The condition of religion

Peter Winch's discussion of religion takes place against a background in which, most notably in secularized philosophy, religious belief is not taken seriously. In those quarters, it is widely believed, religion is a superstitious leftover. Like the Matthew Arnold of “Dover Beach”, all one hears now of the sea of faith, which was once “at the full”, is its “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar … down the vast edges drear/And naked shingles of the world”. It was in this context that Norman Malcolm expressed the sentiment, expressed, too, by Winch, that:

If the belief be that the sea of faith has receded, a refuge for the few who still hold out against a predominantly secular tide, that belief is simply false. Even were it true that, in large parts of England, religion had been reduced to scattered remnants of the old summoned by mellifluous bells to consolations of their evensong, that is not true in other parts of the world. Indeed in that world something like six billion people assert themselves to be religious, of whom some three billion attest to theism in some form or other.