Sometimes, when our values change, when values other than or in addition to those in personal feeling or special institutions become important to us, it is very misleading to look for religion in the familiar guise. Our actual religion may include much more than personal feeling and special institution, and in some cases our actual religion may be quite different from these. Most recent interpreters of religion in the west, particularly in America, suggest that our actual religion is very much different from what we say our religion is. Tillich has said that religion is ultimate concern. But ultimate concern is not some abstract idea known only to theologians and philosophers, not some rarefied concept crowning the remote arch of metaphysics.
Ultimate concern is first and finally the particular way a people in a place and time come to live.