Religion and Advanced Industrial Society by James A. Beckford

Author:James A. Beckford [Beckford, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780429679148
Google: YNSNDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 2154038
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1388-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The socially established nomos is considered to be a shield against the ‘terror’ which allegedly lurks in the marginal situations of life. The nomos represents ‘an area of meaning carved out of a vast mass of meaninglessness, a small clearing of lucidity in a formless, dark, always ominous jungle… Every nomos is an edifice erected in the face of the potent and alien forces of chaos’ (Berger, 1967, pp. 23-4). The capacity of religion to keep the existential nightmares at bay is crucial for Berger because the sacred cosmos is said to be designed to confront chaos as its terrible contrary. This Manichaean phenomenology underlies a distinctive interpretation of one of the problems of modernity:

secularization frustrates deeply grounded human aspirations - most important among these, the aspiration to exist in a meaningful and ultimately hopeful cosmos… There are, of course, secular ‘theodicies’, and they clearly work for some people. It appears, however, that they are much weaker than the religious ‘theodicies’ in offering both meaning and consolation to individuals in pain, sorrow and doubt.

(Berger, 1977, p. 79)

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