Abstract
Reviewed by Titus Hjelm , University College London, UK
For sociologists and scholars of religion alike, Peter L Berger needs few introductions. Some ten years ago members of the American Sociological Association voted his classic The Social Construction of Reality (1966, co-authored with Thomas Luckmann) one of the top ten most influential books in sociology. Berger’s The Sacred Canopy (1967, published in the UK as The Social Reality of Religion, 1973) occupies a similar position among sociologists of religion. A mid-1980s estimate put the sales figures of his books at 1.5 million and, although his fame has somewhat diminished since, with a steadily continuing stream of books and other publications, it is safe to say that Berger is one of the best-known living sociologists and certainly the most famous living sociologist of religion.
Berger’s original fame in the sociology of religion was due to his much-quoted version of secularization theory, first presented in The Sacred Canopy. There he famously argued that modernization leads to secularization and this process happens on two levels. First, secularization happens on the structural or objective level. It manifests itself in the evacuation by the Christian Churches of areas previously under their control or influence – as in the separation of church and state, or in the expropriation of church lands, or in the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority. (Berger, 1973: 113).
This objective secularization is now commonly referred to as differentiation. Second, there is what Berger refers to as subjective secularization, or—flexing his phenomenological muscles—the secularization of consciousness. On this level of secularization, religion ceases to be plausible at the individual level. The “ultimate meaning” of life for the individual is not provided by religion anymore, but by secular alternatives—if provided at all.
According to Berger, the plausibility structures of religion diminish in a pluralistic situation – the “paramount reality” of modernity. And without plausibility structures to support religious legitimations, the individual consciousness is open to secularization. In The Sacred Canopy and his other earlier writings, Berger sees modernization as a more or less linear process which inevitably leads to change in the structural location of religion and, ultimately, to the erosion of religion at the level of individual consciousness. Like so many other sociologists of religion of his time, Berger saw little future for religion in the modern world.
Berger’s more recent fame in the sociology of religion is based on the wholesale abandonment of his earlier views, most definitively expressed in The Desecularization of the World (1999). What the title of the books suggests, Berger bluntly states in the introduction: “My point is that the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false (Berger, 1999: 2).” The main problem with this tergiversation was that it was little more than a statement, backed by examples from American evangelicalism and religious movements in the developing world. However, the permanence or resurgence of religion in public life in different parts of the world does not by itself prove the secularization thesis wrong. Berger’s claims of desecularization were based on a snapshot “diagnosis of our times” (as per Karl Mannheim) rather than an engagement with the theoretical propositions of his own theoretical system (Hjelm, forthcoming). Without reference to the particular aspects of theory they are trying to invalidate, individual case studies are quite unhelpful in understanding broader patterns of social change. Nevertheless, but perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘desecularization’ very quickly became not just a diagnosis, but a celebration of the assumed ‘return of religion’ among some sociologists of religion.
Berger has offered hints at a more theoretical rethinking in some stray comments: Whereas he previously postulated a process whereby individual consciousness would become secularized as the result of pluralism, in a response chapter to an anthology of other scholars’ essays on his work on religion he stated that “pluralism affects the how of religious belief, but not necessarily the what” (Berger, 2001: 194). This contention means that religion continues to be a source for answering questions of ‘ultimate meaning’. However, in the modern world religion is increasingly a matter individual choice, and is not necessarily taken to be an exclusive explanation of all existence (vis-à-vis scientific claims, for example). This point, and some other comments, did not, however, develop into a systematic engagement with the theoretical framework of The Social Construction of Reality and The Sacred Canopy. It was only in 2012, owing to a ‘rather unexpected idea’, that Berger started putting together a more systematic treatment of the question of pluralization and secularization of consciousness, the outcome of which is The Many Altars of Modernity.
In the preface Berger summarizes the book’s central argument. Differentiation—Berger’s ‘objective’ secularization—was the rather uncontroversial part of the original theory, and here he repeats the ideas from The Sacred Canopy: “In the course of modernization, for various reasons, societal functions that used to be vested in religious institutions have now become differentiated between the latter and other (mostly new or redefined) institutions—church and state, religion and the economy, religion and education, and so forth (x).” Berger continues: “Fair enough, but, as a duly accredited specialist in the sociology of knowledge, I should have recalled a basic insight of this approach: If it is to function in society, every institution must have a correlate in consciousness. Therefore, if a differentiation has occurred between religious institutions in society, this differentiation must also be manifested in the consciousness of individuals (x).”
