Western man has lost, it is argued, his sense of religious dread, of awe at the numinous, and with it a whole dimension of human experience. He is no longer aware of the holy. But is this claim entirely true ? Is holiness a matter of the numinous, of awe and religious dread ? Might not the holy now be encountered under a different form ? Professor Davies is convinced that man can and does still encounter the holy, but that he does so in and through, and not apart from the world, taking world to mean both human relations and the public life of man in history. So having established a model for the holy, he presents a great variety of disclosure situations, derived from novels, films, television documentaries and so on, within which the holy may be discerned, from the realms of personal relationships. sex, death, history, politics and work. The second part of the book then relates this thinking to the subject of worship. Beginning with the crisis of worship today it examines, with the help of insights provided by social anthropologists and sociologists, worship, ritual, community and fellowship.
Further aid is sought from a consideration of some secular rituals, leading finally to a chapter on rites of modernization which spells out an understanding of worship related to the secular universe and the New Testament model of the holy.