A Millennial Theologian's Appreciation of Sociologist of Religion Peter Berger

Let me just start off by saying that I LOVE the writings of Peter Berger. He is one of the reasons that I chose to pursue a doctorate at Boston University. I was first introduced to Berger in an introduction to the sociology of Religion course at Morehouse College. The professor was University of Chicago graduate and Morehouse alum, the brilliant Rev. Dr. Matthew Vaughn Johnson. We read the sacred canopy and it blew my mind for the good forever. 

Peter Berger, whose works span five decades, is best known for his theoretical reflections on modernization and secularization. His research methodology is purely sociological in nature and it focuses on the interrelatedness between the development of society and the purpose of religion within society. In his book The Sacred Canopy, Berger systematizes his views with concepts instead of tangible illustrations. Theologically I would describe Berger as radically liberal, which is clearly revealed in “his response to other religious revelations in The Heretical Imperative (1979a) and in A Far Glory (1992).”[1] I would not, however, label Berger, a lifelong Lutheran, as the pluperfect liberal because he often reserves his most scorching criticisms for the irrationalities of the religious and political left.[2]As an insider of both the Christian community and the academic world of sociology, Berger’s work comes across with a level of proficiency that seems to be aimed at advancing conversations pertaining to the intellectual placement of Christianity in the 1970’s. His work also sought to construct alternatives to archaic methods of comprehending the practices and doctrines of Christianity.[3] According to Mark Chapman’s article in Modern Believing on Peter Berger and the study of religion, Berger demonstrated that the sociologist does not necessarily have to be an unbeliever because Berger admittedly cares deeply for theology and the things of God but remains true to the disciplines of sociology.[4]

Berger’s research led him to believe that the greatest impressions of secularization on religion was taking place within religious orders and that over time, traditional protestant congregations would become more accepting, inclusive, and open to the “secular world” in order to survive in a changing world.[5] This transition from traditional to secular-influence was induced and supported by what Berger called “liberal theology”. Berger repeatedly uses the works of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, both of whom wrote on the sociology of religion, to justify his sociological analyses of religion. His essential argument was that with more modernization comes further secularization. Berger usage of the word ‘secularization’ was a comprehensive attempt at describing a process ‘by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.[6] For Berger, “Religion is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established.”[7]

Known for his interpretation of social reality as a form of consciousness, Berger contends that society is fundamentally a human invention that ultimately turns and subjugates its initiator.[8] He understood Society to be an objective reality and a subjective reality brought about by three processes: externalization, the "ongoing outpouring of human being into the world," objectivation, the "attainment by the products of this activity of a reality that confronts its original producers as a facticity external to and other than themselves," and internalization, the "reappropriation by men of this same reality, transforming it once again from structures of the objective world into structures of the subjective consciousness".[9]

Berger argues that an exchange with social structures eventually constructs an individual’s development of reality.[10] Furthermore, because humans essentially make the "world" for themselves, the desire to create a "World" or social order develops. However, since humans do not have given relationships with them they must work to establish a relationship with their created world, which Berger sees as a form of socialization and re-socialization.[11] Thus, the creator of the “world” inadvertently provides order for the society and also for his/herself by locating his or her biography in the created world and creating what sociologists call culture.

Since The Sacred Canopy, Berger has changed his mind about his original secularization theory.  Berger now considers what he and most of the other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization to be somewhat inaccurate. Because of the current evidence presented by mainline and current social scientists, modernization and secularization are now viewed as necessarily correlated developments, which makes Berger’s original theory somewhat indefensible in its basic form. In a recent interview with Charles T. Mathewes, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, Berger said:

“If I look at my early work, I think I made one basic mistake intellectually—leaving aside the question of data and empirical evidence—and that was to conflate two phenomena that are related but quite distinct: secularization and pluralization. Today you cannot plausibly maintain that modernity necessarily leads to secularization: it may—and it does in certain parts of the world among certain groups of people—but not necessarily……..I would simply define pluralism as the coexistence in the society of different worldviews and value systems under conditions of civic peace and under conditions where people interact with each other. Pluralism and the multiplication of choices, the necessity to choose, don’t have to lead to secular choices.”.[12]

I quoted Berger’s words at such great length in order to directly reflect the heart of his personal critique on his 1960’s theory of secularization.