Hence, pluralization and differentiation do not lead to the disappearance of religion in individual consciousness (as the original argument went), but rather the realignment of the role of religion in individual lives. “Modernity necessarily leads to pluralism (20),” but the choice is not between religion and no religion. Hence: “Most religious people, even very fervent ones, operate within a secular discourse in important areas of their lives. Put differently, for most believers there is not a stark either/or dichotomy between faith and secularity but rather a fluid construction of both/and (x).” This argument is, of course, what many sociologists—especially those preferring the term ‘spirituality’ over ‘religion’—have been saying for some time already. But it is in this book that Berger for the first time systematically tries to incorporate his change of mind into his broader sociology of knowledge framework.
Much of the rest of the essay is spent on elaborating this rather simple, but important idea. Berger’s trademark erudite and not infrequently humorous prose is a pleasure to read (‘I asked [a concierge] if he could tell me where there was a nearby Anglican church, and for some reason I added, “Church of England.” He looked at me with astonishment, as if I had asked for the nearest cannibal restaurant’, 20–21). His examples range throughout the globe, from American evangelicalism to Israel and to Shinto. These examples are usually illuminating, although one could speculate that Berger’s friendship with Samuel Huntington—the man behind the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis—shows in his treatment of Islam. While he properly situates other religious traditions in their social contexts, Islam comes off as strangely disembodied, reduced to text—namely the Quran and the Sharia. Theoretically, the usual suspects Max Weber and Alfred Schutz are joined by Shmuel Eisenstadt and his concept of ‘multiple modernities’. The analysis moves from a discussion of pluralism on the individual level, through the institutional level to an application of Eisenstadt’s concept in the study of religion and, finally, to an examination of the political management of pluralism. Throughout, Berger’s point is that ‘secular discourse’, undeniably a characteristic of the modern world, is just one discourse among others, and not an inevitable sign of ‘secularization’ as he previously understood: “ours is not so much an age of unbelief as an age of doubt (68).”
Despite what it says on the cover, Berger’s book is not actually ‘Berger’s book’. His essay is 93 pages long and the rest of the 150-page volume consists of three responses, by sociology of religion luminaries Nancy Ammerman, Detlef Pollack, and Fenggang Yang, respectively. Ammerman applies Berger’s ideas to her specialty of congregational studies. Yang offers the concept of agent-driven secularization as an alternative to Berger and others’ ideas. Although Yang suspects that Berger’s revised thinking regarding pluralization is not universally applicable, his own theorizations drawn from work in China (PRC) are hardly an example of universally applicable theory of agent-driven secularization. Hence, it is the response of Pollack that offers the most significant challenges to Berger’s suggested new ‘paradigm’, and ones that resonate with my own assessment of the book.
If, as Berger seems to argue, secular discourses are privileged in the modern world, religious discourse becomes a ‘secondary language’ at best. As Pollack notes, “it is not discernible how such a secondary language competing with the primary one can reach a persistency and co-existence with the primary code without being challenged, and someday perhaps even overpowered, by the latter (119).” Pollack is unconvinced by Berger’s dictum “pluralism changes the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of an individual’s faith (32; cf. quote above).” It is difficult to imagine how the contents of faith could be detached from its form. In addition, Pollack argues that empirical studies from advanced countries (including the USA) show that relativizing pluralism tends to lead to religious indifference, rather than to change in the form, if not content, of religious belief and practice. For Pollack, Berger’s new paradigm seems to, paradoxically, support a return to the original secularization thesis rather than displacing it.
Finally—relevant in the context of this journal—Berger offers few insights for a particularly critical sociology of religion. His diatribe against Marxism—a standard feature of Berger’s work since the early 1970s—is repeated on the pages of The Many Altars of Modernity, although in somewhat more light-hearted version now that Marxism has become a less acute ‘problem’ in academic sociology. There is no sense of power or struggle in defining the boundaries of religion and the secular, either on the social level or the level of consciousness—a phenomenon for which there is ample evidence all over the world, if one cares to look. It is doubtful that Berger’s theory of pluralism will become the ‘paradigm’ that he suggests it is. For the Bergerites, however, The Many Altars of Modernity answers many questions raised by the ‘desecularization’ turn. With its response chapters, the book is also an interesting document about tradition and the passing on of tradition in the sociology of religion.