University professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University.
Sample Chapter
Chapter 1: The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview by Peter L. Berger (pages 6-14)
THE GLOBAL RELIGIOUS SCENE
On the international religious scene, it is conservative or orthodox or traditionalist movements that are on the
rise almost everywhere. These movements are precisely the ones that rejected an aggiornamento with modernity as
defined by progressive intellectuals. Conversely, religious movements and institutions that have made great efforts
to conform to a perceived modernity are almost everywhere on the decline. In the United States this has been a
much commented upon fact, exemplified by the decline of so-called mainline Protestantism and the concomitant rise
of Evangelicalism; but the United States is by no means unusual in this.
Nor is Protestantism. The conservative thrust in the Roman Catholic Church under John Paul II has borne fruit in
both number of converts and renewed enthusiasm among native Catholics, especially in non-Western countries. Following
the collapse of the Soviet Union there occurred a remarkable revival of the Orthodox Church in Russia. The most
rapidly growing Jewish groups, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, are Orthodox. There have been similarly vigorous
upsurges of conservative religion in all the other major religious communities--Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism--as well
as revival movements in smaller communities (such as Shinto in Japan and Sikhism in India). These developments
differ greatly in their social and political implications. What they have in common is their unambiguously religious
inspiration. Consequently, taken together they provide a massive falsification of the idea that modernization and
secularization are cognate phenomena. At the very least they show that counter-secularization is at least as important
a phenomenon in the contemporary world as secularization.
Both in the media and in scholarly publications, these movements are often subsumed under the category of "fundamentalism."
This is not a felicitous term, not only because it carries a pejorative undertone but also because it derives from
the history of American Protestantism, where it has a specific reference that is distortive if extended to other
religious traditions. All the same, the term has some suggestive use if one wishes to explain the aforementioned
developments. It suggests a combination of several features--great religious passion, a defiance of what others
have defined as the Zeitgeist, and a return to traditional sources of religious authority. These are indeed common
features across cultural boundaries. And they do reflect the presence of secularizing forces, since they must be
understood as a reaction against those forces. (In that sense, at least, something of the old secularization theory
may be said to hold up, in a rather back-handed way.) This interplay of secularizing and counter-secularizing forces
is, I would contend, one of the most important topics for a sociology of contemporary religion, but far too large
to consider here. I can only drop a hint: Modernity, for fully understandable reasons, undermines all the old certainties;
uncertainty is a condition that many people find very hard to bear; therefore, any movement (not only a religious
one) that promises to provide or to renew certainty has a ready market.
Differences Among Thriving Movements
While the aforementioned common features are important, an analysis of the social and political impact of the various
religious upsurges must also take full account of their differences. This becomes clear when one looks at what
are arguably the two most dynamic religious upsurges in the world today, the Islamic and the Evangelical; the comparison
also underlines the weakness of the category of "fundamentalism" as applied to both.
The Islamic upsurge, because of its more immediately obvious political ramifications, is better known. Yet it would
be a serious error to see it only through a political lens. It is an impressive revival of emphatically religious
commitments. And it is of vast geographical scope, affecting every single Muslim country from North Africa to Southeast
Asia. It continues to gain converts, especially in sub-Saharan Africa (where it is often in head-on competition
with Christianity). It is becoming very visible in the burgeoning Muslim communities in Europe and, to a much lesser
extent, in North America. Everywhere it is bringing about a restoration, not only of Islamic beliefs but of distinctively
Islamic life-styles, which in many ways directly contradict modern ideas--such as ideas about the relation of religion
and the state, the role of women, moral codes of everyday behavior, and the boundaries of religious and moral tolerance.
The Islamic revival is by no means restricted to the less modernized or "backward" sectors of society, as progressive
intellectuals still like to think. On the contrary, it is very strong in cities with a high degree of modernization,
and in a number of countries it is particularly visible among people with Western-style higher education--in Egypt
and Turkey, for example, many daughters of secularized professionals are putting on the veil and other accoutrements
of Islamic modesty.
