From 1890, when scholars first started computing, until the 1930s, not once was an article in a mainstream secular or religious publication favorable to the Mormons.

In the 1930s their reputation began to change when, in the midst of the Depression, word went around that "they take care of their own." Mormon versions of communalism did mean that the poor among them were better off than many others. If it meant that they were not dependent upon the federal government, this was a mis-impression: Utah, their stronghold, received as much help as other such states.

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"Social revolutionary" is not a concept that would fit in the time of the 8th century B.C.E. prophets or of Jesus; "social" is a modern understanding and "revolution" is a word invented in recent centuries. So, no, it'd be unfitting to put Jesus in that category.

HOWEVER, in the gospel portraits of Jesus we find plenty of attitudes, expressions, sayings, and teachings which are more readily appropriable by people we call "social revolutionaries" than they would be to those who oppose them.

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"You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live."

This paraphrased line from the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius (taken from Arthur Frank, The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live, provided me with a text for a commencement address at Illinois College last Sunday. How dare a speaker contradict what he said in a deathless commencement address, so:

Each morning I wake up with a fresh awareness of the generosity of God, nature, and people--or, at least, more of them than I deserve. So I am indeed satisfied.

As the day goes on, however, whether with reference to Marcus Aurelius or not, I am dissatisfied with many aspects of life. I am pressing age eighty, have wandered far--physically and in imagination--but I can't say "I finally realized" much of anything yet. But I am trying to find what these lines ask for: "how to live."

Toward that end, I have to be dissatisfied not with "others" and "the other" but with myself, since I have not pursued all the conversations, adventures, risks, challenges, and opportunities that will, or would, advance me in the search for "how to live." In that sense, I hope never to be satisfied until my last day.

Meanwhile, there is today, this day, which brings so much that I can also say honestly: yes, I am sastisfied. As for tomorrow . . .

More than anyone else Jerry Falwell "secularized" fundamentalism, turning it from an other-worldly soul-saving agency into a this-worldly world-changing agency. I am not saying he stopped believing in the earlier things, but he won't be remembered for them. I like to ask people: "Quick, quote or paraphrase a line or two of Jerry Falwell that you would consider a contribution to spirituality, piety, theology, etc." No one ever comes up with one. "Quick, tell me what he set out to achieve and did achieve in public life? "Moral majority. Updated power-fundamentalism. Amassing of clout. Devotion to celebrity. Changing his values depending on the cause and provocation." etc.

His achievement had real sweep. I think his political side was born of what I call "the politics of resentment," and then it changed quickly to "the politics of the will to power," because power seemed so close at hand, so easy to grasp, so ready to gain. . . " I think that now we are seeing some limits to that power: loss in a war his people wanted; sexual and fiscal scandals in church-and-state people whom they backed; floundering in the party they wanted to monopolize; absence of congenial to-be-believed presidential candidates, schisms (e.g. over envrionmentalism) in the movement, etc.

I am not saying that Falwellism in the religious right will disappear. By no means. But moderates to his left and toward the center have taken center stage. Other religious voices and forces have gained power, to do what James Madison wanted: have the diversity of voices speak.

Through his years many mass communicators were spooked out, and probably overstated the case for the Falwellian right's power. They are taking second looks and seeing that, while Falwell wanted to "run the show" in America, no one in religion is going to "run the show;" The population is too diverse, the interests too varied.

"Secular" means "of the present age." Jerry Falwell, who now belongs to the eternal, had a good time with temporal power, politics, the market, where he was very much at home. People are not going to speak of fundamentalisms in America as "other-worldly" or "private" as they did, we did, I did four decades ago.

Before we respond to the question "is religion man-made," we'd have to ask "is it made?" Of course it is: universes were "made," and so are all objects, all perceptions which involve the brain, which "makes" them into something graspable.

If the question means, "did religion come about because a supernatural finger like the one extending Michelangelo's bearded Father-God?" reached out and said "here is religion; you can have it? " The answer is no. Or "was religion made somewhere 'out there' in physically distant heavens? the answer would again be "no."

What humans do with what they receive is always "man-made," "humanly constructed," whether this means forming images in the brain, creating artistic expressions, inventing lawnmowers, or writing books of philosophy. So long as we are talking about anything connected with the human, we cannot evade questions involving brain cells, the ability to create those symbols, the impulse to invent rituals. Religious people are not, or should not be, offended by such questions or the answers about something being 'man-made."

"Religions" usually involve complexes of scripts, sacrifice, stewardship, mission, and institution-building. Of course, these are "made by humans." Religious people do not believe they have exhausted the subject when they affirm that "social constructions of reality" exist, also in the realm that gets named "religion." After they have affirmed something like that, the fun begins, and what is valuable in perceptions called 'religious' begins.

My former colleague, emeritus professor and senior super-historian (world history) recently wrote an article pointing out that there have been few, very very few, years of recorded history that does not record wars going on. Since there has presumably been faith, some sort of faith, all sorts of faith, throughout recorded history, believers must have been taking wars into account when they have and express faith.

So it would be a matter of generational egocentrism for us to think that we should be or are unique in dreaming up the question about how war and faith can coexist in mind and in the same century: they always have.

Sad to say, often they coexisted because or so that one could invoke God or the gods in the unholy causes of war. So such believers "kept their faith." The vast majority of believers, we must presume, were benumbed, befuddled, puzzled, often grieving, probably prayerful, sometimes reflecting on human folly, on occasion praising the courageous.

War can indded obscure thoughts of the goodness of God and inspire vivid thoughts about the outrageousness of evil. For some it can mean a loss of faith, or self-examination if they never had it. Albert Camus told the Dominicans who admired him in the French Resistance that if he could believe in a God who let the war go on and let babies die, he would - but he could not. He wanted the priests to respect him in his unbelief if their virtues matched and they inspired each other, and he would respect them. War or no war, he kept unbelieving and they kept believing.

Faith is born, love extended, hope magnified in the face of and in spite of human finitude, chance in nature and history, and transience. I keep my faith, or my faith is kept for me, in the face of the same. I have no secret or special techniques for faith-holding: accept a gift as a gift, and ponder, and wonder.