Secularization Falsified

by Peter L. Berger
Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (February 2008).

It has been more than a century since Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. The prophecy
was widely accepted as referring to an alleged fact about increasing disbelief in religion, both by those
who rejoiced in it and those who deplored it. As the twentieth century proceeded, however, the alleged
fact became increasingly dubious. And it is very dubious indeed as a description of our point in time at
the beginning of the twenty-first century. Religion has not been declining. On the contrary, in much of
the world there has been a veritable explosion of religious faith.
Ever since the Enlightenment, intellectuals of every stripe have believed that the inevitable
consequence of modernity is the decline of religion. The reason was supposed to be the progress of
science and its concomitant rationality, replacing the irrationality and superstition of religion. Not only
Nietzsche but other seminal modern thinkers thought so—notably Marx (religion as opiate of the
masses) and Freud (religion as illusion).
So did the two great figures of classical sociology. Emile Durkheim explained religion as
nothing but a metaphor of social order. Max Weber believed that what he called “rationalization”—the
increasing dominance of a scientific mindset—would destroy the “magical garden” of premodern
worldviews. To be sure, the two had different attitudes toward this alleged insight. Durkheim, an
Enlightened atheist, saw modern secularity as progress. Weber was not happy about what he saw—
ostensibly the imprisonment of modern man in the “iron cage” of rationality. But, happily or
nostalgically, both agreed on what was supposedly happening.
Not to put too fine a point on it, they were mistaken. Modernity is not intrinsically
secularizing, though it has been so in particular cases (one of which, as I will argue in a moment, is
very relevant for the phenomenon of secularism).
The mistake, I think, can be described as a confusion of categories: Modernity is not
necessarily secularizing; it is necessarily pluralizing. Modernity is characterized by an increasing
plurality, within the same society, of different beliefs, values, and worldviews. Plurality does indeed
pose a challenge to all religious traditions—each one must cope with the fact that there are “all these
others,” not just in a faraway country but right next door. This challenge, however, is not the one
assumed by secularization theory.
Looked at globally, there are two particularly powerful religious explosions—resurgent Islam
and dynamic evangelical Protestantism. Passionate Islamic movements are on the rise throughout the
Muslim world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the China Sea, and in the Muslim diaspora in the West. The
rise of evangelical Protestantism has been less noticed by intellectuals, the media, and the general
public in Western countries, partly because nowhere is it associated with violence and partly because it
more directly challenges the assumptions of established elite opinion: David Martin, a leading British
sociologist of religion, has called it a “revolution that was not supposed to happen.” Yet it has spread
more rapidly and over a larger geographical area than resurgent Islam. What is more, the Islamic
growth has occurred mostly in populations that were already Muslim—a revitalization rather than a
conversion. By contrast, evangelical Protestantism has been penetrating parts of the world in which
this form of religion was hitherto unknown. And it has done so by means of mass conversions.
By far the most numerous and dynamic segment of what I am calling this evangelical
diffusion has been Pentecostalism. It began almost exactly one hundred years ago in a number of
locations in the United States, as small groups of people began to speak in tongues and experience
miraculous healing. From its beginning, Pentecostalism was actively proselytizing, mostly in America
(though there were early outposts abroad—even, curiously enough, in Sweden). But the big
Pentecostal explosion began in the 1950s, especially in the developing countries, and it has been
intensifying ever since. The boundaries of Pentecostalism are somewhat vague: It is a
multidimensional phenomenon, with explicitly Pentecostal denominations, local Pentecostal
congregations with no denominational affiliations, and Pentecostal-like eruptions within mainline
Protestant and Catholic churches. If one subsumes these groups under the general heading of
charismatics, there are four hundred million of them, according to a recent study by the Pew Research
Center.
Religious dynamism is not confined to Islam and Pentecostalism. The Catholic Church, in
trouble in Europe, has been doing well in the Global South. There is a revival of the Orthodox Church
in Russia. Orthodox Judaism has been rapidly growing in America and in Israel. Both Hinduism and
Buddhism have experienced revivals, and the latter has had some successes in proselytizing in
America and Europe.
