ABSTRACT
The rise of the religious right, the religious aspect of ethnic conflict and anti-Western modernization, the spiritual dimension of feminism and the environmental movements, and the religious challenge to the government in nations from China to Egypt—all these testify that, contra Friedrich Nietzsche, God is far from dead. Historically, the secular liberal response to this dilemma was to separate church and state while replacing religion’s authority with that of science and democracy. Part of the liberal view was that human nature provides with a rational faculty enabling to evaluate all beliefs according to universal standards. Religions place great emphasis on ethical teachings, even the simplest and most familiar of those teachings is deeply affected by the development of the global economy and the nation-state, for these have created a world in which people are physically, socially, and hence morally interdependent.
