ABSTRACT
In reflecting about the religious and ideological situation in California, and more broadly in America, it is useful to see it as shedding light on the general evolution of human worldview-formation. Some important strands of Californian fashion are in the direction of therapies, such as varieties of psychoanalysis, which play a role like that of religion, but which cannot so easily be called religious in the narrower traditional sense. Generally, new religious movements are a consequence of crises and new opportunities provided by the meeting of worldviews, including the social forces which are part of those worldviews. The mainstream Christian churches and liberal Judaism have tended towards accommodation with all of these items and themes, in an uneasy and not always stable blend, using the liberal ethos as the key. But the new movements have involved the rejection of some or all of these themes.
