Jim Marion doesn't believe that God is dead. The only thing that modern science, rationality, and materialism have killed, he believes, are our outmoded and obsolete conceptions of God. There isn't a bearded old man on a throne up in heaven—and there never was. As Marion, a former monastic priest, sees it, the essential core values and purpose of human spirituality remain untouched, urgently in need of a new rendering capable of encompassing all that science has brought to bear and all that religion still has to offer.

In this WIE interview with senior editor Carter Phipps, Marion discusses the core concepts of his acclaimed book, The Death of the Mythic God, and explores the landscape of contemporary American religion. From mega-churches, Southern Baptists, Missouri Lutherans, Pentecostals and Catholics, to original sin, intelligent design, and the role of monasticism in future religions, Marion illuminates how our persistent belief in outdated, mythical conceptions of God only contributes to the hardening of fundamentalism in religion and to the alienation of the individual in secular society. By embracing an evolutionary spirituality, one that joins the liberated will of the modern human being with the creative power invested in all of life, Marion believes a new order of religion, and a new spiritual underpinning for human evolution, can be born.

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