Swanson Credits Religious Revival To Closer Integration of Urbanites

Closer contact among the people in cities has led to a state favorable to the rebirth of religion, according to Guy Swanson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.

Speaking last night in a panel discussion on "The Return of Religion" sponsored by the Graduate Colloquium of the Sociology Department, Swanson maintained that the current "return of religion" is based on a growing freedom from the unsettled conditions prevailing in cities until the recent past. The first industrialization produced a "fragmented, individuated" condition in the cities, he continued, which led to despair and a mass rejection of religion.

The cities of today, Swanson said, have afforded much better living and working conditions, and a sort of "mass integration" which has created a stability favorable to the development of religious faiths.

Following Swanson, University Professor Paul J. Tillich had a somewhat different view on the religious revival. He maintained that it stemmed from man's realization of the fact that his technology is unable to solve all human problems. Science, he pointed out, cannot explain the reason for man's existence, and hence people turn to religion as a replacement for scientific knowledge. Tillich criticized ways employed by some religionists to expedite this revival, maintaining that evangelists--"now conformists"--have used religion as a tool rather than an end in itself. In conclusion, Professor Tillich noted the present lamentable state of individualism. "The nonconformist," he said, "will have to go underground."