The First Reformation turned on the separation of church from state, but the Second Reformation turns on the separation of state from corporation, or state from marketplace. Either will do to communicate the transition from a predominantly political era to a predominantly economic era, just as the First Reformation marked the transition from the religious era to the political era.
As these tectonic shifts take place invisibly beneath our feet, no earthquakes cleave the ground asunder. No discontinuity tears the fabric of history. Instead, older institutions live on beyond their shelf life. They do not die, but as Gen. Douglas MacArthur once put it, "they just fade away" into the background. Churches still stand, and even as we undergo a Second Reformation that thrusts corporations and marketplace mechanisms into the forefront of historical progress, and politics and governments into the background, those institutions of government will no more disappear after the...