Yet there are also great differences within the movement. Even within the Middle East, the Islamic heartland, there
are both religiously and politically important differences between Sunni and Shiite revivals--Islamic conservatism
means very different things in, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Away from the Middle East, the differences become even
greater. Thus in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, a very powerful revival movement, the
Nudhat'ul-Ulama, is avowedly pro-democracy and pro-pluralism, the very opposite of what is commonly viewed as Muslim
"fundamentalism." Where the political circumstances allow this, there is in many places a lively discussion about
the relation of Islam to various modern realities, and there are sharp disagreements among individuals who are
equally committed to a revitalized Islam. Still, for reasons deeply grounded in the core of the tradition, it is
probably fair to say that, on the whole, Islam has had a difficult time coming to terms with key modern institutions,
such as pluralism, democracy, and the market economy.
The Evangelical upsurge is just as breathtaking in scope. Geographically that scope is even wider. It has gained
huge numbers of converts in East Asia--in all the Chinese communities (including, despite severe persecution, mainland
China) and in South Korea, the Philippines, across the South Pacific, throughout sub-Saharan Africa (where it is
often synthesized with elements of traditional African religion), apparently in parts of ex-Communist Europe. But
the most remarkable success has occurred in Latin America; there are now thought to be between forty and fifty
million Evangelical Protestants south of the U.S. border, the great majority of them first-generation Protestants.
The most numerous component within the Evangelical upsurge is Pentecostalism, which combines biblical orthodoxy
and a rigorous morality with an ecstatic form of worship and an emphasis on spiritual healing. Especially in Latin
America, conversion to Protestantism brings about a cultural transformation--new attitudes toward work and consumption,
a new educational ethos, and a violent rejection of traditional machismo (women play a key role in the Evangelical
churches).
The origins of this worldwide Evangelical upsurge are in the United States, from which the missionaries first went
out. But it is very important to understand that, virtually everywhere and emphatically in Latin America, this
new Evangelicalism is thoroughly indigenous and no longer dependent on support from U.S. fellow believers--indeed,
Latin American Evangelicals have been sending missionaries to the Hispanic community in this country, where there
has been a comparable flurry of conversions. Needless to say, the religious contents of the Islamic and Evangelical
revivals are totally different. So are the social and political consequences (of which I will say more later).
But the two developments also differ in another very important respect: The Islamic movement is occurring primarily
in countries that are already Muslim or among Muslim emigrants (as in Europe), while the Evangelical movement is
growing dramatically throughout the world in countries where this type of religion was previously unknown or very
marginal.
Exceptions to the Desecularization Thesis
Let me, then, repeat what I said a while back: The world today is massively religious, is anything but the secularized
world that had been predicted (whether joyfully or despondently) by so many analysts of modernity. There are, however,
two exceptions to this proposition, one somewhat unclear, the other very clear.
The first apparent exception is Europe--more specifically, Europe west of what used to be called the Iron Curtain
(the developments in the formerly Communist countries are as yet very under-researched and unclear). In Western
Europe, if nowhere else, the old secularization theory would seem to hold. With increasing modernization there
has been an increase in key indicators of secularization, both on the level of expressed beliefs (especially those
that could be called orthodox in Protestant or Catholic terms) and, dramatically, on the level of church-related
behavior--attendance at services of worship, adherence to church-dictated codes of personal behavior (especially
with regard to sexuality, reproduction, and marriage), recruitment to the clergy. These phenomena, long observed
in the northern countries of the continent, have since World War II rapidly engulfed the south. Thus Italy and
Spain have experienced a rapid decline in church-related religion. So has Greece, thereby undercutting the claim
of Catholic conservatives that Vatican II is to be blamed for the decline. There is now a massively secular Euro-culture,
and what has happened in the south can be simply described (though not thereby explained) by that culture's invasion
of these countries. It is not fanciful to predict that there will be similar developments in Eastern Europe, precisely
to the degree that these countries too will be integrated into the new Europe.
While these facts are not in dispute, a number of recent works in the sociology of religion, notably in France,
Britain, and Scandinavia, have questioned the term "secularization" as applied to these developments. A body of
data indicates strong survivals of religion, most of it generally Christian in nature, despite the widespread alienation
from the organized churches. A shift in the institutional location of religion, then, rather than secularization,
would be a more accurate description of the European situation. All the same, Europe stands out as quite different
from other parts of the world, and certainly from the United States. One of the most interesting puzzles in the
sociology of religion is why Americans are so much more religious as well as more churchly than Europeans.
