"So we have to hold onto the liberal political, moral breakthrough and try to make the breakthrough on the economic level in terms of democratizing, but also acknowledge that Durkheim was actually more right than Weber, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Think about page 431. He says there's something eternal about worship and faith. And if you shift from God-talk, you could end up worshipping the market or its accomplishments and accoutrements. You can end up with idolatrous worship of a lot of profane things. It reminds one of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. You are going to worship something. What is it? Is it Kurtz and the ivory? That's Conrad, 1899, the critique of idolatry. Christians like myself say you must forever be vigilant in critiques of idolatry. Why? Because idolatry is shot through all of us. But you're going to treasure something. If you treasure something that pulls you out of yourself and makes you love more and sacrifice for justice, that's going to be better than the next Lexus that you get. There's no escape from the fiduciary dimension of being human."
Cornel West, "Dialog: Judith Butler and Cornel West" in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, ed. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan Vanantwerpen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 105-106.
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