Simply put: Modernity is not characterized by the absence of God but by the presence of many
gods—with two exceptions to this picture of a furiously religious world. One is geographical: Western
and Central Europe. The causes and present shape of what one may call Eurosecularity constitute one
of the most interesting problems in the sociology of contemporary religion. The other exception is
perhaps even more relevant to the question of secularization, for it is constituted by an international
cultural elite, essentially a globalization of the Enlightened intelligentsia of Europe. It is everywhere a
minority of the population—but a very influential one.
Secularism thus finds itself in a global context of dynamic religiosity, which means that it
faces some serious challenges. We might distinguish three versions of secularism.
First, the term may refer to accepting the consequences for religion of the institutional
differentiation that is a crucial feature of modernity. Social activities that were undertaken in
premodern societies within a unified institutional context are now dispersed among several
institutions.
The education of children, for example, used to occur within the family or tribe, but it is now
handled by specialized institutions. Educational personnel, who used to be family members with no
special training, must now be specially trained to undertake their task in teacher-training institutions,
which in turn spout further institutions, such as state certification agencies and teachers’ unions.
Religion has gone through a comparable process of differentiation—what used to be an
activity of the entire community is now organized in specialized institutions. The Christian Church,
long before the advent of modernity, provided a prototype of religious specialization—the realm of
Caesar separated from that of God. What modernity does is to make the differentiation much more
ample and diffused.
One path for this development is the denominational system typical of American religion, with
a plurality of separate religious institutions available on a free market. The American case makes clear
that secularism, as an ideology that accepts the institutional specialization of religion, need not imply
an antireligious animus. This moderate attitude toward religion is then expressed in a moderate
understanding of the separation of church and state. The state is not hostile to religion but draws back
from direct involvement in religious matters and recognizes the autonomy of religious institutions.
The second type of secularism, however, is characterized precisely by antireligious animus, at
least as far as the public role of religion is concerned. The French understanding of the state originated
in the anti-Christian animus of the continental Enlightenment and was politically established by the
French Revolution.
This second type of secularism, with religion considered a strictly private matter, can be
relatively benign, as it is in contemporary France. Religious symbols or actions are rigorously barred
from political life, but privatized religion is protected by law.
The third type of secularism is anything but benign, as in the practice of the Soviet Union and
other communist regimes. But what characterizes both the benign and the malevolent versions of
laïcité is that religion is evicted from public life and confined to private space. There have been
tendencies in America toward a French version of secularism, located in such groups as the American
Civil Liberties Union or Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. What may be
called the ACLU viewpoint is pithily captured in an old Jewish joke: A man tries to enter a synagogue
during the High Holidays. The usher stops the man and says that only people with reserved seats may
enter. “But it is a matter of life and death,” says the man. “I must speak to Mr. Shapiro—his wife has
been taken to the hospital.” “All right,” says the usher, “you can go in. But don’t let me catch you
praying.” The punch line accurately describes the ACLU’s position on any provision of public
services (from school buses to medical facilities) to faith-based institutions.
All typologies oversimplify social reality, but it is useful to think here of a spectrum of
secularisms: There is the moderate version, typified by the traditional American view of church-state
separation. Then there is the more radical version, typified by French laïcité and more recently by the
ACLU, in which religion is both confined to the private sphere and protected by legally enforced
freedom of religion. And then there is, as in the Soviet case, a secularism that privatizes religion and
seeks to repress it. Its adherents can be as fanatical as any religious fundamentalists.
 All these types of secularism are being vigorously challenged. Even the moderate version of
secularism, as institutionalized in an American-style separation of church and state, is being
challenged by the contemporary religious movements that reject the differentiation between religious
institutions and the rest of society. Their alternative is the dominance of religion over every sphere of
human life.
For obvious reasons, most attention is now focused on the radical Islamic challenge. This
challenge is represented by the ideal of a Shari’a state—that is, of a society in which every aspect of
public and private life is subjected to Islamic law. Muslims differ as to whether this view is essential
to the faith as proclaimed in the Qur’an or whether it is a later accretion that could be modified.
