f

THE DESECULARIZATION OF THE \TORLD

and Religion WorldPolitics Resurgent

Edited by Peter L. Berger

P e te r L . B e rg e r Jo n a th a n S a cks D a vi d N 4 a rti n Tu Veiming Ceor ge Veigel Cr ace Davie

A b d u l l a h i A . An- Na' im

E thics and P ublicP o lic y Ce n t e r $/ashingto n ,D. C. \WilliamB. Eerdmans PublishingCompany Mic h ig a n Grand Rapids ,

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PREFAcE

the Sacks, chief rabbi institute;Jonatharl tor of the Harvard-Yenching 'weigel,my predecessor of Britain and the commonwealth; George at rhe center and tl're aurhor of a forthcomirrg biography of Pope r'rpstudentof the evangelical John Paul II; David Martin, the leading who is an British sociologist surgein the Third'v/orld; GraceDavie,a ..p.rt on religion in Europc; and Abdullahi An-Na'im, an internationally .e.ogniz.d scholrr of Islam and human rights'We owe a debt of gratitude to our seven authors, ior traveling to washington to for for the additionalwork they did to preparetheir papers ,p.ik "nd publication. I would like as well to thank ProfessorBacevichtbr askingus to collaboratewith him, always a task both intellectuallystimulating and personallyrewarding.on his behalfand my own, I wish to thank for his initiative,his counsel John Kizer and the Greve Forrndation esihroughout, and the foundation'sfinancialsupport.Finally,-these ,"yr.ni... editedfor publicationby Carol Griffith, editor at the Ethics and Public PolicyCenter,to whom we at the Center and all who read this book are in debt. Elliott Abrams. President Ethics and Public Policy Center

TbeDesecularizatiln World, of tbe A Global Oueruiew

Peter L. Berger
ter,v yearsagothe first volume coming out of the so-called Fundamentalism Projectlandedon my desk.The Fundamentalism Project was very generouslvfrrnded by the MacArtlmr Foundatiun and chairedby Martin Marry the distinguished church historian at the Universiry of Chicago. number of very rcputablescholars A took part in it, and the publishedresultsare of generally excellentqualiry. But niy contemplationof this first volume gaveme what has been calledan "aha!experience." The book was very big, sitting there on my desk-a "book-weapon,"the kind that could do seriousinjury. So I askedmyself why would the MacArthur Foundationstiell our several million dollarsto supporran international studyof relisiousfundarnentalists? Tivo answerscameto mind. The first was obvious and not very interesting.The MacArthur Foundation is a very progressiveoutfit; it
Peter L. Berger is University Professorand director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University. Among the books he has written zreA Far Glory: The Questfor Faith in an Age of Credulity (1992) and Redeerning Laughter(1997). This essayis adaptedwith permission fiom the original article,which appeared The l,,lational tn lnterest (no. 46, Winter 1996/ 97; Washingon, D.C.).

L ) E S t - ( . L I L . . \ l ilZ ,\1 - l( ) N

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T f' l E \\ ( ) RL t)

PETER tsER(,ER 3 L. wrong. To be sure modernizationhashad some sccularizing , effects, ntore ln some L-rlaces in others.But it hasalsoprovokedpowerthan ful movements of coun-r_elSegg]q4zxlon. AIso, secularizarion the on societal level is nor necessarily linked to secularization the levelof on individual consciousness. certain religior.rs iusritutionshave lost power and int-luence many societies, in but botli old and new religiousbeliefsand practices havenevertheless continnedin the lives9f indr'iduals, somerirnestaking ner,vinstitutional tornrs and sonretimesleedi'q to greatexplosions relisir)us of ten'or.convcrse rclilyi giously identiiled institutionscan play socialor political roles even rvhenvery feu'peoplebelieveor practicethr' religion that thc rnsrituTo l,ltions represent. say the least,the relation between religion and /'moderniry is rather complicated. The proposition that moderniry necessarily leadsto a decline of religion is, in principle, "vafue_{le,e." That is, it can be aftlrmed both by peoplewho think it is good news and by peoplewho think it is very bad ncvu's. Most Enlightenment thinkers and mosr proqressive-minded peopleever sincehave tendedtoq'ard the idea that secularization a good thing, at leastinsofar as it does away with is religiousphenomenathat are "backward,""superstitious," ,,reacor tionary" (a relieiousresiduepurged of thesenegative characteristics may still be deemed acceptable). But religious people, including those with very traditional or orthodox beliefs,have also affirmed the moderniry/seculariry linkage, and have greatly bemoaned it. Some have then defined mgdglqty_tls the enemy, to be fought il t I wheneverpossible. Others have,on t[e6ritrary seenmoderniry as some kind of inr,incible rvorld-viewto which reliqiousbelietsand should adaptthemselves. other words. r('ic.tiL''n:rnd In l7 Practices arlaptatiorr nvo strategies ilre open to religionscorlmunities in a world understoodto be secularized. is alwaysthe casewhen strategies As arc based on mistaken perceptionsof the terrain, both stratcgies have had very doubtful results. It is possible, course,to rejectany number of modern ideasand of values theoretically,but making this rejection stick in the lives of peopleis much harder.To do that requiresone of rwo strategies. The first is religious reuolutitttt: tries to take over socieq,as a whole and one make one'scoLlnter-modern religion obligatoryfi-rreveryone-a diG ficult enterprisein mosr countries in the contenrporalyworld.

