“Even among atheists, the study of religion has now reached a stage where it is far in advance of religious feeling. Many of the pioneers of patient inquiry into religious thought are to be found in convents, or among religious congregations, preachers and monks. Yet in lay and agnostic circles the prevailing mood is one of great spiritual ignorance (the well-educated are not the least ignorant). This paradoxical situation is the fruit of poorly understood — and, eventually, suicidal — secularism, which [in France] prohibits the teaching of the history of religion in state schools. With time, and with the help of an eroding cultural level, ecclesiastical bastions may become the ultimate refuge of minds that still doubt and question. If we now appeal to a humanist readership, it is not because we aim to fill this gap, but simply to prompt the most curious to shake off the yoke of laziness, and to proceed from abstractions to a more deeply felt view. If we can be said to have a goal, it is to reply as precisely and soberly as possible to a childish question, which has been frequently set aside as trivial: Why are these beliefs, which came to light in the desert three thousand years ago, still among us? And why is it that hundreds of millions of men and women still follow them? We must leave to those who are more inspired than we are the task of deciding whether it is God who creates the dynamics of faith, or vice versa. In order to seek how God's fire was transferred from the desert to the prairie, we will limit ourselves to empirical information. What would the infinite abundance of the spirit be without the findings of the hand or foot? The study of God's minor aspects does not, in our opinion, lessen its significance. Instead, it gives new life to spiritual issues. We must take the spotlight from the theological proscenium and move it backstage to the machinery of divine production; we must go back, from the Law, to the Tables themselves; and we must scrutinise the down-to-earth aspects of Heaven. Only if we do all this, will we be able to focus our attention not on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose, and in what physical environment. Let us attempt to seize the Eternal in statu nascendi, stimulated by its environment and freed by its medium.”
Régis Debray

Régis Debray is the author of numerous works, including Transmettre and Croire, voir, faire, published by Editions Odile Jacob, and editor of the series Le Champ médiologique, also published by Editions Odile Jacob. He heads the publication Cahiers de médiologie and is currently teaching at the University of Lyon-III.