Regardless, the call for an all-embracing Islamic state resonates strongly among contemporary
Muslims. It is by no means limited to Jihadists, who want to establish such a state by violent means.
Many Muslims who have no inclination toward terrorism or holy war have similar views.
Nor is such a view of religion dominating all of society peculiar to Muslims. The ideal of a
Shari’a state has strong similarity with the ideal of a halakhic state propagated by some Orthodox
Jewish groups in Israel. In India, the ideology of hindutva has similar ambitions, as have powerful
groups within Russian Orthodoxy calling for a “monolithic unity of church and state” (a phrase used
recently by a high official of the Moscow Patriarchate). In all these cases, the term fundamentalism is
appropriate.
In progressive circles in America, comparable ambitions are frequently attributed to
evangelical Protestants and Catholics. The attribution is empirically untenable. Only a very small
minority of evangelicals, in the United States and elsewhere, want to set up a Christian state.
As to the Catholic Church, the last time it sought to establish a Catholic state was when it
supported the Nationalist side in the Spanish Civil War. Since the Second Vatican Council, such a
stance is unthinkable. Indeed, as Samuel Huntington has pointed out, the Catholic Church has become
an important factor in democratization, notably in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Philippines.
One must make an important distinction between movements animated by genuinely religious
motives and movements where religious labels are attached to agendas that are nonreligious.
Admittedly it is difficult to decide which motives are genuinely religious and which are not.
There are, however, fairly clear instances of both. A suicide bomber in the Middle East may be trusted
when he says that he is doing so to witness to the greatness of God. Social scientists (most of whom
are quite secular in outlook) tend to believe that religious motives are suspect, that they are used to
legitimate the “root causes” underlying a conflict. This is a bias that fails to understand the motivating
power of religious faith.
And yet there are also clear instances of religious labels stuck on agendas rooted in very
material interests. One such case is the Bosnian conflict, where religious markers were attached to
clashes of political and ethnic interests. As P.J. O’Rourke once put it: There are three groups in the
Bosnian conflict. They look alike, and they speak the same language. They are divided only by
religion, which none of them believe in. Another case is Northern Ireland. And this case is again
nicely illustrated by a joke: A gunman jumps out of a doorway, holds a gun to a man’s head and asks,
“Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Actually,” says the man, “I’m an atheist.” “Ah, yes,” replies the
gunman, “but are you a Catholic or a Protestant atheist?”
A country in which the challenge to secularism is politically prominent right now is Turkey.
The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 by Atatürk, who was decidedly anti-Islamic and probably
antireligious in general. He wanted to “civilize” Turkey, and civilization for him meant the secular
culture of Europe. His political model was the French one—public life made, as it were, antiseptically
free of religious symbols and behavior. Thus Atatürk proscribed the traditional fez as male headgear,
insisting that Turkish men don European-style hats or caps. (This, by the way, had a very visible anti-
Islamic implication: It is difficult wearing headgear with a visor in front to touch one’s forehead to the
ground in the mandatory obeisance of Muslim prayer.)
This secularist ideology was firmly established in large sectors of Turkey’s society,
particularly in the Kemalist political and military elite. It was dominant in urban, middle-class
populations. Back in the Anatolian hinterland, a deeply Muslim culture continued to prevail, with
people paying lip service to the Kemalist ideology but at the same time passively resisting it in family
and community life.
In recent years, this resistance turned politically active. A series of avowedly Islamic parties
entered the political process, challenging the Kemalist orthodoxy. For a while, the military intervened
to stop such parties from taking power. But this has become progressively more difficult. One reason
is that masses of Anatolians migrated to the urban centers, bringing their Muslim culture with them.
Another is that Turkey (partly motivated by the elite’s desire to have the country admitted to the
European Union) has become more democratic, and, as a result, all those unenlightened people are
actually voting. And yet another reason is that some in the elite have come to doubt the old secularist
orthodoxy and become lukewarm in their resistance to political Islam.
