The virtue of Zaret's approach is that it demonstrates the relevance of broad social conditions as effects on religious ideas, but instead of pinning these effects on hidden psychological states or
vague generalities about interests and legitimation, it traces the factors
actually involved in the specific contexts in which ideas were produced, modified, and disseminated.
It is just because they failed to
actually talk about them, preferring
vague generalities like «change» and «hope».