What was the inspiration for Religion and the Human Prospect?
AS: The resurgence of religion in the period since the end of World War II. This reproduced on a world scale the situation of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries when it was decimated by religious wars. Religious conflict, interlocking with economic and political disputes, vastly intensified their destructiveness. That was what led me to start working on this book, which came late in my career. Starting from the first book I wrote, which was in the 1940s, my attention had not at all been focused on religion. I was secular in my attitudes. I wrote about social and economic problems, especially the problem of racial discrimination and white racist ideology, which had an enormous role in labor conflict. All my first five books centered in one way or another on this subject. When I retired I had just published The Rise and Fall of the White Republic. At that point, I shifted focus to what seemed an equally important and dangerous problem. I began working on Religion and the Human Prospec
