Desecularization

For well over a century since the inception of the social-scientific study of religion, there was a broad consensus that the importance of religion was waning in the modernizing world. The cause for this putative decline was traced to various developments, including the increased division of labor in society, capitalism, and the nature of Protestant Christianity itself. At some point during the middle of the 20th century, these diverse views solidified into what has since become known as the secularization thesis. Never a unified theory in the strict sense of the word, secularization nevertheless was for several decades the main prism through which the role of religion [Page 293]in the modern world was examined and explained.

But the secularization thesis also attracted criticism from early on. In recent years, this criticism has increased and gained in strength, to the point that some scholars have been ready to declare the secularization thesis defunct while others consider it of limited use at best. Peter L. Berger, a renowned sociologist of religion, is a prime example of this change of mood in the field. Although he was one of the best known proponents of the secularization thesis in his early work, Berger has since recanted and has become an advocate of what he has termed the desecularization of the world.

Desecularization can be briefly defined as the resurgence of religion in public life. Contrary to the predictions of the secularization thesis, religion seems to be alive and well in the modern world. In The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (1999), the agenda-setting book on desecularization, its editor Peter L. Berger and the other contributors list many examples of the importance of religion in contemporary public life around the globe. From the evangelical Protestant upsurge in Latin America to the role of Islam in global politics, the world seems to be as religious as it ever was, as Berger puts it in his introduction. Whatever the world is, it certainly isn't secularized.

If this is the case, why is it, then, that so many, Berger himself included, came to believe that secularization was inevitably happening in the first place? Those favoring the idea of desecularization like to point out that the original secularization thesis was the product of an intellectual climate prevailing at a time when the decline or even disappearance of religion seemed plausible, particularly in western Europe. The thriving religious culture of the United States, however, always provided a stumbling block for the secularization thesis. Whereas parts of the developing world might be predicted to secularize in the wake of wider modernization, the United States, though arguably a modernized country, showed very little or no signs of secularization. Therefore, the term American exceptionalism was sometimes used to account for this anomalous case. Today, however, from the perspective of desecularization, it is Europe that seems exceptional. In other words, while the importance of religion in public life and individual consciousness may indeed have declined in some parts of Europe, secularization cannot be considered a global phenomenon.

...