Public and Private Religion

The classic dichotomy between public and private religion is at the heart of numerous attempts to analyze and locate religion, even if often only one element is included in the analysis, such as exploring public religion-state relations or analyzing the links between private religion and altruism. Modern societies are committed to the increasing independence of social systems (societal differentiation), one example of which is the privatization of religion, or religious individualism. For instance, the majority of the American baby boomers are religiously privatized. The overall societal differentiation is gained and maintained by the public-private distinction. This dichotomy is, however, rooted in the traditional way of looking at social relations and institutions (domestic life vs. the public and third sectors) and has been challenged.

Still, this dichotomy is also useful today, particularly in empirical survey research (e.g., in trying to detect and measure interconnections between the parts of religiosity and various phenomena, acts, and attitudes). Public religion then refers to expressions of religious faith or behavior in the public sphere, and what is important is that the agent of such expressions may be individuals, communities, or public institutions. Private religiosity then refers to all individual-level private expressions of religious faith and behavior, such as prayer or the importance of religion or God in an individual's life. Various other elements of individual-level religiosity (such as attendance at religious services) are, however, examples of public religiosity. Overall, expressions of individual-level religiosity and the general question of why people become religious have been analyzed from various perspectives, including deprivatization theory, socialization theory, rational choice theory, and the theory of the search for meaning and belonging.

Many classic studies (and a few even today) took it for granted that religion would be doomed to (above-noted) privatization and away from public life. However, since the late 1970s, religion has increasingly appeared in the public sphere in various contexts in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. The first prominent scholars to analyze this process have been Robert N. Bellah and José Casanova in particular, arguing that religion is indeed still a force for collective action and togetherness as well as political mobilization. Bellah has scrutinized the question of civil religion: religious factors existing and functioning independently of churches and states. Casanova modifies the public-private dichotomy by focusing on the mediating category of civil society. He has analyzed the role of the Catholic Church in different democratization processes, showing that the Church and Catholic groups that have previously resisted democratization have become positive and even proactive in the processes of democratization. Thus, the role of religion does not imply privatization but a modern public religion. Indeed, our time is witnessing a rise in both the public and the political roles of religion. Casanova focuses on the deprivatization of religion, through which religions refuse to adopt a detached and privatized role previously assumed to be a consequence of modernization (secularization).

Casanova argues that deprivatization of religion may take place in three ways. First, religions have begun to defend the traditional lifeworld against modern processes, which disrupt things such as the patriarchal family model. Religion enters the public sphere and raises public discussion on these issues. Second, religions enter the public sphere to question the action of states and markets. Religions can use their position to remind societies and individuals of the need to subordinate such institutions to the common good and to regulate them to become more responsive to human needs. Third, religious traditions may maintain the principle of the common good against the claims that reduce it to an aggregated sum of individual rational choices. Religions can bring issues of private morality into the public sphere and force societies to confront the task of reconstructing their own normative foundations. Various scholars have used Casanova's perspective to explore national cases. Broader trends are obvious too; religion in Europe has been unexpectedly prominent during the last two decades in public debates and actions over welfare and in combating social problems. Another example is that religious organizations in the United States are involved in care in very substantial ways, through both informal partnership and their own programs. Indeed, and as noted by Casanova in a 2001 article, even though organized religion in the [Page 1034]United States is very different in its history and composition from that in Europe, it has similar public functions in society.

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