When the ordinary person is convinced that there is little he can do to alleviate the misery and injustice that surround him, then avertive religion in one or another of its forms or some inwardness version of formative religion will prove irresistibly attractive, and the social activism inherent in world-formative religion will seem profoundly irrelevant. But just the opposite will be the case when the social situation appears fluid and open to influence in many different directions, as was the case in sixteenth-century Western Europe.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘Until Justice and Peace Embrace’