At present, an Islamist party is in power. Its leaders say they have no desire to overthrow the
secular republic or to establish a Shari’a state. So far the military has not intervened, limiting itself to
muttering threats. The most visible challenge from the religious side has been the insistence by many
Muslim women on their right to wear the headscarf, the symbol of Islamic modesty, in public
institutions—a practice still prohibited. (It is interesting how often headgear has become a flashpoint
for conflict between secularists and pious Muslims—from the male fez to the hijab.)
The outcome of these Turkish debates has importance far beyond Turkey. The Pahlavi regime
in Iran consciously tried to emulate Atatürk’s secular state. Again there was passive resistance by a
strongly religious populace. And again the latter finally attained power. But the difference between the
two paths to power clearly shows that the challenge to secularism can take very different forms: In
Iran, an Islamic state has been set up by revolution and is marked by an oppressive dictatorship in
which the Shi’ite clergy exercise hegemony. In Turkey, the Islamic party came to power through
democratic elections, and thus far (though the Kemalists continue to have dark suspicions) it has not
only observed the rules of the secular state but has actually made it more democratic.
What the two cases have in common was the blindness of the Enlightened intelligentsia to see
what was coming. My only visit to Iran occurred in 1976, two years before the Islamic revolution.
With one exception, all the intellectuals I met were opposed to the shah, and most of them expected a
revolution. None of them expected the revolution that actually occurred, however, and I never heard
mention of the Ayatollah Khomeini. About the same time, my wife was lecturing in Turkey. On her
way through Istanbul, she noticed green flags (symbols of Islam) flying from houses and storefronts.
She asked her host (an Enlightened university professor) whether these flags signified a resurgence of
Islam. “Not at all,” replied the professor, “they are just put up by migrants from the provinces,
ignorant people, who will never have much of an influence.”
On a much more recent visit to Turkey, I had an experience that may serve as a metaphor for
the religious challenge to secularism, not only in Turkey but everywhere: A main tourist attraction in
Ankara (indeed, just about the only tourist attraction) is the mausoleum of Kemal Atatürk. It is an
imposing building, on a hill from which one gets a panoramic view of the city. At the time of my visit,
in the center of the city one can see only one big mosque (built quite recently by the Saudis). Thus the
city center, Atatürk’s capital, was quite literally a public space cleansed of all religious symbolism.
But Ankara has expanded enormously since the 1920s, and the center is ringed by a great number of
newer urban areas. As far as one can see, every one of these has a mosque. Thus Islam is besieging the
capital of Kemalist secularism not only politically but physically.
Two instructive additional cases of a secular elite facing a popular religious challenge are
India and Israel. When India became independent in 1947—and Nehru gave his famous speech
celebrating India’s “tryst with destiny”—the new state was explicitly defined as a secular republic. No
hostility to religion, Hindu or other, was implied by that phrase. After all, Gandhi served (and still
serves) as a national icon. Mainly it was to set India off against Pakistan, which became independent
at the same time, defined as a state for Muslims. By contrast, India was understood as a state in which
all religious communities were to feel at home—Hindus as well as Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and
Christians.
India today is still defined in its constitution as a secular republic, in the sense of neutrality
with regard to all religious communities. But, as a matter of fact, India is one of the most religious
countries in the world, and more than 80 percent of its population is Hindu. Inevitably, this has
political repercussions. In recent decades, the Congress party, which had presided over the founding
tryst, has continued to uphold the secularist ideal (which is why Muslims mostly vote for it). But the
major opposition comes from a party rooted in a vigorous affirmation of Hinduism as the core of
Indian civilization. And the party, now called the BJP, has periodically held power both in several
states and in the Union government.
 Israel is remarkably similar in its secular and religious dynamic. The state proclaimed its
independence a year after India. It did identify itself as a Jewish state, but this identity in no way
implied that it would be a state with Judaism as the established religion. Like India, Israel has been a
democracy from its beginning, and its non-Jewish minorities of Muslims and Christians were
supposed to be full citizens.
