Is it just a symbol?

For the majority, one suspects, of ‘practising’ Christians — and what does ‘practising’ entail in this context? — the Crucifixion remains an unexamined inheritance, a symbolic marker, of familiar but vestigial recognitions. This marker is revered and invoked in conventional idiom and gestures. Its concrete status, the enormity of suffering and injustice it incarnates, would appear to have faded from felt immediacy.—George Steiner, No Passion Spent, page 381