A history of the secularization issue

man's feeling of dependance, whereas in Barth it is on God's incommensurable act (Heron 1980, p. 78).

216 It is curious to note that the analogy between the development of the human organism and the evolution of society, which was so widely criticized in some thinking of the nineteenth-century sociologists, is set forth in the crudest terms by this otherwise very sophisticated thinker. But this should not really come as a surprise to us, since theology, insofar as it is not committed to the same axiological neutrality as sociology, can afford - and, indeed, is compelled - to make such value judgments on the sense of history.

217 On this point, see also Cox 1965, pp. 85-89.

218 The difference between the two words can be rendered in English by the contrast between "autonomy" and "independence".

219 The functional definition in sociology which defines religion as a concern with "ultimate reality" can be traced to Tillich (Isambert 1976, p. 576, n. 8).

220 However, Robinson denies having any responsibility in this: the initiative to write the summary article, as well as the provoking title, came from the staff of the Observer (Edwards 1963, pp. 234-35).

221 Evidence that these three books were, in 1965, considered as belonging to the same movement can be found in a number of comments; see for instance Callahan 1966, p. 23.

222 According to the Social Science Citation Index, between 1966 and 1970, Cox's book got three citations in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, one citation in Sociological Analysis, 5 citations in Social Compass, and 4 citations in the Review of Religious Research. In the same period, Robinson's book got only three citations in Social Compass, and none in the other journals, while Van Buren's got no citations in any of these journals.

223 I will come back on this very interesting debate in chapter 13.

224 At this point, Cox refers to Weber, but only in a general fashion, although he refers to Ancient Judaism on p. 51, n. 5).

225 Reference is made to Weber's Protestant Ethic.

226 A Franciscan.

227 President of the CISR from and professor at the Catholic Faculties in Lyon.

228 For instance James Beckford (Interview).

229 Interview.

230 Interview with Roland Campiche.

231 This paper was presented at the 1966 SSSR meeting (In this context, the role played by an organization like the SSSR, in which all the persons interested by the study of religion can meet - whether they be sociologist, historians of religion or theologians - deserves to be be stressed).

232 Although this paper was only indirectly related to secularization, it constituted an elaboration on the main theme of the Secular City.

233 Richard Fenn, interview.

234 Interview with Bryan Wilson. On the Rationalist Press Association, see Chap. 7.

235 Probably René König (Interview with Thomas Luckmann).

236 Arnold Bergstraesser, editor of the sociological collection of Rombach, in Freiburg (Interview with Thomas Luckmann).

237 Thus, Thomas Luckmann embarked in his first research in the sociology of religion - a discipline in which he was not particularly interested from a professional point of view - because he needed a job. As his friend Peter Berger was drafted in the army, he took over his job (Interview with Thomas Luckmann). Bryan Wilson also describes his first involvement in the sociology of religion as rather accidental (Interview with Bryan Wilson).

238 With the exception of a short paper entitled "God in Retirement", published in Nineteenth Century and After (Bryan Wilson, personal communication).

239 My reconstruction is always limited to technical adaptations allowing me to save space and to present the theories in a way that allows comparison between them. I am confident that, in doing this, I am not betraying the authors' intentions. An earlier such reconstruction (which, however, did not include the exemplar framework) was presented to Wilson, Luckmann, and Fenn. None of them objected to my reading of their theory.

240 Current Biography 1983, p. 28.

241 A complete bibliography of Berger's works can be found in Making Sense of Modern Times: Peter L. Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology. Edited by James D. Hunter and Stephen C. Ainlay. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

242 Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 19, p. 306.

243 Schriftenverzeichnis, roneotyped document provided by Thomas Luckmann.

244 Probably René König (Interview with Thomas Luckmann).

245 "Die Frage, die die Religionssoziologie immer mehr wird beschäftigen müssen, ist also nicht die - historisch zentrale - Problematik der "Säkulkarisierung" [...] und ihrer strukturellen Voraussetzungen, die zur Entleerung bestimmter Sinnzusammenhänge, zum Wirklichkeitsverlust ganzer symbolischer Realitätsschichten und zur Privatisierung der traditionellen Kirchlichkeit führen. Die soziologisch zentral Frage wird vielmehr sein müssen, was denn der Sinnzusammenhang der jetzt gültigen oder gültig werdenden symbolischen Realität sei, wie die innere Struktur ihrer Thematik beschaffen sei und inwiefern sie eine Christiliche Thematik weiterführt" (Luckmann 1960, p. 326).

