Never before in human history has a civilization been formed and sustained without a religious core. It is doubtful that it can happen now. Efforts to impose a religion by force have been frequent; those who have power know that unless they also gain moral and spiritual legitimacy they will not long have power. Usually, however, a religion is established gradually in the midst of contentious disagreements and divergent schools of thought, each of which claims to foster the transcendent, holy standards on which to ground an ethos and to assess, reform, or revitalize the society should it grow morally and spiritually empty or corrupt. Religions endure by their capacity to provide ultimate meaning and to supply the bases for both personal commitment and social cohesion. A compelling mythology or theology on one side, and a compelling ethic on the other, are fateful for civilizations.

One of the greatest debates of the last century was just on this point, with Marxists, Social Darwinists, secular liberals, and their heirs on one side, and Weberians, social-gospel advocates, Christian realists, and their allies from other religions on the other side. This debate concerned whether an antimythological, antitheological view of life allows us to explain and finally to dispense with religion, or whether religion is necessary to interpret and guide civilization. Since theology and theological ethics are the only disciplines that study religious phenomena, it is critical whether these disciplines are held to be indispensable or not. A critical, related question is whether the resources of civilization now being generated worldwide will be different from all of human history in that the emerging society will not have, or need, a religious core or a theological ethic to interpret, to repeatedly assess, and to guide it. If such a core is needed, what might it be? Several highly regarded scholars have made suggestive first steps toward a theological ethic as it bears on this situation. Olav G. Myklebust suggests that contemporary concerns for globalization grew out of missiological concerns that developed in the fifteenth century and that intensified dramatically throughout the nineteenth century, with increasing accent on social and ethical matters. The cultural expansion of European influence around the world was fueled, at least in part, by Western Christianity well into the early twentieth century, until many of these efforts were shattered by that century's world wars -- notable globalizing forces themselves, although working decidedly against that cultural expansion. Even then, several major theologians addressed the question of how the world could be reconstructed beyond the conflict, and what Christianity could contribute. The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner took up these questions directly. The American theological ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr turned his "Christian realism" in constructive new directions after having mobilized Christians to resist fascism and defend democracy. The Dutch radical theologian Arend Van Leeuwen was one of the first to raise the issues of global processes during the Cold War, and added a major interpretation of how Christianity and its sociohistorical derivatives -- democracy, technology, capitalism, and secularization - would likely transform non-Western civilizations and aid in the formation of "a planetary world." In Catholic circles, Pope John XXIII extended the tradition of the "social encyclicals" when he not only called a council, Vatican II, but published Pacem in Terris. Pope Paul VI extended his contributions in Populorum Progressio and in his address to the United Nations on October 4, 1965. Some themes now seem to have been modified, but they opened contemporary Catholicism to renewed social and political influence that can be seen in both liberation theology in Latin America and in the enormous influence of Pope John Paul II on the extension of human rights and democracy in Eastern Europe. Also significant is the work of the "independent" Catholic, Hans K¥ng. His dialogical interaction with the world's religions on questions of social and ethical life, and his more recent efforts to develop a global ethic, have informed this ethic policy and public policy. Protestant church leaders, also in dialogue with persons of other faiths, met in a number of settings to chart out new directions, while individual thinkers, such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith of the World Religions Center at Harvard and Tissa Balasuriya of the Centre for Society and Religion in Sri Lanka, wrote pioneering volumes. Still the area is not fully developed, and the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and the International Association of Evangelicals, among Christian bodies, as well as the interfaith Parliament of Religions, have put the issues of globalization at the center of their agendas -- an agenda that remains unfinished.

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