a philosophical point of view.

These new currents were soon joined by a stream of militant atheism, as in the case of Bakunin and the anarchists, archenemies of both God and the State. In these instances, what one finds is not simply irreligiosity but rabid attacks on anything that remotely smacks of religion, and particularly of Christianity. And then of course there is the famous statement by Nietzsche, “God is dead,” which has had such ramifications in this century.

Other mutations were taking place as well. Leon Rivail, in Switzerland, was the organizer of the ideas of Pestalozzi, one of the creators of modern pedagogy. Rivail took the name “Allan Kardek” and became the founder of “Spiritism,” one of the most important religious movements of recent years. Kardek’s was published in 1857, and the movement to which it gave rise expanded throughout Europe, the Americas, and even parts of Asia.
Then came Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and other expressions, all of which might be grouped together under the rubric of “occult beliefs” rather than religion, strictly speaking. Neither Spiritism nor these occult beliefs have the character of sects within a religion, but are rather other types of formations, though in any case they certainly involve the religious sentiment. These associations, among which we also include Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, achieved their greatest gains in the nineteenth century, with the exception of Spiritism, which continues growing vigorously to this day.

As we enter the twentieth century, things become little less than chaotic. Christian sects such as the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have appeared, as have countless others, sects within sects, in a tremendous proliferation. Much the same had occurred in Asia, where the social evangels also inclined toward the mystical. For example, in China during the 1850s the Tai-Ping gained such strength across large areas of the country that it lacked only the taking of Peking (Beijing) to proclaim a socialist republic, collectivize the means of production, and bring equality to the living conditions of the people. The political ideas proclaimed by the “King of Heaven,” that movement’s leader, were impregnated with elements of Taoism and Christianity. The struggle against the Empire cost millions of lives. . . .

In 1910 Tolstoy died in Russia. By the latter part of his life he had so distanced himself from the Orthodox Church that the Holy Synod decided to excommunicate him. Tolstoy was a fervent Christian, but after his own fashion. He proclaimed his credo in the following way: “Take no part in war; swear no oaths, judge no one; resist not evil with force.” Then he abandoned everything – writing, home, family. No longer was he the brilliant, world-renowned writer, the author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace; he had become a Christian-anarcho-pacifist mystic, the source and inspiration of a new teaching and a new methodology of struggle: non-violence.

Tolstoy’s anarcho-pacifism, combined with the ideas of Ruskin and the Social Evangel of Fourier mentioned by Marx in his Manifesto, came together in a young Indian attorney, Mohandas Gandhi, who was active in the struggle against discrimination in South Africa. Following the model of Fourier, Gandhi founded a phalanstery (similar to a commune), but above all he experimented with a new form of political struggle. He returned to India, and in the following years the movement for Indian independence began to coalesce around him. It was with Gandhi that peaceful marches, sit-down strikes, blocking streets and railways with bodies gone limp, hunger strikes, and peaceful sit-ins began–what Gandhi called “civil disobedience.” This was no longer the strategy of taking over critical nerve centers as in the revolutionary tactics of Trotsky, this was quite the reverse: creating a void. And then there occurred a most extraordinary confrontation: a struggle in which a moral force was pitted against all the forces of economic, political, and military might. Of course, with Gandhi we are not talking about some soft, sentimental pacifism, but rather an active resistance, probably the most courageous form of struggle there is, in which one’s defenseless body is totally exposed–as with empty hands Gandhi and his followers faced the bullets of the Western invaders and colonizers. This “naked fakir,” as the English Prime Minister called him, finally won the struggle, but then he was assassinated.

In the meantime, the world has suffered one tremendous shock after another. World War I broke out and the socialist revolution triumphed in Russia. This last occurrence demonstrated in clear, hard facts that those ideas considered utopian by right-thinking people of the time could not only be applied in practice but could also modify the social reality. The new structuring and planning for the future going on in Russia changed the political map of Europe. The philosophy that organized the ideas of the Revolution began to spread vigorously throughout the world. Marxism leapt quickly not just from country to country but from continent to continent.

It is appropriate to recall some of the events that occurred in that time of war, 1914 to 1918. Any list of dates and events will include more or less the following: Richardson described his electron theory of matter; Einstein presented his theory of general relativity; Windhaus did his research in biological chemistry; Morgan performed his experiments on the mechanism of Mendelian inheritance; Mayerhof studied the physiology of muscles; Juan Gris revolutionized painting; Bartok composed his Hungarian dances; Sibelius his Symphony No. 5; Siegbahn studied the X-ray spectrum; Pareto wrote his Sociology; Kafka, Metamorphosis; Spengler, The Decline of the West; Mayakovsky, Cosmic Mystery; Freud, Totem and Taboo; and Husserl, Idea of Phenomenology.

