The Alternative Jesus: Psychedelic Christ

haven for religious enthusiasts whom he sometimes does not fully comprehend. He says: "There is no place left where they can go and sort themselves out unless the churches are open. They do an enormous amount of praying, sometimes in the lotus position. One young man comes in and plays the bass recorder. He and God have some relationship over a bass recorder. I don't understand it, but that's his thing."

In a world filled with real and fancied demons for the young, the form their faith takes may be less important than the fact that they have it. Ronald Knox, who set out in Enthusiasm to expose the heresies of religious enthusiasts, concluded by praising their spirit. "How nearly we thought we could do without St. Francis, without St. Ignatius," he ended his work. "Men will not live without vision; that moral we would do well to carry away with us from contemplating, in so many strange forms, the record of the visionaries." Enthusiasm may not be the only virtue but, God knows, apathy is none at all.