In fact, it is in just such a situation that the profundity of Bultmann's argument is disclosed. Although the theological forms of the past continue to exist in a way they do not in a more secularized situation, the striking thing is the rapidity with which they are being reduced to a marginal existence. This is especially in evidence among the present generation of the suburban middle class. Time and again in counseling and teaching, one encounters members of this group whose attempts to bring into some kind of unity the insubstantial mythologies of their ``fundamentalist'' heritage and the stubborn reality of the modern world are only too painfully obvious.

The same thing is also evidenced by the extreme ``culture Protestantism'' so often observed to characterize the preaching and teaching of the American churches. In the absence of a truly adequate conceptuality in which the gospel can be expressed, the unavoidable need to demythologize it makes use of whatever resources are at hand -- and this usually means one or another of the various forms of ``folk religion'' current in the situation. This is not to say that the only explanation of the present infatuation with Norman Vincent Peale's ``cult of reassurance'' or the other types of a purely cultural Christianity is the ever-present need for a demythologized gospel. But it is to say that this need is far more important for such infatuation than most of the pundits seem to have suspected.