More on A World in Upheaval
The ICA Global Archives are chock full of references to scope and depth of social change taking place in our era – a few examples . . .
“Everyone is becoming aware that the moral question of our times is “What kind of a world do you want to create?” William Cozart in an Ecumenical Institute newsletter
“I do not need to quote from . . . (the writers of our day). . . to testify to the radical upheaval of our culture we are the trustees of religion in the midst of a non-religious technological culture that is the new fact.” Samuel H.Miller in an address to the Church Federation of Greater Chicago
A brief History from the Institute of Cultural Affairs International
What was the Global Spirit Movement?
Here is an early on line archive Golden Pathways
The Institute Today “Working with others to build a just and equitable society in harmony with Planet Earth”.
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Across the earth, Protestant congregations are awakening to the startling new world, in which they have to live and for which they are responsible, It is a strange world of radical revolution, Radical in scope because history is experiencing for the first time a universal upheaval in consciousness; every continent, every people, every individual,,, every stage of life is affected, The depth of the revolution is, perhaps, even more significant. It penetrates beneath the economic and political dimensions of our social life to the very well-springs of human living itself, Concretely, the explosion in civilization now at hand is created by the convergence of three revolutions.
First, THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION is altering our model of the universe and our image of human participation in it, The universe of Dr, Einstein is woven into the very fabric of post-modern man. The concepts of the observer’s role in the experience of reality, of the expanding universe and the dissipation of energy, of relational substance, and the significance of models in determining what happens in nature and history-all of these have altered the common sense of everyday thinking. The cosmological revolution has totally changed man’s picture of his environment,
The second major force in the transposition of humanness today is THE TECHNOLOGICAL OR URBAN REVOLUTION. The form of human settlement molds the life style of its people. Today the entire world is emerging into a cosmopolis which, first of all, is a state of mind, The power of the rural mind-set has been exhausted and is being replaced by the rising urban mentality, The simplicity of natural rhythms has been replaced by the complexity of historical variation, The intimate and provincial have given way to the anonymous and comprehensive. Stable patterns have been uprooted by rapid and perpetual social change, and the very roots of life are being transferred from the memories of the past to the possibilities of the future. In brief, the new urbanity is demanding different life postures which embody fresh and unique feelings after and understandings of inner human relatedness and social grounding.
The third dimension of the cultural revolution. THE SECULAR REVOLUTION is the universal and crucial alteration of the “mood” of man. In new depth and increased intensity man has become a self-reflective or self-conscious being. Perhaps “intentionality” is the most definitive characteristic of the new mood. The post modern man takes nothing for granted, nothing on the authority of the past. Instead he forges temporal models out of the signals of the times by which he intentionally carries out the future. To do this he has been forced (consciously and unconsciously) to reinterpret radically old life-stories and to create fresh ones, There is a revolution in progress in the symbols, myths, and rites through which man is ultimately present to his life and times. This is an upheaval in the natural religious attitudes of man. It has indescribable consequences for every historical faith, secular or religious and for mankind at large.
This three-pronged cultural revolution comprises the world in which we live today. To designate it as good or bad, right or wrong, is to miss the crucial issue and to abstract oneself from reality. From “A Pilot Project Experimenting with the Structures and Dynamics of the Local Congregation” The Ecumenical Institute. Fall, 1963. #21332