Aerial and submarine warfare were introduced; poison gas and tear gas were used for the first time. The Spartacus League in Germany; Turkish power was broken in Palestine; Wilson announced his Fourteen Points; Japanese entered Siberia; there were revolutions in Austria and Germany; republics were declared in Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia; the Yugoslav state was born, and Poland gained its independence; England gave women the vote; the Panama Canal was opened; the Empire was re-established in China; Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens; and the Mexican Constitution was approved.

We were at the dawn of the technological revolution, the collapse of colonialism, and the beginning of imperialism on a worldwide scale. The catalog of watershed events would grow even longer in the following years, and it would take days to recite the entire list, but for purposes of our theme we will mention a few key events. In science, Einstein made truth elastic: no longer are there absolute truths, but only truths relative to a given system. Freud claimed that reason itself is moved by dark forces which, in their struggle with the superstructures of morality and customs, determine human life. Bohr’s model of the atom had shown us a matter that is largely emptiness, vacuum–and the rest electrical charge of infinitesimal mass. The universe, according to astrophysicists, began in an initial explosion, a “Big Bang,” and as it expanded outward, galaxies, groups of galaxies, and island-universes formed, all moving toward an increasing entropy that will someday reach an end in a final catastrophe. . . . In that universe, we find a spiral galaxy of some 100,000 million stars, and out on the edge of that galaxy is a small yellow star around 30,000 light-years from the center of the system. An absurd particle a mere 8,000 miles or 13,000 kilometers in diameter revolves around that star at the insignificant distance of eight light-minutes. And on that particle another war broke out, embroiling even the most remote parts of the planet. . . .

The Fascists advanced. One of their representatives proclaimed: this new war was not a religious conflict, it was a struggle between businessmen and mad ideologies. There were genocides and holocausts, hunger, sickness, and destruction on a scale never before seen on the face of the earth. Human life was reduced to absurdity.

Some people were led to think, “Why exist? What is existence?” The world had exploded. One’s senses deceived one, reality was not what one saw with one’s own eyes. Then a young physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, while studying Sanscrit so that he might understand the Vedic religion of the Hindus, began to direct the Manhattan Project. In the early morning hours of July 16, 1945, he made history–a light like the sun was detonated on the Earth. The nuclear age had begun. And the second world war was brought to an end with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today there is no civilization, no point on the globe that is not in contact with all others. A network of communications covers the earth. And this involves more than just objects that are produced and exchanged by air, sea, or rail transport; it involves also language-signs, the human voice, information that instantaneously reaches all points on the globe. While the earth healed its wounds, Pakistan and India became independent and the war in Indochina began. The state of Israel was declared, as was the People’s Republic of China with Mao at its helm.

In 1951 the European socialist bloc created COMECON, while Western Europe created the Coal and Iron Community. We were at the height of the Korean War, as well as that other struggle called the Cold War between capitalism and socialism. In the United States, Senator McCarthy began his witch hunt. There were arrests and firings, blacklisting of those accused of “a lack of Americanism,” and even deaths among those who came under suspicion or minor spies such as the Rosenbergs. Stalinism, for its part, engaged in all manner of the most horrific atrocities and repression. Stalin died and Khrushchev came to power. Khrushchev opened the world’s eyes to reality. Intellectuals of good will who had considered all the stories simply attempts by Western propaganda to discredit the U.S.S.R. were left stunned. Then came the disorders in Poland and the return of Gomulka to power. In 1956 the Hungarian uprising took place, and the leadership of the U.S.S.R. had to choose between Russian national and international security on the one hand, and the country’s image on the other. The leaders chose security; Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary. This produced a shock to the Party on a worldwide scale. . . .

Fresh winds began to blow. The new faith entered a crisis. In Africa, liberation movements followed one after another. The borders of countries shifted. The Arab world was in convulsions. In Latin America the injustices that had strengthened tyrannical regimes became worse as a late influence of European Fascism. Coups, counter-coups, and the fall of dictators followed upon each other. The United States, now established as an empire, maintained a rear guard in Latin America. The enormous wealth of Brazil remained in the hands of a few, while the country grew and the irritant of social inequality became ever more pronounced. Brazil was a sleeping giant, but it was awakening. Its borders touched on almost every country of South America. Its religions, such as the Umbanda and Candomble, born in Angola and other parts of Africa, spread to Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. The “Switzerland of the Americas” as Uruguay was once called, went bankrupt. Agrarian, cattle-raising Argentina became another country altogether, unleashing the most formidable mass movements ever seen in the Americas. A populist president and his charismatic wife proclaimed the “social mysticism” of their doctrine. An earlier president, almost opposite in his positions (though equally populist) had been a Krausist and a believer in espiritismo. 1955, several Catholic churches were burned in Argentina. . . . What was happening here? This peaceful country, no longer “the breadbasket to the world,” was struggling to throw off the remnants of British economic colonialism.

