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A still greater indication of theological peril is . . . that of a fundamentalism that seeks to absorb all too readily the nuclear dilemma into its dogma. Thus, certain American Christians, in their literalization of biblical imagery, equate nuclear holocaust with Christian Apocalypse, and at times seem almost to welcome that development as a confirmation of their accusations of human sinfulness. One encounters similar imagery in totalistic cults of the mid and late 1970s. In some of these waves of fundamentalism, one is impressed by the combination of premodern mythology with highly contemporary techniques of mind manipulation The attraction of the combination lies in the promise of salvation—of immortality—in the face of imagery of extermination, and in a form of totalism—absolute truth—that can associate itself with the power of science. Again, the overall fundamentalist project, despite brilliant success, remains tenuous and anxious. One need only point to the strange sequence of mind-manipulation, or ‘coercive persuasion,’ by church members in bringing young people into the fold, and then by ‘deprogramming’ attempts to free them from that influence. Robert Jay Lifton, The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (Basic Books, 1979), 340.

Our problem is one of adapting our social training to a widely literate culture. It is clear that the highest standards of literacy in contemporary society depend on a level of instruction and training far above that which is commonly available. For this reason it is still much too early to conclude that a majority culture is necessarily low in taste. The danger of such a judgement is that it offers a substantial righteousness—the duty of defending a standard against the mob. Right action is not of this kind, but is a matter of ensuring that the technical changes which have made our culture more dependent on literate forms are matched by a proportionate increase in training for literacy in its full sense. It is obvious that we have allowed the technical changes to keep far ahead of the educational changes, and the reason for this neglect, which in its own terms is so plainly foolish, lie in a combination of interest and inertia, deeply tooted in the organization of society. An interpretation of the majority as a mob had served, paradoxically, to still or waken that most active conscience in this matter. Loutishness is always easy, and there can be few things more loutish than to turn, at the end of a long training, and sneer at those who are just entering on it, and who, harassed and insecure, are making the inevitable mistakes. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950 (Columbia U, 1960), 310.

Literacy makes sense only in these terms, as the consequence of men’s beginning to reflect about their own capacity for reflection, about the world about their position in the world, about their work about their power to transform the world, about the encounter of consciousness—about literacy itself, which thereby ceases to be something external and becomes a part of them, comes as a creation from within them. I can see validity only in a literacy program in which men understand words in their true significance: as a force to transform the world. Paulo Friere, Education for Critical Consciousness (Continuum, 1973), 81.

Once the diagnosis of the problem had been made by the local people, the organizer soon found that the people were telling the organizer that the thing to do was to organize: “What about next Friday night for a meeting?” Saul Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals (Vintage, 1969), 105.