An analysis of the various strategies of religion in establishing contact with the historic situations and social realities in which it must function reveals, in short, that it can pursue no course which is altogether free of peril to its moral values. Capitulation without conflict reduces religion to magic and secularizes life. A stubborn conflict with the intractable forces of nature and history results in some kind of compromise. Neither papal internationalism nor puritan plutocracy are what the idealists who were responsible for them really desired. And what they really desired fell short of their pretended goals. Withdrawal from the world is equally dangerous. For it may lead either to the morbid artificialities of asceticism or to the sentimental subjectivism of quietistic religion. There are values in each of the various strategies as well as perils. Perhaps those who are too critical of their limitations can never create their values. Religion must create its values in naïve faith and subject their limitations to a critical intelligence. Of the various strategies asceticism is probably nearest to the real genius of religion and most adequate for the moral needs of our day. If a world is completely astray the higher perspective from which it may be convicted of sin and the greater dynamic which may function redemptively in its life both depend upon some kind of detachment of religion from life. CHAPTER VI SOCIAL COMPLEXITY AND ETHICAL IMPOTENCE While there is good reason to regret the individualism of Protestantism in a civilization which has increased the intimacy of all human relations and made social and economic interdependence a basic fact, yet it alone cannot be held responsible for the unethical nature of modern society. This is attributable as much to the greater difficulties which the human conscience faces in modern life as to any weakness in the moral and religious idealism by which it is informed. A much more adequate type of religious idealism might have been unequal to the task of preserving ethical values in modern life.