Mindless Religion

Despite a renewed interest in text study, many Reform Jews equate spiritual with non-intellectual. ``I feel Jewish'' has replaced ``I know Jewish,'' Thought and the pursuit of knowledge are being sacrificed on the altar of affect.

The author Flannery O'Connor has written: ``One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of though, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed, has not done so and that religion is our own sweet invention.'' Her warning applies to all liberal religions.