L rn d c r s t ands liur dl m e n ta l i s ts to b e a n ti -p ro {ressi ve; the P roj cct, then, was a matter of knowing one's enetnies. But therc rvas also a more intcresting answer. "Fundamentalism" is considered a strange, hard-to-understand pirenonenon; the purpose of the Project was to . delve' into this alien rvorld and ntake it more utrderstandable But tc'r tllswer to tftat queswhorn? Who llnds this world strange?'V/eil, thc tion was easy: people to r,vhom the olEcials of the MacArthur Foundation nornrally talk. sttch :rs professors at elitc A.rncricln unil-erstcrpc-rience.Thc- cotlcern that trlust ties. And u.ith this catnc the al-ra! have led to this Project r.vasbased on an upside-down perception of the world, according to which "fundamentalisnt" (which, rvhen all is said and done, usually refers to any sort of passionatereiigious movement) is a rare, hard-to-explain thing. But a look either at history or at the contemporary world revcals that what is rare is not the phenomenon itself but. knowle dge of it. The difficult-to-understand phenomenon is not Iranian mullahs but American universiry professo15-i1 might be w'orth a rntilti-million-dollar pro-iectto try to exp l a i n t hat l

Theory of Mistakes Secularization

My point is that the assumption that we live in a secularizedworld iome rs falsg. fhe world today, with some erceptions tffiEiEET*ill

tilt ;. pI y, i s.as fu ri o u sllqe !ig1911g1l$ry4;q p." * ".* "if more so than evei. TTii means that a whole body of literature by his1 y' torians and sotial scientistsloosely labeled "se!u14!Zaqe! Jb99ry-" is mistaken.In rny earlywork I contributedto this literature. I cssentially of \I was in good compaltv-rnost sociologists religion had similar of for and we had gocldreasons holding thetn. Sorr-re the rvritl,icrl,s, one adings we producedstill standup. (As I like to tell my students, a being,say, philosopher of being a socialscientist,as against vantage or a theologian,is that you can haveasrnuch fun when your theories they are verified!) are falsifiedas rru'hert theory" refers to works from Although the term "secularization the key idea ofthe theory can indeedbe traced 1950sand 1960s, the necessarily to the gdfglrtenurerlt.That ideais simple:Moderrrization and in the minds of indileads to'adeclineoircliqion, both in sociery viduals. And it is preciselvthis kev idea that has turned out to be

t'

DESECu LARI ZATI O N O F THE v O RLD

PETER tsERCER5 L ited the Rornan monument to the Bersaglieri. thc elite arnry u'its tlrat crccupied EternalCiry in the nameof the ItalianRisorguncnto, the you may have noticed the placement of the heroic fisure in his Bersaglieri uniform-he is positionedso that his behinJ points exactly toward the Vatican.) The Second Vatican council, almosta hundredyearslater,considerablymodified this re.;ectionist stance, guidedasir was by the notion of agiornanento, bringing the church up to date-that is, rrp to <iate with the modern world. (I rememberaskinga protestantthe.logian what he thought would happe' at the council-this was befoie it had c.nvened; he replied that he didn't know but he r,,u-as they surc would not readthe minutesof the lastmeetinsl)The Second Vatican council was supposed open windows, specifically windows of to the the catholic subculturethat had been constructed when it became clearthat the overallsocietycould not be reconquered. the united In States, this catholic subcuhurehasbeenquite impressive right up to the very recentpast.The trouble with openingwindows islhat you can't control whar comes in, and a lot has come in-indeed, the rvhole turbulent world of modern culture-that hasbee' very troubling to the church. Under rhe currenr pontificare the church has been steerirg a nuancedcourse berweenrejection and ad;rptarion, with mi-xedresultsin different courrtries. This is asgood a poinr asany ro rrrentiorr that ail rrryobscrvatiorrs here are intended to be "value free,,;that is, I am trying to look at the current religioussceneobjectively. For the duration of this exerciseI have put asidemy own religiousbeliefs.As a socioloqistof religion. I find it probablethat Rome had to do some rei'i'q*in on the lcrel ot-both docrrineand practice. the wake of thc i-nstituin tional disturbances that followed vatican II. To saythis, however,in no way implies my theologicalagreement with what has been hap_ pening i' the Roman catholic church under the present pontificate.Indeed, if I were Roman catholic, I wourd have considerable misgivingsabout thesedevelopments. But I am a liberal protesrant (the adjectiverefers to my religious position and not to my politics), and I have no immediate existentialstakein what is happening u,ithi' the Roman communiry. I am speaking here , ,o.iolo_ ", gist, in which capacityI can claim a certain competence; have no I theoloqicalcredentials.

