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reactions to what is arguably the most famous and controversial cover story in Time’s seventy-five-year history (generating more letters—3,430—than any issue before or since) were at once amusing and instructive (April 15, 1966, 13). “No,” said a Chicago reader. “Yes,” proclaimed a Notre Dame professor. “Not only is God dead—he never was,” pronounced the president of the Freethinkers of America. Equally vehement was this letter from a reader in Mount Vernon, New York: “Your ugly cover is a blasphemous outrage and, appearing as it does during Passover and Easter week, an affront to every believing Jew and Christian.” A more measured response came from a ministerial student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis: “God is dead to those who wish him so; he lives for those who hope in him.” The most accurate, however, came from a rather unexpected source—Jay North, best known as television’s Dennis the Menace (May 6, 1966, 9): “In sending you my views I realize I have two strikes against me: I am a teen-ager, and I am in show business. In neither category does much religious thought go on, according to the public … . I have found, too, that the citizens of Hollywood are as strong in their devotion as are their priests and ministers and rabbis. This God-is-dead premise seems to me merely a fad; religion will live through it.” How right the menacing Mr. North would turn out to be.

GOD’S RESURRECTION

From Nietzsche’s pronouncement to Time’s declaration that he was right took eighty years. Another thirty should have buried him for good, no? No. A Gallup poll of American adults published in the Wall Street Journal on January 30, 1996, reported that 96 percent believe in God, 90 percent believe in heaven, 79 percent believe in miracles, 73 percent believe there is a hell, 72 percent believe there are angels, and 65 percent believe the devil is real. A gender gap was evident for two beliefs: Women outnumbered men in belief in miracles (86 percent women versus 71 percent men) and angels (78 percent women versus 65 percent men). Not surprisingly, education makes a difference, but not as much as one might think. Belief in heaven, for example, breaks down as follows: college postgraduates: 75 percent; college graduates: 80 percent; some college: 90 percent; no college: 94 percent. The 20 percent range gap deflects from the reality that three out of four people with master’s and doctorate degrees believe in heaven. Who says God is dead?

Other polls corroborate God’s vitality, such as George Barna’s 1996 Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators, which reported a 93 percent figure of belief, and his 1995 poll revealing that 87 percent say their religious faith is very important in their lives. (Interestingly, the 1996 poll also showed that 30 percent of believers described “God” as a deity other than the biblical God: 11 percent saw God as a higher consciousness; 8 percent said God is the total realization of personal human potential; 3 percent voiced a belief in many gods each with his or her own power and authority; and 3 percent reported that everyone is his or her own god.) While some believers occasionally have doubts, a 1997 Pew Research Center survey reported that a remarkable 71 percent of Americans say that they “never doubt the existence of God” (up from 60 percent in a 1987 survey). Even in Southern California, that bastion of New Age spiritualism, God is alive and well, as noted in a 1991 Los Angeles Times poll in which 91 percent of respondents reported believing in “God or a universal spirit,” 67 percent believing in “life after death,” and 67 percent believing in heaven.

SUPPLY-SIDE RELIGION AND THE SECULARIZATION OF THE WORLD

At the beginning of the twentieth century social scientists predicted that with the advent of universal public education and the rise of science and technology, culture would become secularized and religiosity would dramatically decrease. This “secularization” thesis has been thoroughly refuted, as religiosity continues to increase at the end of and into the next century. The question is, why?