It is in the context of these conflicts that we might understand the emergence of Latin American freedom-fighter and youth hero Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. Guevara was an important figure in the Cuban government following the successful 1959 Cuban Revolution which overthrew Batista. Guevara went on to fight for revolutions in other countries and on other continents. A Guevarist uprising failed in Sri Lanka, but his influence ignited youthful guerrilla movements in far-flung places of the world. He was both theorist and man of action. Using the ancient words of St. Paul he attempted to call forth the “new man,” and almost poetically he proclaimed: “From today onward, History will be forced to take into account the poor of the Americas. . . .” Little by little he moved away from his original ideas. And today his image is frozen forever for us in the photograph printed around the world. He is dead, but someplace in Bolivia he remains the Christ of Las Higueras.

During this period, the Catholic Church issued a number of pronouncements on social issues, and it organized political parties as part of the worldwide Christian-Social International, although these parties used different names in different countries. In Europe, the Christian Democrats come to power in several countries, and from that time on, power was traded back and forth between the Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, and the Liberal-Conservatives. Christian Socialism spread to Latin America. In Japan, the imperial religion of Shintoism received a critical blow, and Buddhism moved in through the small Soka Gakkai sect, which within six years had mushroomed to six million believers. From that base, the Komeito party was launched, and soon became the third-largest political party in Japan.

In 1957, the U.S.S.R. launched the first artificial satellite into orbit around the earth. With this event, at least two things became clear to the general public: first, that interplanetary travel was possible; and second, with satellites as antennae and relays, the entire world could now be connected via television. From that time on, images were beamed to every point where a television receiver was to be found. The electronic revolution erased all national borders. And that led to another problem: the manipulation of information and the use of ever more sophisticated propaganda. Now the System was able to enter any household–but information could enter as well.

With the first nuclear tests on the Bikini atoll, the world was introduced to the bathing suit that still bears that name. The Mao jacket was adapted to casual dress. The voluptuousness of Marilyn Monroe, Anita Ekberg, and Gina Lollobrigida gave way to a unisex look that tended to blur the differences between the sexes. The Beatles appeared as a new role model for youth. Young people everywhere began to cherish their blue jeans. With the world wars, Europe had suffered a substantial decrease in the percentage of men in its population, and women in large numbers began to hold both hourly-labor and managerial positions. But this also happened in the U.S. and other places, where not nearly so much blood had been shed. The influx of women into the labor force was a worldwide process, in spite of the fierce resistance of those who would discriminate against women. But this particular process was not so rapid as others, and once again the right to vote for women was defeated in Switzerland. In spite of everything, however, women were joining clubs and associations, attending schools and universities that had once been closed to them. And women of all ages became politically active–picketing, marching, and protesting against the Establishment.

Toward the end of the sixties, a youth rebellion arose around the world–first among students in Cairo, then in Nanterre and at the Sorbonne. The wave reached Rome and spread across all of Europe. In Mexico, security forces shot three hundred students, and the Paris student uprising of May, 1968 stunned every political party. No one knew what was happening–not even the protagonists of the struggle–it was a psycho-social outpouring. Young people cried, “We don’t know what we want, but we know what we don’t want!” What do we need? “Imagination to Power!” Demonstrations by students and young workers erupted again and again in country after country. Earlier protests had begun at Berkeley and elsewhere in the form of free speech protests, anti-Vietnam War marches, sit-ins, near-riots. In Europe and Latin America there were other reasons for the protests, but the simultaneity of the phenomenon was striking–a new generation showed that the planet had indeed become unified. On May 20, a strike in France spread to six million workers; the government organized counter-demonstrations and De Gaulle’s administration tottered. In the United States, civil-rights leader and minister Martin Luther King was assassinated. Hippies, counter-culture clothes, and music, lots of music, were the elements of what has been called the “youth culture.”
Many members of this generation embarked on dangerous explorations in three areas: guerrilla movements, drugs, and mysticism. Each of these roads is distinct and normally they are at odds, yet during this time they all seem to have had in common a mark of rebellion against the Establishment, against the status quo. Some young people formed guerrilla groups such as the Bader-Meinhoff gang, the Red Brigades, the Tupamaros, the Montoneros, Mir, etc., many taking Ché Guevara as their model. They killed other people and sometimes committed suicide. Other youth took as their model the teachings of Aldous Huxley and the great psychedelics such as Baudelaire. Many of these, too, ended up harming themselves or in suicide. Finally, the third group explored every imaginable possibility along the paths of inner change. Their models were figures such as Alan Watts, St. Francis of Assisi, and Eastern religions in general. Many of these young people also harmed or destroyed themselves. Of course, the actual number of young people strongly committed to any of these factions was minuscule in comparison with an entire generation, but these things were symptomatic of the new times. The System reacted quickly: “All young people are suspect.” Everywhere the hunt was on, though its methodology and brutality varied depending on the means available in each place.