(Franco tried in Sparn and failed; the mullahs are stillat it in Iran and a couple of other places.) And this doeshave to do with modernrzation, which brings about very heterogeneous societiesand a quantum leap in intercultural conrmunication, two factors favoring pluralism and not favoring the establishment (or reestablishment) of religious monopolies. The other possible way of getting people to reject mod- n errr ideas and values in their lives is to create religious subcultures de-',tl signed to keep out the intluences of the outside society. That is ai/ somewhat more promising exercise than religious revolution, but it,l too is fiausht with difficulry. Modern culture is a very powerful fclrce, and an immenser e fTort is required to maintain enclaveswith an airtight defense systenr. Ask the Amish in eastern Pennsylvania. Or ask a Hasidrc rabbi in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Interestingly, secularization theory has also been falsified by the results of adaptation strategies by religious institutions. If we really lived in a highly secularized world, then religious institutions could be erpected to survive to the degree that they manage to adapt to seculariry That has been the empirical assumption of adaptation strategies. V/hat has in fact occurred is that, by and large, reiigrous communities have surv'ived and even flourished to the degree that they have not tried to adapt themselves to the alleged requirements of a secularized world. To put it simply, erperiments with secularized religion have generally failed; religious movements with beliefs and practices dripping with reactionary supernaturalism (the kind utterly beyond the pale at self-respecting faculty parties) have widely succeeded.

The CatholicChurchvs.Modernity The strugglewith moderniryin the Roman CatholicChurch

In nicely illustratesthe difficulties of various strategies. the wake of thc Enlightenment and its multiple revolutions,the initial response the by the Church was militant and then defiant rejection.Perhaps most magnificentmoment of that defiancecame in 1870,when the First Vatican Council solemnly proclaimed the inflllibiliry of the Pope and the immaculateconceptionof Mary literally in the faceof of the Enlightenmentabout to occupyRome in the shape the army of Victor Emmanuel I. (The disdain was mutual. If vou have ever vis-

t)ESECLI LARI ZATToN oF THE v / oRLD

PETER L BER C EI{

Tnr Glosal Rtlrcrous ScENr

On the international religious scene, it is conservative or orthodox or traditionalist movements that are on the rise almost everywhere. Thesc movements are precisely the ones that rejected an agiornamento with modernity as defined by progressive intellectuals. Conversely, religious movernents and institutions that have made great eiTorts to confbrm to a perceived rrroderniry are :rlmost every\,v'here the deon cline. In the United States this has been a much commented upon fact, exemplified by the decline of so-called mainline Protestantlsm and the concomitant rise of Evangelicalism; but the United Statesrs bv no nr eans un u s u a l i n th i s . Nor is Protestantism. The conservative thrust in the Ron-ranCatholic Chtrrch under Jolin Paul II has borne fruit in both number of converts and rcnewed enthr.rsiasmamong native Catholics, especially in non-Western countries. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union there occurred a remarkable revival of the Orthodor Church in Russia. The nrost rapidly urowingJewish sroups, both rn Israel and in the Diaspora, are Ortirodox. There trave been sirnilarly vigorous upsurges of conscrvative religion in all the other major religious H i n d u i s m , B u d d h i sm-as w ei l as revi val c om m unit ic s - I s l a n r, l nov c m ent s in s m a l l e r c o mmu n i ti e s (s u ch as S hi nto i n Japan and Sikhism in India). These developments differ greatly in their social and polrtical irnplications. W}rat they have in common is their unaminspiration. Consequently, taken togelhsp thsl' I biguousll, religiotts providc a massive falsification of the idea that modernization aird sec\ ularization are cognatc phenomena. At the very least they show that counter-secvlarization at least as important a phenomenon in the is c ont c m por ar y w o rl d a s s e c u l a ri z a ti o n . Bclth in tlic nredia ancl in scholarly publications, these nrovernents are oftL-n subsumed under the category oi"fundamentalism." This is not a feiicitous terrn, not only because it carries a pejorative undertone but also because it derives from the history of American Protestantism, w'here it has a specific reference that is distortive if extended to other reliqious traditions. All the sar-ne. the term has sonre sLlglesti v e us e if one w i s h e s to c rp l a i n th e a tb re rnenti oneddevel opments.It suggestsa cornbination of several features-great religious passion, a defiance ofwhat others have defined as the Zeitgekt, and a retrlrn to