The context of his work

Born in Vienna, Austria, Berger immigrated to America after the Second World War. He began to frame his sociological work during the seventies when the theory of secularization was widely accepted[13] and when the traditional distinction between the sacred and the profane was alive and well. Trained in the discipline of sociology at the New School for Social Research, Berger’s theories were birthed out of a number of conspicuous contexts. According to Paul Fitzgerald’s article on “Faithful sociology: Peter Berger's religious project”, Berger's later writings are conceived during an age in Western societies where the end of religion was widely predicted. “Secularization as a social theory was born simultaneously with secularism as a political program, both children of the Enlightenment.”[14] During this time religion became somewhat insignificant due to the constant economic attacks on the creeds, doctrines, and institutions of organized religions. However, despite the attacks and threats of secularism, there were a variety of church-state relational models around the world. For instance, in France the political marginalization of the clergy and the social denigration of Catholicism did not completely secularizing the French society.[15] On the other hand, despite the ambiguity amongst these differences of affairs, religion was far from fading away.

During the time period when Berger wrote the bulk of his work, modern science was considered the prime cause of religious and institutional decline through secularization.[16] In an article on the "Peter Berger and the study of religion", Gary Dorrien traces the development of Berger’s theological and religious views to Barthian focuses on inauthenticity and inductive Schleiermacherian approaches to theology and inter-religious dialogue".[17] Dorrien also believes that in order to fully understand some of the ideologies of Berger, that one must be aware of his retreat from mainline Protestantism and his increasing affinities with neo-conservative politics.

According to David Martin, “distrust of theologians pushed Peter Berger to become his own theologian”.[18] In an article on Berger’s work, Mark Chapman supports this idea about Berger’s distrust of theologians by revealing the fact that long ago theologians would make claims based on overgeneralizations for the sociology of religion as somehow to analyze Church and society. “Once that analysis was done then theologians would be able to do their theological business. This one- way method, upon which some courses in practical and applied theology are predicated, leads to both bad theology and bad sociology.”[19] It is out of this politically charged context that Peter Berger’s ideologies emerged.

Major critiques and responses to his work

Gary Dorrien, a critic of Berger's interpretation of God's transcendence, argues that berger “misconstrued the problem of transcendence and misunderstood Schleiermacher and wrongly denounced modern theologians, he was right to emphasize the determinative significance of how transcendence is conceived".[20] “Berger’s approach has been criticized by social theorists for reproducing, rather than transcending, the very errors of voluntarism and determinism that he strives to avoid.”[21] Van A. Harvey, Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University argues that Berger neither offers an empirical or value free theory, which Berger claims to do consistently. Harvey says: “I am, however, interested in the logical status of his theory and the degree to which it rests on claims that are not so much empirical as they are philosophical and, horribili dictum, ontological”.[22] In the Sacred Canopy, Berger tries to establish the claim that internalization entails self-objectification and, therefore, that alienation is anthropologically necessary. Harvey’s response to Berger’s claim is that: “very little of that argument could qualify as empirical in any strict sense off the word.[23]”

Another critic of Berger is that he makes claims about theology without having formal training in the discipline of theology itself. In an article critiquing Peter Berger's HERETICAL IMPERATIVE, David Christopher Lane professor at Mt. San Antonio College, in Walnut, California says: “One is led to the conclusion that Berger's own attempts at theology are a reflection of this crisis rather than a cure for it because his own theology itself has no norms or criteria that govern his statements.  It simply is a reflection of his own personal sensibility”.[24] University of Chicago theologian Langdon Gilkey agrees with Lane. He believed that Berger inaccurately used theology to justify the claims in his works and to critique the claims of others. He says:

“(1)Berger is not intelligent enough to understand theological writing. This does not, however, represent a serious possibility…….(2) He has had no specialized training in theology and thus in fact does not know how to read a theological work competently—especially if it is "sophisticated."[25]

 Berger's significance for academic study of religion and relevance for religious communities

When you take into consideration the context, time frame, and audience to whom Berger was writing, his overall descriptive analysis becomes extremely valuable and instructive to the academic and congregational communities alike. To a certain extent, I consider Berger’s works to be of most interest and help to academic audiences. For instance, in the Sacred Canopy he creates an interesting amalgamation of sociological theory and religion. In order for a reader to understand the intersections of these fields of study, one must have a solid grip on formal sociological theory. As a pastor, I do not foresee highly theoretical work of this sort as being comprehendible for the average layperson. Nonetheless, I do believe that a simplified version of Berger’s thoughts on the effects of modernization and secularization on religion could greatly benefit dying congregations struggling to deal with the pluralistic societies in which the exist. Berger argues that the resurgence of orthodoxy by Protestantism in order to retaliate against secularization is a major mistake because it carries within itself the seeds of self-destruction.[26] Berger acknowledged liberal theology as a ploy of the mainline church to remain relevant to the secular culture.[27] However, many traditional protestant traditions still choose to assail against religious plausibility structures by creating a resurgence of orthodoxy to disruption the secularization of their faith traditions.[28] Diminishing churches could use his work to create healthy dialogue about modernization and secularization.