While phenomena such as the IRA, the Basque ETA, the Corsican movement, and the PLO do not exactly fit the generational pattern we have been describing and are different cases, in some respects they overlap the previous examples.
In 1969, the United States put the first man on the moon. The landing was televised live. From the time that Orson Welles’ broadcast of The War of the Worlds had spread panic across the United States some forty years earlier, science fiction had become increasingly popular–and not just Martians fighting earthlings. In stories, movies, and TV series the protagonists became robots, computers, mutants, androids, and demigods. Let’s go back to those times. Since 1945 there had been a growing number of reports from widespread locations of strange objects in the skies. Sometimes these were lights or objects that were truly hard to explain. They began to be called “flying saucers” or, generically, UFOs–unidentified flying objects. They would appear intermittently. Psychologists such as Jung looked into the matter. Physicists and astronomers gave skeptical explanations. Writers such as Cocteau went so far as to say that these were “beings from the future revisiting their past.” Centers were created in which observers, often coordinating with one another, watched the skies, and “contacts” began to occur between earthlings and what were purported to be beings from other worlds. Today, these beliefs have gained considerable ground. Sightings, abductions, and other kinds of encounters have been reported with particular frequency in the Canary Islands, the south of France, the southern part of the U.S.S.R., the western United States, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. In 1986, the government of Brazil officially announced visual and radar contact with a UFO. For the first time, a government had confirmed a contact. It also noted that the phenomenon had been pursued by the Brazilian Air Force.

While as we have noted, the Catholic Church had begun to recover ground through confessional political parties, Islam was not far behind. Monarchies and unstable regimes were toppled, and Islamic republics began to multiply. Thus, by the 1970s, the great religions had recovered considerable ground on the political and economic fronts. Yet there was great concern about faith. Many realized that it was not enough for traditional religions simply to regain the ground that the forces of politics had occupied for a time, to become simply an intermediary between the individual and the State, between needs and their solutions. Astute Muslim observers realized that many things had now changed. The old tribal organization had weakened. In many Arab countries, oil wealth had been poured into new industrial development, and large urban centers had begun to spring up. The family had become smaller, and no longer lived in the large home of the old extended family. An exodus toward Europe had also begun as workers from the poorest countries left their homelands seeking new sources of employment, and this was altering the landscape of the youth. Muslim countries that had begun to enjoy the prosperity that oil made possible were now also experiencing the influence of Westernizing institutions, behaviors, and fashions, particularly within the dominant strata of those societies. In this climate of change, the Shah of Iran imposed a forced Westernization. He did so despotically, backed by the best-equipped army in the Middle East. Unskilled agricultural labor was absorbed by the oil centers. With the exodus from the countryside, the cities mushroomed. But everything was under control–there was only one other leader, and he was not really a politician. He remained in exile in France while the various political parties, under the watchful eye of the Savak and manipulated by their foreign masters, jockeyed for position. Surely, no one need worry about an old theologian from the University of Quom. “Nothing to take seriously,” assured Western and Soviet analysts.

Suddenly, the whirlwind of ancient Iran–that creator of universal spiritual movements, that hotbed of heresies and religious ferment–began to blow once more. For a week, the whole world watched in stunned astonishment as a psycho-social chain reaction unfolded–it was like a dream. Governments in Iran rapidly succeeded one another; there was a vacuum at the center of public administration. The army remained paralyzed, and was thus dismantled. The only thing that functioned was the religious sphere. In the mosques, the mullahs and ayatollahs followed the orders that came down from the mythical Imam. And all that then ensued constitutes a sad and bloody chapter in history.

Khomeini declared: “Islamic government is a government by divine right, and its laws cannot be changed, modified, or debated. In this lies the radical difference between an Islamic government and monarchical or republican governments–in which representatives of the State, or those elected by the people, propose and vote on laws, whereas in Islam the only authority is the Almighty and His divine will.” In turn, Muammar al-Khaddafi had said in October 1972, in Tripoli: “Islam is an immutable truth; it gives man a sense of security because it comes from God. Theories invented by men may be the result of madness, like the theory proclaimed by Malthus. Even the pragmatism dictated by men is not free of falling into falseness and error. Thus, it is completely wrong to govern human society in the name of temporal or constitutional laws.”