246 "The project of which this book is the realization was first concocted in the summer of 1962, in the course of some leisurely conversations at the foot of and (occasionally) on top of the Alps of western Austria. The first plan of the book was drawn up early in 1963" (Berger and Luckmann 1966a, p. 8).

247 As a matter of fact, although all the theoretical foundations relating to secularization theory derived from this work will be briefly presented, the following presentation is based on the assumption that the reader is familiar with this book.

248 The English version is not a simple translation; it was entirely rewritten by Luckmann himself (Interview with Thomas Luckmann). It contains two additional chapters: "The Anthropological Condition of Religion" (III) and "Modern Religious Themes" (VII). But this reorganization does not substantially modify the intent of the first version, at least with regard to the secularization process. I will therefore rely mainly on the later version.

249 As will become clear later on, Luckmann understands this term in a somewhat particular sense.

250 But, Luckmann's argument goes on, in this restricted sense (which is precisely the one put forward in the CISR paradigm) the concept would lose much of its mythological power.

251 For the sake of clarity, the exemplars will be separated graphically from the rest of the text by an italic title on the right margin and by a line on the left margin.

252 In giving his account of differentiation, Luckmann's intention was to distinguish himself from traditional formulations of this theory, as they had been expressed in functionalism (1967, p. 23). The whole point of my approach, however, is precisely to show that an exemplar can be "transferred" from one theoretical context to another, and can be used in a way contrary to some of the author's intentions.

253 Luckmann's views on simple societies are based on Redfield (Luckmann 1967, p. 61; 1979, pp. 128 and 130).

254 Note the implications of this point: secularization has religious roots. This particular statement, however, was made in a more classic form by Berger.

255 Luckmann goes on to explain: "It is this unique and transitory historical situation which is mistaken by the contemporary myths of secularization for a lasting structural arrangement between society and religion".

256 As we will see, this point is also very important in Wilson's theory.

257 The same considerations apply to The Heretical Imperative (1979).

258 It may be more surprising in the framework of Wilson's, though.

259 In 1967, Berger explicitly refused to consider that religion had been generalized*: "The religious legitimations of the state [...] remain as rhetorical ornamentations devoid of social reality" (Berger 1967, p. 133). Later on, he softened his stance, and discussed American civil religion without considering it as mere rhetoric (Berger [1973] 1977, pp. 148-161).

260 The reason for this choice is probably related to a desire to jog the most conservative of the "religiously-inclined observers". Berger experienced a dramatic shift in his religious positions in the direction of liberalism in the 50s and early 60s (1980, p. 41), and since then, he always seems to enjoy very much being able to use the sociological perspective to unmask the inauthenticity of certain religious views (see for instance 1961b, pp. 146-60). More important, however, is another reason: As we will see at the beginning of the section on the collapse of the world view, Berger refuses, for theoretical reasons, to consider that any world view is intrinsically superior to another, and therefore considers that it is wrong to start from the level of ideas to establish causal connections.

261 Berger does not use this exact phrase; he speaks of the "collapse of the plausibility of traditional definitions of reality" (1967, p. 127). The difference, however, is only terminological. By collapse of the world view*, I refer exactly to what Berger proposes.

262 Why is it, Berger asks, that secular theologians, for instance, "take [...] for granted the epistemological superiority of the electricity and radio-users over the New Testament writers - to the point when the theoretical possibility that there may be a non-scientific reality that has been lost to modern man is not even considered. In other words, secularized consciousness is taken for granted, not just as an empirical datum but as an unquestioned standard of objective validity" (Berger [1967] 1977, pp. 169-70). Berger again develops this argument in A Rumor of Angels: "We may agree, say, that contemporary consciousness is incapable of conceiving of either angels or demons. We are still left with the question of whether, possibly, both angels and demons go on existing despite this incapacity of our contemporaries to conceive of them" (Berger 1969, p. 52).

263 He notes that the only instance of a reversal of this tendency - Barthian neo-orthodoxy - was rather "accidental" (1967, p. 166), as it coincided with the rise of Hitlerism, which seemed to crystallize all the evils of modernity. The counter-trend reversed as soon as this area came to an end: "The turning point can be dated with embarrassing clarity in 1948 - the year of the currency reform and the beginning of economic recovery. At this point, the 'outside' world, including its secularized character, becomes much more difficult to see as 'the enemy'" (1967, p. 164).