As for his contribution to scholarship, Peter Berger’s “works are intellectually most impressive and have been of great help to many of us (theologians) in feeling our way around a field in which we are not really competent.”[29] As a forty-year pioneer in the field of sociology of religion, “few can compare with Peter Berger for his lucid commentary on the meaning of modernity”.[30] He has written on the impact of privatization, the plausibility of meaning systems, approaches to secularization by pluralism, economic and social development, the differing costs of the capitalist and communist alternatives, scenarios for possible solutions in South Africa and, most recently, the theme of European exceptionalism, just to name a few. From his classic path-breaking cooperation with Luckmann to his works in Redeeming Laughter in 1997, Berger’s academic expressions continue to refresh the vocabulary, renew the frameworks, and alter the perceptions[31] of the academic study of religion.

[1] Linda Woodhead with Paul Heelas and David Martin, Peter Berger and the Study of Religion (London: Routledge, 2001), 14.

[2] Wood, Ralph C. "To the Unknown God : Peter Berger's Theology of Transcendence." Perspectives in Religious Studies 20.2 (1993): 175-186. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[3] Wood, Ralph C. "To the Unknown God : Peter Berger's Theology of Transcendence." Perspectives in Religious Studies 20.2 (1993): 175-186. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[4] Chapman, Mark D. "Peter Berger and the study of religion." Modern Believing 43.2 (2002): 56-58. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[5] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 160.

[6] Peter Berger, The Social Reality of Religion, (Middlesex, England: Penquin, 1973), p. 113.

[7] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 25.

[8] Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. (1966)

[9] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 4.

[10] Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. (1966)

[11] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 35.

[12] Charles T. Mathews (University of Virginia) and Peter Berger (Boston University), "An Interview with Peter Berger," 152-161.

[13] Fitzgerald, Paul J. "Faithful sociology: Peter Berger's religious project." Religious Studies Review 27.1 (2001): 10-17. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[14] Fitzgerald, Paul J. "Faithful sociology: Peter Berger's religious project." Religious Studies Review 27.1 (2001): 10-17. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[15] Fitzgerald, Paul J. "Faithful sociology: Peter Berger's religious project." Religious Studies Review 27.1 (2001): 10-17. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[16] Peter Berger, A Far Glory  (New York: Anchor, Doubleday 1992), p. 26.

[17] Engler, Steven. "Peter Berger and the study of religion." Religious Studies and Theology 23.1 (2004): 123-125. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[18] Engler, Steven. "Peter Berger and the study of religion." Religious Studies and Theology 23.1 (2004): 123-125. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[19] Chapman, Mark D. "Peter Berger and the study of religion." Modern Believing 43.2 (2002): 56-58. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[20] Engler, Steven. "Peter Berger and the study of religion." Religious Studies and Theology 23.1 (2004): 123-125. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[21] Lewis, Paul. Peter Berger and His Critics: The Significance of Emergence. Journal Name: Society. Springer, New York (May 1, 2010) pp. 207

[22] Harvey, Van A. Some Problematical Aspects of Peter Berger's Theory of Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 75-93

[23] Harvey, Van A. Some Problematical Aspects of Peter Berger's Theory of Religion Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 75-93

[24] Lane, David Christopher. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE SACRED A Critique of Peter Berger's HERETICAL IMPERATIVE Publisher: UCSM Publication date: 1985

[25] Gilkey, Langdon, Schubert Ogden, and David W. Tracy. "Responses to Peter Berger." Theological Studies 39.3 (1978): 486-507. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[26] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 129.

[27] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 160.

[28] Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967; New York: Anchor Press, 1990), 166.

[29] Gilkey, Langdon, Schubert Ogden, and David W. Tracy. "Responses to Peter Berger." Theological Studies 39.3 (1978): 486-507. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.

[30] ‪ Garber, Steven. The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together and Behavior Belief InterVarsity Press, 2007. pp. 115

[31] Linda Woodhead with Paul Heelas and David Martin, Peter Berger and the Study of Religion (London: Routledge, 2001), 14.