The other exception to the desecularization thesis is less ambiguous. There exists an international subculture
composed of people with Western-type higher education, especially in the humanities and social sciences, that is
indeed secularized. This subculture is the principal "carrier" of progressive, Enlightened beliefs and values.
While its members are relatively thin on the ground, they are very influential, as they control the institutions
that provide the "official" definitions of reality, notably the educational system, the media of mass communication,
and the higher reaches of the legal system. They are remarkably similar all over the world today, as they have
been for a long time (though, as we have seen, there are also defectors from this subculture, especially in the
Muslim countries). Again, regrettably, I cannot speculate here as to why people with this type of education should
be so prone to secularization. I can only point out that what we have here is a globalized elite culture.
In country after country, then, religious upsurges have a strongly populist character. Over and beyond the purely
religious motives, these are movements of protest and resistance against a secular elite. The so-called culture
war in the United States emphatically shares this feature. I may observe in passing that the plausibility of secularization
theory owes much to this international subculture. When intellectuals travel, they usually touch down in intellectual
circles-- that is, among people much like themselves. They can easily fall into the misconception that these people
reflect the overall visited society, which, of course, is a big mistake. Picture a secular intellectual from Western
Europe socializing with colleagues at the faculty club of the University of Texas. He may think he is back home.
But then picture him trying to drive through the traffic jam on Sunday morning in downtown Austin--or, heaven help
him, turning on his car radio! What happens then is a severe jolt of what anthropologists call culture shock.
RESURGENT RELIGION:ORIGINS AND PROSPECTS
After this somewhat breathless tour d'horizon of the global religious scene, let me turn to some the questions
posed for discussion in this set of essays. First, what are the origins of the worldwide resurgence of religion?
Two possible answers have already been mentioned. One: Modernity tends to undermine the taken-for-granted certainties
by which people lived through most of history. This is an uncomfortable state of affairs, for many an intolerable
one, and religious movements that claim to give certainty have great appeal. Two: A purely secular view of reality
has its principal social location in an elite culture that, not surprisingly, is resented by large numbers of people
who are not part of it but who feel its influence (most troublingly, as their children are subjected to an education
that ignores or even directly attacks their own beliefs and values). Religious movements with a strongly anti-secular
bent can therefore appeal to people with resentments that sometimes have quite non-religious sources.....
Second, what is the likely future course of this religious resurgence? Given the considerable variety of important
religious movements in the contemporary world, it would make little sense to venture a global prognosis. Predictions,
if one dares to make them at all, will be more useful if applied to much narrower situations. One prediction, though,
can be made with some assurance: There is no reason to think the world of the twenty-first century will be any
less religious than the world is today. A minority of sociologists of religion have been trying to salvage the
old secularization theory by what I would call the last-ditch thesis: Modernization does secularize, and movements
like the Islamic and the Evangelical ones represent last-ditch defenses by religion that cannot last; eventually,
secularity will triumph--or, to put it less respectfully, eventually Iranian mullahs, Pentecostal preachers, and
Tibetan lamas will all think and act like professors of literature at American universities. I find this thesis
singularly unpersuasive.
Having made this general prediction--that the world of the next century will not be less religious than the world
of today--I will have to speculate very differently regarding different sectors of the religious scene. For example,
I think that the most militant Islamic movements will find it hard to maintain their present stance vis-à-vis
modernity once they succeed in taking over the governments of their countries (this, it seems, is already happening
in Iran). I also think that Pentecostalism, as it exists today among mostly poor and uneducated people, is unlikely
to retain its present religious and moral characteristics unchanged, as many of these people experience upward
social mobility (this has already been observed extensively in the United States). Generally, many of these religious
movements are linked to non-religious forces of one sort or another, and the future course of the former will be
at least partially determined by the course of the latter. In the United States, for instance, militant Evangelicalism
will have a different future course if some of its causes succeed in the political and legal arenas than if it
continues to be frustrated in these arenas. Also, in religion as in every other area of human endeavor, individual
personalities play a much larger role than most social scientists and historians are willing to concede. There
might have been an Islamic revolution in Iran without the Ayatollah Khomeini, but it would probably have looked
quite different. No one can predict the appearance of charismatic figures who will launch powerful religious movements
in unexpected places. Who knows--perhaps the next religious upsurge in America will occur among disenchanted post-modernist
academics!