264 But Wilson had prepared for this degree at the University College, Leicester - then a college of London University (Bryan Wilson, personal communication).

265 Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol 19, p. 485.

266 Interview with Bryan Wilson.

267 The same interest is evident from the concluding sentence of a paper published the previous year in French: "De même que l'individu nerveusement marginal est susceptible d'éclairer le processus mental des autres hommes, ces sectes contemporaines ne pourraient-elles pas illustrer le malaise social de notre temps?" (Wilson 1958, p. 150).

268 Quoted in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, vol. 19, p. 485.

269 Lately, however, he somewhat softened his stance: "Certainly, it is an open question whether secularization is reversible" (Wilson 1985b, p. 17).

270 At several points, he explicitly refuses Luckmann's notion of "invisible religion" (see for instance Wilson 1976a, p. 4).

271 This position most likely reflects Wilson's personal dislike for grand theory more than any uncertainties about the process of secularization.

272 In the interview, Wilson repeatedly stressed this point.

273 His conception of rationality is not very articulate, nor very original. Even in the introduction to the volume on Rationality he edited (Wilson 1970), he did not come forward with any clear-cut conception of his own going beyond Weber.

274 Indeed, Wilson told me that he had written Religion in Secular Society in a matter of weeks because of what, tongue-in-cheek, he referred to as a "threat" from Watts, his publisher: Wilson's book was scheduled to be published at the same time as a book by Julian Huxley (apparently a reedition of Religion Without Revelation published by Watts in 1967). As Wilson absolutely wanted to avoid giving the impression that he was a "secularist" (like Huxley) he wrote his book very quickly so that it could be published before Huxley's (Interview).

275 Other examples of tendencies toward worldliness are evident in the "absorption of the Churches by the society, and their loss of religious content" (Wilson 1966, p. 114) in America, and in the tendency toward ecumenism, which provides a pretext for adjusting the denominations to secular values (1966, p. 130).

276 Unless we were to put all the considerations on the effects of the newly emerging institutional spheres on religion under the heading of pluralization, instead of considering them as part of the process of autonomization (which is the course of action I follow, as it seems to me to better reflect Wilson's own intentions).

277 Wilson's argument is obviously very close to Berger's: The plausibility of religion declined because its social base had disappeared: "Christianity was an effective religious system as long as cultural constraints were solemnized in community life. But once anonymity and impersonality became the dominant experience of man in western society, so Christianity, like any institutionalized religion, lost its grip on culture" (Wilson 1976a, p. 103).

278 This point is very close to the one made by Berger (see the section on unbelief* in the presentation of Berger's theory above).

279 In his stress on the discontents brought about by secularization, Wilson is very close to both Luckmann and Berger. Berger also laments the "loss of community" (see for instance Berger [1976] 1977, p. 60), and his general anti-modernist stance in Facing up to Modernity (1977) is very similar in its intent, if not in its tone, to Wilson's chapter on "Secularization and its Discontents" (Wilson 1982, pp. 148-179). While he does not as explicitly share this stance, Luckmann seems to agree with Wilson's general appreciation on the decline of the role of socialization (see for instance Luckmann 1979, p. 135).

280 "Societalization" is a word coined by Wilson himself (Wilson 1982, p. 154, n. 6).

281 The International Authors and Writers Who's Who.

282 Some of these informations appear on the dust jacket of Martin 1969.

283 Martin's argument rests mainly on the assumption that, as "worldliness", for example, can be defined in a number of different and incompatible ways, it is not a meaningful concept. Martin furthermore argues that one cannot even resort to the alternative of selecting one of these definitions at the expense of the others, since this course of action would lead to "unintelligibility. For example, an analytic definition which identified the secular in terms of an acceptance of power and wealth would require the growth of the Christian Church and its subsequent dominance to be taken as illustrating a process of successful secularization" (Martin [1965] 1969, p. 13).

284 Martin's vocabulary is very picturesque. Witness for example this alternative formulation of the same idea: "Certain 'general' processes in modern society are funnelled through varied patterns which alter their form, color, pace and detailed impact" (Martin 1978, p. viii).