traditicinai sources religiousauthoriry.Theseare indeedcolrlroll of features across cultural boundaries. And they do reflectthe presence of secularizing fbrces,since they must be understoodas a reacrion against thoseforces.(In that sense, least, at somethingof the old secularization theory may be said to hold up, in a rarher back-handed 7 way.) This interplayrf r"."l"rirl"S r"d.c { is, I rvould contend,one of the mosr inportant topicslor a sociology]of contemporaryreligion, but far too large to consider here. I can/ only drop a hint: Moderniry for fully understandable reasons, undermines all the old certainties; uncertainryis a condition that many peoplefind very hard to bear;therefore,any movement (not only a religiousone) that promisesto provide or to renew certaintyhas a readl rnarket. Dffirences AmonQ Thriuing Mouements While the aforementioned common features are important, an analvsis the socialand political irnpacrof the variousreligiousupof sLlrges rnust alsotakefull accolrntof their differences. This becomes clearrvhen one looksat what arearguably tr,vo the nrostdynamicreligious upsurgesin the world today,the Islamic and the Evangelical; the comparisonalsounderlinesthe rveakness the category "funof of damentalism" appliedto both. as The Islamicupsurse,because its more immediatelyobviouspoof litical ramiflcations, betterknog,-n. it would bc a seriouserror ro rs Yet secit oniy through a political lens.It is an irnpressive rcvival ot'cnrphatically religious commitments. And it is of vast geographical scope, affecting every single Muslim counrry from North Africa to Southeast Asia.It continrres gain convcl'rs, to cspecially sub-saharan in Africa (whereit is often in head-oncompetitionwith Christianiry).It is becoming very visible in the burgeoning Muslirn communities in Europe and, to a much lesser er-tent, North America.Everywherc in it is bringing about a restoration, nor only of Islamic belicfs but of distinctivelyIslamic life-sryles, which in many ways directly contradict nrodern ideas-such as idcasabout thc relatiou oi- religion ancl the state,tire role of women, moral codesof cvervclav bchavi.r. and the boundaries religiousand nroral tolerance. of The Islamic revival is by no meansrestricted the lessmodernizedor "backsrard" to sec-

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DESECu LARI ZATToN oF THE woRll)

L PETER tsERGHR9 ethos,and a violent ward rvork and consumption,a new educational (women play a key role in the Evanrejectiorr traditionalrnarhismo of gelicalchurches). The origins of this worldwide Evangelical upsurge are in the United States.from which the missionariesfirst went out. But it is very important to understandthat, virtually everywhereand emphatically in Latin America, this new Evangelicalismis thoroughly indigenousand no longer dependenton support from U.S. fellow behave been sending lievers-indeed, Latin American Evangelicals missionaries the Hispaniccommuniry in this country where there to has been a comparableflurry of conversions. Needless say, religiouscontentsof the Islamicand Evangelito the cal revivalsare totally different.So are the socialand politicalconscquences(of which I will saymore later).But the rwo developlnents The Islamicmovement alsodiffer in anothervery important respect: Muslim or among is occurringprimarily in countriesthat are already movementis Muslim emigrants(asin Europe),while the Evangelical growing dramatically throughout the world in countries where this rype of religion was previously unknown or very marginal. Exceptions to the Desecularization Thesis Let me, then, repeatwhat I said a while back: The world today is world that had massivelyreligious, is anything but the secularized by been predicted(whetherjoyfuliy or despondently) so nlany analystsof modernity. There are,however,wvo exceptionsto this proposition, one somewhatunclear,the other very clear. Europe The first apparent exceptionis Europe-more specificaliy, in west ofwhat usedto be calledthe Iron Curtain (the developments the formerly Communist countriesare asyet very under-researched and unclear).In WesternEurope,iinowhere else,the old secularization theory would seem to hold. With increasingmodernization both on in therehasbeen an increase key indicatorsof secularization, thosethat could be calledorthe levelof expressed beliefs(especially on thodox in Protestantor Catholic terms) and, dramatically, the level of church-related behavior-attendance at sen'icesof worship, codesof personalbehevior (espccially adherence church-dictated to recruitmenttc-r with regardto sexualiryreproduction,and marriage),

still like to think. On the intellectuals tors of sociery as progrcssive contrary it is very strong in citiesrvith a high degreeof modernization, and in a number of countries it is particularlyvisible among higher education-in Egypt and Turkey, people with W'estern-style are professionals putting for example,many daughtersof secularized of on the veil and other accoutrements Islamic modesry. Yet there are also great ditlerenceswithin the movement. Even within the Middle East, the Islamic heartland,there are both reliSunni and giously and politically irnportant differencesbetr,veen meansvery differentthingsin. Shiiterevivals-lslanricconservatism say,Saudi Arabia and Iran. Away from the Middle East, the differencesbecome even greater.Thus in Indonesia,the most populous Muslim country in the world, a very powerfirl revivalmovenlent,the Nudhat'ul-Ulama, is avowedly pro-democracyand pro-pluralism, the very opposite of what is commonly viewed as Muslim "fundaallow this, there is in mentalism."Where the political circumstances placesa lively discussion about the relation of Islam to various many among individumodern realities, and there are sharpdisagreements Islam.Still, for reasons alswl"roare equailycomrnitted to a revitalized deeplygrounded in the core of the tradition, it is probablyfair to say that, on the whole, Islam has had a difficult time coming to terms and the with key modern institutions,such as pluralism,democracy, market economy. The Evaneelicalupsurge is just as breathtakingin scope.Geographicallythat scopeis even wider. It has gainedhuge numbers oi converts in East Asia-in all the Chinese communities (including, persecution, rnainlandChina) and in South Korea,the despitesevere Africa the SorrthPacific,throughout sub-Saharan Philippines,across (where it is often synthetized with elementsof traditionalAfrican religion), apparentlyin parts of ex-Communist Europe. But the most has occurred in Latin America; there are now remarkablesuccess thought to be between forry and fifry million EvangelicalProtestants south of the U.S. border, the greatmajoriry of them first-generation The most nurnerouscomponentwithin the Evangelical Protestants. which combinesbiblical orthodoxl' and a upsurgeis Pentecostalism, lbrn-rof worship and an emphasis rigorous morality with an ecstatic on spiritualhealing.Espcciallyin Latin America,conversionto Protestantismbrings about a cultural transformation-new attitudesto-

