Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist by Berger Peter L

Author:Berger, Peter L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services

NOT TOO FEW BUT TOO MANY GODS

Secularization theory holds that the modern world suffers from an absence of gods. Max Weber used the haunting phrase “the disenchantment of the world” to describe this alleged situation. The enchantment is gone, and modern man is imprisoned in the “iron cage” of a pervasive rationality. It offends my filial piety to disagree with Weber (who, a bearded Germanic apparition, hovered over my formation as a sociologist)—alas, I must. I would now say that the modern world, with a few exceptions here and there, is not characterized by secularity but rather by plurality—not by too little but by too much religion. Modern man may have lost the one enchanted garden in which his ancestors dwelled, but instead he confronts a veritable emporium of such gardens, among which he must make a choice.

My conclusion that secularization theory will not hold up was based on three experiences—my encounters with the Third World, with the counterculture, and with Evangelicalism.

It is impossible to spend any amount of time in what was then called the Third World (now known, equally confusingly, as the Global South) without being struck by the pervasiveness of religion. In my case that impression began in Latin America. It was reinforced in Africa and later in Asia.

One of my first experiences in Mexico was the celebration of a folk mass in the cathedral of Cuernavaca. Our Lady of Guadalupe was everywhere, and in the background still lurked the dark deities of the pre-Columbian past. I was struck by the fact that, to be plausible beyond the small world of the intellectual elite, even Marxism had to put on a religious garb. Intellectuals, many of them quite secular, propagated Catholic liberation theology, but as an unambiguously religious movement it tried to attract people from the “popular classes.” It was not terribly successful in this attempt, but that is another story. Supposedly Christian socialism at least had a chance of inspiring the masses—Our Lady clutching a red banner. Marxist atheism had no chance beyond the universities.

The religious themes in the American counterculture were overt and impossible to ignore. Woodstock had the characteristic of a pilgrimage, and the much-vaunted sexual revolution was suffused with “spirituality,” a curious reincarnation (literally!) of the archaic carnality of sacred orgies. As an experienced Godder, I could sniff out these themes quite early. I think my first statement of this insight came in an article published in 1974, in—of all places—the Christian Century (the ironically named flagship periodical of mainline Protestantism). The article was titled “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven—2,500 Years of Religious Ecstasy.” The title is taken from a passage in the Book of Jeremiah, in which the prophet berates the women of Jerusalem for baking the cakes that were used in the cult of Astarte, the great mother goddess of the ancient Near East. I argued that what was happening around us was a return of sacred sexuality and that Jeremiah's rejection of it still made sense for the same

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