In God's name

A special report on religion and public life from The Economist

Many secular intellectuals think that the real “clash of civilisations” is not between different religions but between superstition and modernity ...

Part of that secular fury, especially in Europe, comes from exasperation. After all, it has been a canon of progressive thought since the Enlightenment that modernity—that heady combination of science, learning and democracy—would kill religion. Plainly, this has not happened ...

Moreover, from a secularist point of view, the wrong sorts of religion are flourishing, and in the wrong places. In general, it is the tougher versions of religion that are doing best ...