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PETER BEI TCER 11 L

the clergry'. These phenomena, long obseryed 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-relatcd relieion. So has Greece, thereby undercutting the claim of Catholic conservatives that Vatican II is to be blamed for the 1/ what has V/ dccline. There is now a rnassivcly secular EuroiiliureJlid happened in the soLrthcan be simply describecl (thongh not thercbl' \ e x plained) by t h a t c u l ttrre ' s i n v a s i o n o f th e se countri es. It i s not fanthat tircrc wili be sir-nilardevelopments in Eastern Euciful to prcdic--t rope. pr c c is c lv t,-i tl rt d c g ri ' c th a t_ th e s c c o unt;tes i oo rvi l l be i rrtcgrated into the new Europe. /t -"'' While these facts are not in'dispute, a number of recent works in the sociology of religion, notably in France, Britain, and Scandinavia, havc questioncd the term "secularization" as applied to these developments. A body of data indicates strong surwivals 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 thc Eurrope:rnsituation. All the sarne, 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 ' socioiogy of religion is why Americans are so much more religrous as twell as more churchly than Europeans. \ The other exception to the desecularization thesis is less ambiguous. There exists an international subculture composed of people with'W'estern-ty?e higher education, especiallv in the humanities and social sciences, that is indeed secularized. This subculture is the princi pal " c ar r ier " o i p ro q re s s i v e ,En l i g h te n e d bel i ets and val ues.W hi l e its members are'relatively thin on the ground, thev are very influential, as they control the institutions that provide the "official" definitions of realiry notably the educational system, the media of mass communication, and the higher reachesof the legal system. They are remarkably sirnilar all over the world today, as they have been lor 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 sccularization. I can only point out that what we have here is a globalized e/ile culture .

In country after country then, religiousupsurges havea strongly populist character. Over and beyond the purely religious motives, theseare movementsof protestand resistance a against secularelite. The so-calledculture war in the United Statesernphatically shares this feature.I rnay observe passing in that the plausibilityof secularizationtheory owes much to this internationalsubculture. When intellectualstravel, thcy trsuall,v touch down in intellcctualcirclesth:itis. arnongpeoplen-ruch like thenrselves. till Thcv caneasily into the misconception that thesepeoplereflectthe overallvisitedsociery r,r.hich. course. a big mistake. of is from Picturea secrrlar intellccttral 'W'estern Europe socializing with colleagues the faculryclub of the at University of Texas. may think he is backhome. But then picture He him trving to drive through the traffic jam on Sundaymorning in dow-ntown Austin-or, heaven help him, turning on his car radiol jolt of what anthropologists culV4rat happensthen is a severe call ture shock.

,l

RrSuRcpNT RELIGIoN: ORTcTNS AND PRospEcrs After this somervhatbreathlesstour d'horizonof the global religious scene, me turn to somethe questionsposedfor discussion this let in set of essays. First,what aretheorigins theworldwide o;f resurgencereliof gion?Two possibleanswershave alreadybeen mentioned. One: Moderniry tends to undermine the taken-for-granted certainties by rvhich people lived through most of history.This is an unconrfortablestatcof affairs.for many an intolerableone, and reliqiousnlovements that claim to qive certainryhave greatappe:rl. Tu'o: A purely secular view of realiryhasits principal sociallocationin an elitc culture that, not surprisingly,is resentedby large numbers of people who are not part of it but who feel its influence (most troublingly, as their children are strbjected an educationthat ignoresor even dito rectly attackstheir own beliefs and values).Religious movements with a stronglyanti-secular bent can thereforeappeal peoplewith to resentments that sometimeshave quite non-religiorrs sources. But I would refer once more to the little storywith which I began, about American foundation officialsworried about "fundamentalism." In one sense, there is nothing to explainherc. Stronglyfelt reli-

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oF THE woRLD DESECULARIZATToN

