What we may be witnessing is not so much the end of religious influence, but an impending change in how faith interacts with society. No longer can traditionalist-oriented religious leaders hope to win the fight against secular values from the pulpit, particularly as government-sanctioned science has supplanted the role of faith. Religious leadership instead will need to redefine its role in ways that are, in a sense, more defensive and nurturing than aggressive and hostile.

Religion’s future opportunity will lie with focusing on those very things – such as the raising of children, the maintenance of marriage and confronting aging and death – for which secular society has few adequate answers. A secularist culture tends to regard individuals as autonomous; besides sentiment or residual guilt, it fails to provide a rationale for sacrifice for future generations or personal service for the disabled and the aged. This is a major failing in an economically strapped society faced with growing populations of the physically and mentally infirm.

The religious mission, in fact, may be more critical in a society where more people, particularly the stressed working class, lack the resources of community and family to cope with the challenges posed by globalization, technology and a debased social culture. Ecclesiastical institutions, and people of faith, can increase their relevance by providing a more humane alternative to the state for addressing these needs. It is by example, not by hectoring and chastisement, that faith can restore its place, if not at the ballot box, then in the society as a whole.