Third, do the resurgent religions differ in their critique of the secular order? Yes, of course they do, depending
on their particular belief systems. Cardinal Ratzinger and the Dalai Lama will be troubled by different aspects
of contemporary secular culture. What both will agree upon, however, is the shallowness of a culture that tries
to get along without any transcendent points of reference. And they will have good reasons to support this view.
The religious impulse, the quest for meaning that transcends the restricted space of empirical existence in this
world, has been a perennial feature of humanity. (This is not a theological statement but an anthropological one--an
agnostic or even an atheist philosopher may well agree with it.) It would require something close to a mutation
of the species to extinguish this impulse for good. The more radical thinkers of the Enlightenment and their more
recent intellectual descendants hoped for something like this, of course. So far it has not happened, and as I
have argued, it is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The critique of secularity common to all the resurgent
movements is that human existence bereft of transcendence is an impoverished and finally untenable condition.
To the extent that secularity today has a specifically modern form (there were earlier forms in, for example, versions
of Confucianism and Hellenistic culture), the critique of secularity also entails a critique of at least these
aspects of modernity. Beyond that, however, different religious movements differ in their relation to modernity.
As I have said, an argument can be made that the Islamic resurgence strongly tends toward a negative view of modernity;
in places it is downright anti-modern or counter-modernizing, as in its view of the role of women. By contrast,
I think it can be shown that the Evangelical resurgence is positively modernizing in most places where it occurs,
clearly so in Latin America. The new Evangelicals throw aside many of the traditions that have been obstacles to
modernization--machismo, for one, and also the subservience to hierarchy that has been endemic to Iberian Catholicism.
Their churches encourage values and behavior patterns that contribute to modernization. To take just one important
case in point: In order to participate fully in the life of their congregations, Evangelicals will want to read
the Bible; this desire to read the Bible encourages literacy and, beyond this, a positive attitude toward education
and self-improvement. They also will want to be able to join in the discussion of congregational affairs, since
those matters are largely in the hands of laypersons (indeed, largely in the hands of women); this lay operation
of churches necessitates training in administrative skills, including the conduct of public meetings and the keeping
of financial accounts. It is not fanciful to suggest that in this way Evangelical congregations serve--inadvertently,
to be sure--as schools for democracy and for social mobility.
"Berger's collection is replete with compelling writing about the relationship of religion and politics."
--Publishers Weekly
Eerdmans Publishing Company Web Site, November, 2000
Summary
Theorists of "secularization" have for two centuries been saying that religion must inevitably decline in the
modern world. But today, much of the world is as religious as ever. This volume challenges the belief that the
modern world is increasingly secular, showing instead that modernization more often strengthens religion.
Seven leading cultural observers examine several regions and several religions and explain the resurgence of religion
in world politics. Peter L. Berger opens with a global overview. The other six writers deal with particular aspects
of the religious scene: George Weigel, with Roman Catholicism; David Martin, with the evangelical Protestant upsurge
not only in the Western world but also in Latin America, Africa, the Pacific rim, China, and Eastern Europe; Jonathan
Sacks, with Jews and politics in the modern world; Abdullahi A. An-Na'im, with political Islam in national politics
and international relations; Grace Davie, with Europe as perhaps the exception to the desecularization thesis;
and Tu Weiming, with religion in the People's Republic of China.
Table of Contents
Preface by Elliott Abrams
The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview Peter L. Berger
Roman Catholicism in the Age of John Paul II George Weigel
The Evangelical Protestant Upsurge and Its Political Implications David Martin
Judaism and Politics in the Modern World Jonathan Sacks
Europe: The Exception That Proves the Rule? Grace Davie
The Quest for Meaning: Religion in the People's Republic of China Tu Weiming
Political Islam in National Politics and International Relations Abdullahi A. An-Na'im
