ABSTRACT
The Western pattern of organization, in which religious organizations are distinguished from political and economic organizations. The American situation, therefore, may to a European appear confused, without standards, lacking in originality, unorganized, and lacking in speculative power. In a modern industrial society, the “location” of the individual in the social order has suffered a fundamental shift. Liturgy, in turn, is torn between its primitive source and its formalized expression. The mode of traditional liturgy has always been communal and alternates between tragedy, irony, and comedy. The privatizing tendencies of the invisible religion severely diminish the social effectiveness of churches, sects, and denominations. Churches, denominations, and sects of the Western world, therefore, are in sharp and dangerous conflict with the invisible religion of modernity. In Europe, by contrast, when theologians write about “theology and culture”, they tend to have a highly defined standpoint within which to be clear about their meaning for each term.