PETERL BERCER I3 sucgelicalism future corlrseif sonreof its cattses ',villhavea difTerent ceedin the political and legalarenasthan if it continuesto be fiustrated in these arenas. Also, in religion as in every other area of play a much larger role human endeavor,individual personalities than most social scientistsand historians are willing to concede. There might have been an Islarnic revolution in Iran without the Ayatollah Khomeini, but it would probably have looked quite different. No one can predict the appearance charisrnatic figureswho of u'ill launch powerful religious movements in unerpected places. Who knows-perhaps the next religiousupsurgein Americawill occur among disenchanted post-modernistacademics! Third, dotheresurgent religions dfr-er tlrcircritique in oJthe secular order?Yes, of coursethey do, dependingon their particularbelief systems. Cardinal Ratzingerand the Dalai Lama will be troubled by different aspects of contemporarysecularculture.'V/hatboth will agrecupon, however, is the shallowness a culture that tries to get alongwithout any tranof to scendentpoints of reference. And they will havegood reasons support this view.The religiousimpulse,the questfor meaningthat transcendsthe restricted spaceof empirical existencein this world, has been a perennial featureof humanity. (This is not a theologicalstaternerlt bur an anthropologicalone-arl agnosticor even an atheistphicloscto a losopher rnal,wellagree with it.) It woulclrcquireson-rething this impulse for good. The more mutation of the species ex'tinguish to radicalthinkersof the Enlightenmentand their nrore rccent intcllcc* tual descendants hoped for somethinglike this, of course.So far it has not happened, and asI haveargued,it is unlikely to happenin the forefuture. The critique of secularitycommon to all the resurgent seeable is movementsis that human existence bereft of transcendence an impoverishedand finally untenablecondition. To the e\tent that secularirytoday has a specificallymodern lbrm (there r.l'ereearlier forms in, for example,versions of Confucianisrn a and Hellenisticculture),the critiqueof secularity alsoentails critique of at leasttheseaspects modernity. Beyond that, however,different of religious movements differ in their relation to modernity. As I have said, an argument can be made that the Islamic resurgencestrongly tends toward a negativeview of moderniry; in placesit 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 resur-

sion has alwaysbeen arouttd: what needsexplanationis its absence Modern scculariryis a much more puzzling rather than its preselrce. than all these religious explosions-if you will, the phenon-renon of Universiry of Chicagois a more interestingtopic for the sociology of Qom. In other words, the phereligion than the Islamic schools here on one ievel sirnply serveto demnornenaunder consideration onstratecontinuiry in the place of religion in human experience. jnure course this religious Given resurgen(e? of Second, uhat is the likcll, variery of important religious movements in the the considerable contemporaryworld, it would make little senseto venture a global if prognosis.Predictions, one daresto make them at all, will be more useful if applied to much narrow-ersituations.One prediction, There is no reasonto though, can be made with some assurance: think the world of the twenty-first century will be any lessreligious of than the world is today.A minoriry of sociologists religion have theory by w'hatI rvould the old secularization been tryine to salvase and movesecularize, call the last-ditch thesis:Modernizatiot does ones representlast-ditch the Evangelical merlts like the Islamic and secularirywill tridefensesby religion that cannot last; eventually, umph-or, to pr.lt it less respectfully,eventually Iranian mullahs, preachers, and Tibetan lamaswill all think and act like Pentecostal i universities. find this thesissinof literature at A.rnerican professors gularly unpersuasive. Having made this generalprediction-that the world of the nert century will not be lessreligiousthan the world of today-I will have very differently regardingdifferent sectorsof the relito speculate gious scene-For example, I think that the most militant Islamic uis-i-vk movementswill find it hard to maintain their presentstance of in nrodernity once they succeed taking over the governments their (this, it seelrts, alreadyhappeningin lran). I also think is countries as that Pentecostalism, it existstoday among mostly poor and uneducated people, is unlikely to retain its present religious and moral upunchanged,as many of these people experience characteristics ward social mobiliry (this has alreadybeen observedexensively in many of thesereligiousmovementsare Generally, the United States). linked to non-religiousforcesof one sort or another,and the future course of the former will be at least partially determined by the militant Evanfor courseof the latter.In the United States, instance,

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DE S E CU L AR T z A T T o N T H E w o R L D oF