285 This happened fairly often in the interviews.

286 This analysis contains nothing original. Its main elements are: 1) differentiation; 2) the impact of science; 3) a variety of other processes, like social mobility and technical change.

287 Of course, one could contend that sloppiness can be explained on account of the author's failures. In the case that interests us, however, what must be noted is that Martin's theory has been very well received by the scientific community (a fact that particularly struck me in my interviews: Everyone admires Martin's theory very much) in spite of its "sloppiness". This fact, I would contend, can only be understood against the paradigm background.

288 As opposed to the "vicious circle" obtaining in Catholic monopolies.

289 Differentiation is defined by Martin as "the process whereby each social sector becomes specialized" (Martin 1978, p. 69).

290 Interview with Richard Fenn.

291 For a detailed discussion of Fenn's position on social integration as contrasted with Parsons', see Tschannen 1989.

292 Bell was not mentioned in the 1970 paper.

293 Fenn does refer to Wilson, but rather on the subject of sects.

294 This again illustrates how a thinking in terms of paradigm, rather than in terms of theoretical frameworks, allows us to understand the common infrastructure of different approaches.

295 In characterizing civil religion as "inauthentic rhetoric", Fenn is not being faithful to his own principles: he implicitly draws on a definition of religion that must be his own, personal definition, instead of leaving that decision to the social actors. If we follow Fenn's own methodology, the question whether civil religion is authentic or not can only be decided by the social struggle over the boundaries of religion.

296 The notion of the dispersion of the sacred is taken from Edward Shils (Fenn 1978, p. 36).

297 This argument is reminiscent of Luckmann's notion of privatization. Both hinge on the idea that the individual is free to choose his own religious world view, precisely to the extent that this world view is irrelevant to the workings of the institutional order. Like Luckmann, Fenn shows that modern society is characterized by a new relationship of the individual to the social order.

298 Social Compass 37 (1), 1990, p. 44.

299 Interview with Karel Dobbelaere.

300 The first meeting he attended was in 1962, just before leaving for the United States (Interview).

301 Dobbelaere does use the term rationalization, but not in this particular passage.

302 I would not like to give the impression that Dobbelaere did not discuss these aspects. He devoted 34 pages to religious change, and 20 pages to religious involvement (as compared with 65 pages devoted to secularization). But he discussed secularization first, and the main thrust of the report was clearly more on this first dimension: "Although both topics, religious change and involvement, extend beyond the compass of this study, I will discuss them in so far as they are related to laicisation" (1981, p. 14).

303 For a presentation of Yinger's argument, see chapter 10.

304 I have discussed this approach, and my reasons for disagreeing with it, in chapter 1.

305 Dobbelaere's late attempt to include Luhmann into the paradigm seems not to have been very successful thus far (Luhmann was mentioned in the 1981 report, but rather as someone exemplifying a different approach).

306 See for instance Bellah 1970, p. 20; Parsons 1974, p. 204.

307 The only reference known to me is a cursory remark by Parsons to the effect that "the story [is not even] fully told in the usual sense of the term 'secularization' as used even by so sensitive a student as Peter L. Berger" (Parsons 1974, p. 203).

308 "The main common normative structure has come to be placed on a level of higher and higher generalization if it was to include wider ranges of pluralistic diversity" (1966, p. 138).

309 The only place to my knowledge where Bellah hints at the complementarity of the two approaches is found in the paper on Religious Evolution. In this paper, where he gives an account of the process of privatization*, he also mentions the institutionalization of religious values in society at large - without, however, explicitly referring to civil religion (Bellah 1970, p. 39).

310 For the brief summary provided here, it is not necessary to rely on the more detailed, but also more ambivalent, account given in The Broken Covenant (Bellah 1975).

311 However, there is at least one major difference: Herberg's "common faith" has a private, as well as a public dimension (Herberg 1955, p. 89).

312 The same type of analysis had already been put forward by Le Bras (1964).

313 As we can see, this term was not used by Isambert in the sense as by Luckmann.

314 One of the main reasons for that may be the exasperatingly disorganized pattern of the work. The accumulation of details makes almost impossible the emergence of any global picture of the phenomenon the author is trying to describe. This is a pity, since the psychological aspect of a technologized society, which cannot be denied, has hardly been discussed by secularization theorists.

315 In