The popular genres of mass-media fiction; or, Pagan mythology in modern dress

Abstract

The 'secularisation' of modern man, the 'eclipse of the sacred' in contemporary civilisation, the rejection of the supernatural by our age, is one of the themes most frequently discussed by contemporary theologians. Their accounts of the phenomenon have differed widely. Bonhoeffer concluded that modern man was some, how 'beyond religion'; Eliade that he was 'still religious in his subconscious'; Tillich that he asked religious questions in non-religious form; Barth that he was not at all different from his ancestors... The disagreement is to be expected since there seem to be no agreed criteria as to the method of arriving at the truth on the matter.