We are all born with a religious impulse. St. Augustine’s assertion that our hearts were made for God remains a fundamental theological tenet. The great misfortune that has plagued mankind is not the absence of this impulse, but how it has been misdirected. If it is not directed to God, it short-circuits itself and fails to achieve its proper aim. Religion, therefore, has not died, because its basic impulse remains. “What bothers an agnostic like me most,” said Andre Malraux, “is that it seems — yes, it seems, that man cannot live without the transcendent.

A person may be swept up with intense religious fervor and direct it toward something other than God, toward an earthly utopia, for example, that cannot exist. In his insightful little book, The Religious Impulse, Jean-Clause Barreau avers that,

“In reality, human beings are adult only when they admit, without falling into pessimism, that earthly paradise does not exist and never will.”

We should be wary of demagogues and the like, who exploit our religious impulse for an illusion.

Hillary Clinton is a prime example of a politician who, by means of her own religious fervor, is urging Americans to follow her to nowhere. Samuel Butler’s anti-utopian novel, Erewhon, is “nowhere” spelled backwards (though imperfectly). In an address to the United Nations in January, 2012, she proposed goals to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere,” to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,” and to “provide access to justice for all ... at all levels.”

Deirdre White, chief executive officer of Pyxera (a global service organization), referred to Hillary’s proposals as “moving beyond utopia.” It would be difficult to take Mrs. Clinton’s words seriously given her denial of human rights for the unborn and her steadfast acceptance of Planned Parenthood’s gruesome practice of selling the body parts of mutilated fetuses.

In Hillary’s more recent speech at Case University, she raised a triumphant arm declaring, “We are going forward. We are not going back.” It has been her persistent proclivity to arouse people’s religious impulse, but to urge them to pursue an illusion.

Back in 1969, in an address to the graduates of Wellesley University, she said that “for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible. …. We’re not interested in social reconstruction, it’s human reconstruction.”

She calls for “a society that fills us up again and makes us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.” “Nobody knew what that sort of blather meant in the ’60s,” commented Robert Bork, “and nobody knows now.” “We do know what it is about, however,” he went on to say. “It is about self and the attempt to give life meaning through the quest for a vaguely imagined utopia. The religious impulse is obvious, but it is only an impulse, a religious feeling without structure.”

For journalist Michael Kelly, Clinton agrees that she is searching for a “unified-field theory of life.” He maintains that her speeches at Wellesley and other venues “share all the same traits; vaulting ambition, didactic moralizing, intellectual incoherence and the present needs only your guiding hand to create the glorious future” (New York Times Magazine, June 27, 1993).

“It is the great danger of social idealism,” as Christopher Dawson has noted, “that it tends to confuse religious and political categories.” We should not interpret Hillary Clinton’s religious fervor as good politics. It invites people to an ideal that properly belongs to religion. Nor should we interpret her fervor as good religion since it does not direct us to God.

The Christian understands his obligations in social justice and corporal acts of mercy. He does not ignore the world. He regards civilization is a road on which he travels while doing the best he can to assist his neighbor. It is not his final resting place. His final abode is elsewhere.