The cover of Time magazine once asked the question “Is God Dead”. In the April 8, 1966 Easter issue the article began with the sentence, “We must recognize that the death of God is a historical event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence".
These words were written by an associate professor of religion at Atlanta’s Emory University, a Methodist school. The author, Altizer, was not alone in proclaiming his atheism, and took his starting point from Nietzsche who wrote in The Gay Scientist that, “God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown". The Time article went on to explain that the death-of-God theologians didn’t argue merely that Christianity’s traditional image of the Creator is obsolete. They said that, "it was no longer possible to think about or believe in a transcendent God who acts in human history, and that Christianity will have to survive, if at all, without him".
Although it was argued that modern science had eliminated the need for religion to explain the natural world, and that God took up less and less space in people’s daily lives, the immediate reality did not indicate a death of God or religion. While only 27% of Americans called themselves deeply religious, as many as 97% declared a belief in God. The article led to a public backlash, and by the end of the decade the ‘death of God’ movement had lost much of its momentum. Later, in The Death of God, someone named Vahanian concluded that “God is Dead”, because “modern secular culture had lost all sense of the sacred, lacking any sacramental meaning, no transcendental purpose or sense of providence”.
I'm glad to report that Nietzsche, Altizer, Vahanian, and everyone else that "thinks" God is dead are (dead) wrong! Catholic sacramental liturgy is alive and well in my life, and the lives of at least 1 billion Catholics around the world. Non-demoninational mega churches are springing up almost everywhere, the Christian music world is main stream, and Christian schools, TV, and Radio are doing well. I found the cave Nietzsche referred to in his article, and on the wall below his hastily written signature a shadowy hand has written;
Nietzsche is Dead! (Signed) God.
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