--- title: God Will Never Die description: The domain of the sacred, of awe beyond human grasp, reminds us that God lives in the pulse of our world canonical: https://time.com/4285383/god-will-never-die/ author: Rabbi David Wolpe article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-07T19:21:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:57.198Z article:section: Ideas og:title: God Will Never Die og:description: God lives in the pulse of our world og:url: https://time.com/4285383/god-will-never-die/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5071f5c08fb298a2/69888e2aa988ca37de6b74f1/is-god-dead-time-magazine-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 400 og:image:height: 225 og:image:alt: is-god-dead-TIME-magazine-cover og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: God Will Never Die twitter:description: God lives in the pulse of our world twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5071f5c08fb298a2/69888e2aa988ca37de6b74f1/is-god-dead-time-magazine-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # God Will Never Die > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=73beaa7d-0c58-4cd7-a48e-90a775f1c000&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TimeFrames: Sects, God and Politics [Watch (HLS stream): TimeFrames: Sects, God and Politics](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yc5UqAJ2.m3u8) (3:49)  _Published 2010-11-22. Howard Chua-Eoan -- news director for TIME and TIme.com -- explores the long history of TIME's reporting on religion and its impact on society_ by [Rabbi David Wolpe](https://time.com/author/rabbi-david-wolpe/) ## Rabbi David Wolpe Apr 7, 2016 7:21 PM UTC  The April 8, 1966 cover of TIME The April 8, 1966 cover of TIME TIME by [Rabbi David Wolpe](https://time.com/author/rabbi-david-wolpe/) ## Rabbi David Wolpe Apr 7, 2016 7:21 PM UTC Once, God was dead. This is a statement not about God, but about me. God did not touch my life, and as philosopher [Nietzsche wrote](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,835309,00.html), the sacred no longer influenced the way modern people thought about the world. We killed God, cried Nietzsche’s madman; we exiled the divine from our world. And so I did; for all my teenage years I was convinced that God was a prop for the feeble. Dead to me. But there were insistent glimpses that grew like the first intimations of sunrise: a word in a conversation or a look in the eye of one I loved or those precious moments of doubting one’s own certainties. Gradually the death of God seemed more like an eclipse; God was blocked, and I could not see. I learned to shift my angle of vision. I came increasingly to believe the words of [Rebbe Nachman](http://www.breslov.org/who-is-rebbe-nachman/) of Bratzlav, that one who never questions God does not believe in God. Our society does not live in the wake of God’s death. True, some things are gone forever. Ours is not the God-besotted world of the middle ages. Science has taken areas from the domain of faith and made them vivid and workable where once they were mysteries. Yet all over the world relief workers give themselves to good works because they believe God wishes them to help. People gather in houses of worship, get married with blessings and buried with rites, bring food to the hungry and succor to the bereaved—all in the name of the God who works with human hands. Each of us are made of infinitely divisible particles. And all of us are parts of an incomprehensible unity. To dissect an animal is not to understand it and to know the botanical name of a flower is not to encompass its beauty. Breaking apart to understand is one way; assembling to worship is another. The totality of life is no less astonishing because we gradually understand more and more, since at its core our existence is not a puzzle but a mystery. There are ways of looking at the world that allow God back in, and they are not laboratory triumphs but postures of reverence. We can still be humbled by that which we do not know. The domain of the sacred, of awe beyond human grasp, sweeps through our lives both personal and public and reminds us that God lives in the pulse of our world. Fifty years ago the death-of-God movement, a powerful theological statement, did not envision that religion would surge across the world in often terrible ways. Things are now done in God’s name that are despicable and destructive. In their shunning of human knowledge, norms and decency, some of those who call themselves God’s most ardent advocates seem intent on making us wish that God would indeed die, and so deprive them of the motivation for their depravity. But that is not the God of faith as I know or respect it. The God of my life is a goad, a guide and a comfort, one characterized by compassion and eternal embrace. Mine is the God of my tradition, whose spark we find in one another and whose radiance is shot through creation. God is the healer of shattered hearts (Psalm 147:3) and will never die. ## Transcript Religions may feel they are answerable only to God, and, therefore, impervious to time and TIME Magazine. But religion is always timely. Take Islam, for example. Today, the 1400- year- old faith is part of daily debates over assimilation, toleration, modernity, national and global security, neighborliness, the nature of America, nature of Europe, the nature of God, or just the stuff of plain everyday politics. TIME's 2010 cover on Islamophobia in America and the way the so- called Ground Zero Mosque became a totem for controversy was by no means the magazine's first involvement with the subject. In 1979, TIME had been consistently reporting on Iran's then exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and our correspondent, Bruce Van Voorst, accompanied the Iman when he returned to Iran from Paris on a chartered Air France 747. Van Voorst chronicled an astounding religious coup that would turn a Shi'a secularist kingdom into an Islamic Republic, a theocracy whose ambitions roiled geopolitics today. For many Americans, Khomeini gave the enemy a religious face when, in November 1979, Iranian militants took 52 US citizens hostage in what would turn out to be a 444- day long crisis. For rupturing American policy in the Mid East and altering the way the world calibrated power, TIME named Khomeini 1979's Man of the Year. Just 2 weeks after the issue came out, 8, 941 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. Pope John Paul II would not be named TIME's Man of the Year until 1994, a sort of belated honor of being three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In December 1983, John Paul made the whole world stand still when he visited the prison cell to talk with and to pardon the man who had shot him in 1981. But a whole class of religious leaders would be void if not created by television and the mass media of the 20th century. The charismatic Billy Graham would dominate the age of American television preaching, even though his ministry was more than mere televangelism. His broadcast appearances enhanced an already immense magnetism and popularity, turning him into the unrivalled American Pope. Through six decades, TIME has had extraordinary access to Graham, putting him in the cover four times. TIME not only chronicles religious authority, it questions it as well. The televangelist's sex scandals got two covers in 1987 when Jim and Tammy Bakker went bust. They have also closely followed the child sex abuse scandal and the Catholic Church, and, what perhaps the most controversial covering its history, TIME questioned the ultimate authority. On the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue were the words " Is God Dead ?". It was the magazine's first all- text cover and provoked a firestorm anger, praise, and ridicule of an America that was still devout but also in the middle of a decade that saw no center clothing. And yet, TIME marches on. The end of the following decade, the 1970s, would provide its own answer. God was not dead. Alas, fanatical believers of all cults and creeds were certain that as the battle hymn of the Republican tone, he wields a terrible swift sword. 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