As it turned out, there have been tensions between the dual identity of Israel as a democratic
and a Jewish state, especially since the acquisition of the Palestinian territories after the l967 war. It is
not surprising that Arab citizens of Israel have been uncomfortable as a result of these tensions. But
what is directly relevant to the present topic is that many religious Jews have been uncomfortable by
the secular, religiously neutral character of the state.
For a long time the political and cultural elite was strongly secular. There is no precise
equivalent to India’s BJP in Israel, but the major opposition party, the Likud, has drawn much of its
strength from Jewish voters who resent the secular elite (to be sure, for many reasons, not just because
of its secularity). Again not surprisingly, many Arab citizens have been voting for Labor.
Yet another instructive case is the United States. The religious challenge to secularism has
been an important fact of American culture and politics for the past forty years or so. Unlike modern
Turkey, India, and Israel, the American republic was not created under a secularist banner. The
American Enlightenment was very different from the French, and the Founding Fathers, though some
were not particularly pious Christians, were certainly not antireligious. Nor did the First Amendment
have a secularist intention but rather was intended to preserve peace between the different
denominations of what was then a mainly Protestant nation.
This arrangement worked very well for a long time. And the circle of tolerance has expanded
steadily—from the different Protestant denominations, to Catholics and Jews, and finally to just about
any religious community that does not engage in illegal or clearly outrageous behavior.
What has changed in more recent times (I suspect, beginning in the 1930s) was what could be
called a Europeanization of the cultural elite. This elite was increasingly secular, and its politics
became increasingly secularist (a sort of Kemalization, if you will). All along, though, the general
population continued to be stubbornly religious.
This religiosity, especially in its evangelical version, was looked down on by the elite. H.L.
Mencken’s contemptuous treatment of evangelicals in his writings (notably in his account of the so-
called Dayton Monkey Trial) ably represented this elite perception—and still does. To be progressive
came to mean secular. The United States continues, by any measure, to be the most religious society in
the Western world. Sooner or later, this situation had to lead to a political clash. Just as in Turkey,
India, and Israel, the nonprogressive populace was going to rebel against the elite—and it was going to
use the mechanisms of democracy to do so.
There were two clear flashpoints sparking the rebellion. Both involved the Supreme Court, the
least democratic of the three arms of government: the 1963 prohibition of prayer in the public schools
and the 1973 prohibition of laws against abortion. And, as a result, in a curious reversal of the earlier
relation to class by the two major parties, Republicans won the allegiance of the religious rebels and
Democrats reflected the secularist biases of the elite. In recent elections, it turns out, degree of
religious commitment—Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish—was the single best predictor of how people
were going to vote.
I think the positioning of the two parties was accidental; it might just as well have been the
other way around. But once the dichotomous identification became established, secularists and
strongly religious voters both became important elements of the two parties. They supply the activists
—the people who write checks, who volunteer in campaigns, who ring doorbells, and who address
envelopes.
All this is fascinating for any social scientist trying to understand contemporary cultural and
political developments. Should it matter to anyone else? The answer is yes, if one is concerned for the
future of democracy in the contemporary world.
There is the general view that fundamentalism is bad for democracy because it hinders the
moderation and willingness to compromise that make democracy possible. Fair enough. But it is very
important to understand that there are secularist as well as religious fundamentalists—both unwilling
to question their assumptions, militant, aggressive, contemptuous of anyone who differs from them.
H.L. Mencken was just as much a fundamentalist as William Jennings Bryan (though Mencken was
wittier). There are fundamentalists of one stripe who think that religious tyranny is around the corner
if a Christmas tree is erected on public property. There are fundamentalists of the other stripe who
believe that the nation is about to sink into moral anarchy if the Ten Commandments are removed
from a courtroom.
In plain language, fundamentalists are fanatics. And fanatics have a built-in advantage over
more moderate people: Fanatics have nothing else to do—they have no life beyond their cause. The
rest of us have other interests: family, work, hobbies, vices. Yet we too must be militant in defense of
certain core values of our civilization and our political system. It seems to me that a very important
task in our time (and probably in any time) is to be militant in defense of moderation—a difficult task
but not an impossible one.