PETERL tsERCER 15 r'g. Sorrre of rhese animosities have themselves taken on an ideological form, asin the asserrion a distinctive of Asianidentirvbv a of governmentsand intellectualgroups in East and Soutir'umber east Asia.This ideologyhasbecomeespecially visiblein debares over the allegedll'ethnocentric,Gurocentric character human rishts as of propagated the United States b1' and other\vesterngo,r..r,-.rits and governmental organizations.But it would probably be arr cxaggeration to seethesedebates signaling clashof civilizations. as a The situation closest a religiouslydefinedclashof civilizations to would come about if the vn'orld-view tlre mosr radicalbranchesof the Islarnic of resurgence cameto be established within a u'ider spectnlm of countries and becamethe basisof the foreig' policiesof thesecountries. As yet this has not happened. To assess role of religion in internatio'al politics,it would be the useir-rl distinguishbetweenpolitical,'r-,,',".-",'rt, to that aregenuipell. inspiredby religion and thosethat usereligion asa convenientlegitimation for political agendas basedon quite non-religiousinterests. Such a distinction is ditEcult but not impossible. Thus there is no reason doubt that the suicidebombersof the IslamicHaw-s to movement truiy believe in the religious motives they avow. By conrrast, there is good reasonto doubt that the three partiesinvolved in the Bosnianconflict,commonly represented a clashbetweenreligions. as are really inspired by religious ideas.I think it was p J. o'Rlurke who observed that thesethree partiesare of the ,.r-,-r..".-., speakthe sanrelanguage, and are distinguishedonly by their relieion. u,hich . trl-rhern belicve. The same:kepricism .., \ rr.rrrc aborrtrlre.ilieio,,, n.!'/' rure of an allegedlyreligiousconflict is expressed the followinq in joke from Northern Ireland:As a man rvalksdown a dark street ii Belfast,a sunnranjumps out of a doonvay,rroldsa gun ro his head, and asks.''Arevou Protestant catholic?" The man stutters.*well. or actually, I'rn an atheist.""Ah ves," saysthe gunman, ,,but are you a Protesrant a Catholicatheist?'' or r Second, wttrandpeace. rvould be nice to be ableto savthat reli_ It gion is everywherea force for peace.lj'fbrtllnrtelll it is n.t. Very probablyreligion in the modern world more often fosters*.., boti-, berq'eenand rvithin nations.Religiorrs institutionsand movenielts are lanning wars and civil r,r'ars the Indian srrbcontinent, the on in Balkans, the Middle East,and in Africa, to rnenriononly the mosr in

gcnce is positively modernizing in most placeswherc ir occurs, clearly so in Latin America. The new Evangelicalsthrow asidemany of the traditions that have been obstaclesto modernization-nmchisrno, for one, and also the subservienceto hierarchy that has been endemic to Iberian catholicisrn. Their churches encourage values and behavior patterns that contribute to modernization. To take just one important case in point: In order to participate fully i' the lifb of their congregations, Evangelicalswill want to read the Bible; this desire ro read the Bible encourases lite racy and, beyond this, a positive attitude torvard education and self-improvenenr. Tl"reyalso will want to be able tojoin in the discussion of co'gregational alTairs,since those matters are largely in the hands of lalpersons (irdeed, largely in the hands of women); this lay operation of churches necessitates training in administrative skills, including the conduct of public meerings and the keeping of financial accounts. It is not fancitirl to suggestthat in this rvay Evangelicalcongregations 5sn-s-illiclvertentll', {o [s sLl1s-as schools for denrocracy and for social nrobilirv.

Rlrrc;rous RrsuRceNCE AND'WoRr-n Alr,qrns

otl'rer questio.s posed for discussion in this volume concern the rel a ti o' oit hc r c ligi o r-rs s u rg e r)c e a n u mb e r of i ssuesnot l i nked to re to re l i g ion. r First, intemationalpolitics. Flere one comes up head-on against the thesis, cloque'tly proposed lonq ago bv San'ruel rJ'ntington, 'ot that, with thc cnd of the cold war, internarional affairs will be affected bv a "clash of civiiizations" rather than by ideological conflicts. There is something to be said for this thesis. The g;reatideorogical conflict that anirnated the cold war is certainly dormant for the mon l cn t , but I , f br on e , w o u l d n o t b c t o n i ts fi n a l demi se. N or can w e be sure that new ideolclgical conflicts mav not arise in the future. To the extent that nationalisnr is an ideolclgy (more accuratell,,each nationaiisrn has tts orutt ideoiogy), ideology is alive and well in a lonq list of c()tlntrles. It is also plausible that. i. the absence of the overarchins confrontation between Soviet clommunism and thc Anrerican-led west, cultu ral anim os it ies su p p re s s e dd u ri n g th e c o l d w ar peri od are surfac-

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DESECuLARI ZATToN oF THE \ ( / o R L I - )

PETER BERCER 17 L havesuggested that Islam, by and large,has diftlcultieswith a rnodern market economy; yet Muslim emigrants have done remarkably well in a number of countries(for instance, sub-Saharan in Africa), and there is a powerful Islamic movement in Indonesia that might yet play a role analogousto that of Opus Dei in the Catholic world. I should add that for years now there has been an extended debate over the part played by Confucian-inspired values in the economic success storiesof EastAsia; if one is to credit the "post-Confucian thesis"and also to allow that Confucianismis a religion, then here would be a very important religious contribution to economic development. One morally troubling aspectof this matter is that values llnctional at one period of economicdevelopment may not be functional at another. The valuesof the "Protestant ethic" or a functionalequivalent thereof are probably essenrialduring the phase that Walt Rostow called "the take-off," but may not be so in a later phase. Much less austerevalues may be more functional in the so-called post-industrial economies Europe,North America,and EastAsia. of For example, frugaliry however admirable from a moral viewpoint, may actually be a vice economically speaking.Although undisciplined hedonistshave a hard time climbing out of primitive poverry they can do well in the high-tech, knowledge-driven economies of the advancedsocieties. r Finally, humanriglts and social justice.Religious institutions have, of course, made many statements human rights and social on justice. Some of thesehave had important political consequences, in the as civil-rightsstrugglein the IJnited States and the collapse Commuof nist regimesin Europe. But, as mentioned previously, there are dif-ferent religiously articulatedviews about the nature of human rights. The samegoesfor ideasabout social justice: what is justice to some groupsis grossinjusticero others.Sometimes is very clearthat poit sitionstakenby religiousgroupson such mattersare basedon a religiousrationale; the principledoppositionto abortionand contraception by the Roman Catholic Church is such a clear case.At other times,though, positionson social justice, even if legitimated reliby gious rhetoric, reflect the location of the religiousfunctionariesin this or that netrvorkof non-religioussocialclasses and interests. To stavrvith the sameexample, think that this is the case I with most of