Of course, I have cited these statements out of context. But what I have wanted to do is to try to transmit an understanding of the Islamic religious phenomenon as one which subordinates all activity to itself–including, of course, politics. And this Islamic view of the world, once apparently in retreat, now appears to be gaining strength. We know that in the United States, Islam is growing. In France today there are 200,000 converts, and we are not talking about Arabs or their descendants. Naturally, I give these two cases only as examples, and note that Islam has changed considerably as it has moved into the West. The dervish and Sufi forms are other variants of the same religion.

In Christianity today we can observe a certain mobility between the large sects. Thus, in countries where Protestantism is in some sense the “official religion,” the Protestant sects tend to be concentrated near the centers of power, while Catholicism gains ground on the periphery. And conversely, in so-called “Catholic countries,” as Catholicism abandons the periphery, Protestant denominations move in to occupy these areas. This change is rapid, perceptible, and inspires not a little alarm in both sects, though naturally which one is alarmed depends on which sect is dominant. In this struggle, groups of both persuasions sometimes resort to low blows and questionable tactics. But one can’t blame Protestantism in general if a madman named Manson walks around with a cross and a Bible killing people, or if Protestants from the People’s Temple, in a parody of the Masada, end up in Guyana in a massive act of collective murder-suicide. Those are phenomena, in my view, that correspond to the present state of psycho-social dislocation and disorientation, and are symptomatic of larger and more widespread phenomena and events, which society today seems to be on the verge of.

In my view, there is a possibility that Catholicism can regain part of its lost influence in Latin America and, by retracing cultural paths, gain influence in Africa as well. That possibility can play a part in the destiny of the so-called “Liberation Theology.” Christianity and Social Evangelism are in this case compatible, with Nicaragua being a good example of this.
In the first interview to take place between Fidel Castro and a Catholic priest, Frei Betto, which took place in Havana on May 23, 1985, the priest made the following statement:

Comandante, I am sure that this is the first time that a head of state of a socialist country has given an exclusive interview on the subject of religion. The only precedent in this regard is the document that was issued by the National Headquarters of the Sandinista Liberation Front in 1980, on religion. That was the first time that a revolutionary party in power had issued a statement on that subject. Since then, there has not been a more informed, more probing word, even from the historical viewpoint, on the subject. And considering the current moment, when the problem of religion plays a fundamental ideological role in Latin America; considering the existence of numerous Grassroots Ecclesiastical Communities (indigenous communities in Guatemala, campesinos in Nicaragua, workers in Brazil and many other countries); considering, too, the imperialist offensive which since the Santa Fe Declaration attempted to combat directly this more theoretical expression of the Church committed to the poor and known as Liberation Theology, I think that this interview and its contribution to this subject are very important. . . .” Hart, in turn, the Cuban Minister of Culture, in his note to the book Fidel Castro and Religion, says of the Christian-Marxist dialogue: “And this is, in and of itself, a supremely important event in the history of human thought. The ethical and moral note appears in these lines charged with every human meaning that binds together those engaged in the struggle for freedom and in defense of the humble and the exploited. How can this miracle be happening? Social theorists, philosophers, theologians, and an enormous intellectual class in various countries, will have to ask themselves this question.”
For our part, we no longer ask ourselves this question. It seems very clear to us that the religious sentiment is advancing–here in Latin America, in the United States, in Japan, in the Arab world, in the socialist camp–Cuba, Afghanistan, Poland, the U.S.S.R. Our doubt with respect to this matter lies rather in the question of whether the official, established religions will be able to adapt to this psycho-social phenomenon in the new urban landscape, or whether it will overflow them. It may happen that a diffuse religious sentiment will continue to grow in small, chaotic groups, without a formal church emerging, and should that happen it will not be easy to grasp the real size and scope of this phenomenon. Although the comparison is not entirely legitimate, a distant anticedent comes to mind: cults and religions of every sort, superstitions of every imaginable kind, arrived at the gates of Imperial Rome from all corners of the empire, while the people of Rome continued losing conviction in their official religion. And one of those myriad insignificant groups would eventually become a universal church. Today, it is clear that if it is to advance, this diffuse religious sentiment must somehow combine the landscape and the language of our times, a language of computers, technology, and space travel, with a new social evangel.


Thank you very much.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto III: 3, in Arthur P. Mendel, ed., Essential Works of Marxism, New York: Bantam Books, 1961, pp. 40-41.

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