indeed,religiousinstitutionstry to reslst obvious cases. Occasionally, The Vatiwarlike policiesor to mediate be&veenconflicting parties. in can mediated successfully some international disputesin Latin America. There have been religiouslyinspired peacemovementsin during the Vietnam severalcountries (including the United States, War). Both Protestant and Catholic clergy have tried to mediate the conflict in Northern lreland, though with notablelack of success. But it is probably a mistake to look here simply at the actionsof formal religious institutions or groups.There may be a diffusion oi religious values in a sociery that could have peace-proneconseof quenceseven in the absence lormal actionsby church bodies.For havearguedthat the wide diffusion of Chrisexample,some analysts tian values played a mediating role in the processthat ended the apartheid regime in South Africa, even though the churches were mostly polarizedbewveenthe rwo sidesof the conflict, at leastuntil the last few yearsof the regime,when the Dutch ReformedChurch reversedits position on apartheid. r Third, economic The development. basictex'ton the relation of religion and economic developmentis, of course,the German sociolo"Weber's 1905 work The Protestant Ethk and theSpirit of Capigist Ma-r talism.Scholarshave been arguing over the thesis of this book for over ninety years.Flowever one comes out on this (I happento be an Weberian),it is clearthat somevaluesfostermodern unreconstructed economic development more than others. Something /ike'Vleber's "Protestantethic" is probablyfunctionalin an earlyphase capitalist of growth-an ethic, whether religiously inspired or not, that values personaldiscipline,hard rvork, frugaliry and a respectfor learning. in The new Evangelicalisrn Latin America exhibits thesevalues rn purity, so that my own mental subtitle for the revirtually crystalline project on this topic conductedby the centerI directat Boston search Universiry hasbeen, "Mo< Weber is alive and well and living in Guain temala." Conversely,Iberian Catholicism, as it was established Latin America, clearly does nol foster such values. a But religious traditions can change.Spain experienced remarkperiod of econornic developmentbeginning in the ably successful waning yearsof the Franco regime,and one of the important factors was the influenceof Opus Dei, which cornbinedrigoroustheological in with a market-friendly openness economic matters.I orthodoxry

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LARI ZATI O N I)ESEC:LI ')F

TI I E V/ O RLL )

I &
2

the positionstaken by Aurerican Catholic institutions on sr-rcial-jusand reproductton. tice issuesother than those relating to sexualiry dealt very briefly with inrmcnselycomplex matters.I was I l-rave askedto give a global overview,and that is what I have tried to do. There is no rvay that I can end this u'ith some sort of uplifting sermon. Both thosewho havegreathopesforthe role of religionin the this affairsof this world and those who-fear role must be disappointed this by the factualevidence.In assessing role, there is no alternative can be made But one statement approach. to a nuanced,case -by-case who neglectreligion in their analyses with great confidencc:Those of contemporaryatlairsdo so et greatperil.

Roman in Catholicism

tbe oJJobn Age PaulII

Ceorge Weigel
the edqeof the twenry-firstcentury the impact of thc Roman A" \r.-,f Catholic Church on world affairs vividly illustrateswhat Professor PeterBergerdescribed the previouschapterasthe non-secin ularizationof late moderniry.That Catholic impact, which can be measuredempirically from Manila to Krak6w, and from Santiagode Chile to Seoul, also refutes the expectations-indeed,the deeply cherishedhopes-of many of the founding fathersof thc modern world. Voltaire,it will be remembered,died with the wish that the last king be strangled r','iththe guts of the last priest,and the revoltrtion he helpedto inspiredefined its goal as little lessthan the or.'erthrorv of thc civilization the Church had helped nLlrtllre for ccnturic-s. When Italian troopsoccupiedRome in 1870,completedthe unification of Itall'by absorbing PapalStates, the and sent the pope into rnternalexileasthe "prisonerof the Vatican," waswidely thought that it the CatholicChurch was a spenthistoricalforce.As recentlyas 191.9,
George Weigel, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center from 1989to mid-1996,is now a senior fellow at the Center.He haswriren or edited sixteenbooks. The most recent, Wirness Hope:The Biography Pope to oJ John PaulI will be published worldwide in the fall of 1999.

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