Michael Horton, co-host of the White Horse Inn, recently spoke with Dr. Peter Berger, University Professor of Sociology and Theology at Boston University and director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture. A member of many scientific societies, he has received honorary degrees from Loyola University and the Universities of Notre Dame, Geneva, and Munich. Professor Berger may be best known for his work on the sociology of knowledge and his profound alternative to the reigning secularization thesis, both of which we'll be discussing in this interview as we try to understand our role as Christians in a post-Christian culture.
The book you co-authored with Thomas Luckmann in 1966, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, became required reading across many disciplines; in fact, you introduced the phrase "social construction" into our vocabulary. Today, we have on one hand René Descartes, isolating himself in his apartment in a lonely project of discovering once and for all the absolute truth untainted by authority, tradition, community, or sense experience. On the other hand, we have postmodernism, which many people–especially conservative Christians–regard as just another word for relativism.
We're in a major cultural transition, which you've tracked significantly over your career. How do you navigate these extremes?
I don't think the way I navigate it is all that unique. We tend to think of relativism and fundamentalism as being opposed things. I see them as reverse sides of the same coin. The coin is modernization, and for reasons that can be fully explained, modernity brings about a loss of taking-for-grantedness in terms of what people think the world is like and what they think people should do. There are two reactions to it.
Relativism is a kind of embrace of this: there is no truth, or if there is, we can't find it out; there is really no right and wrong; everything is relative. That's one extreme that is very destructive, both in terms of society and in terms of individual lives.
At the other extreme is fundamentalism, which is most easily explained as taking refuge from the relativizing effects of modernity in some claim of absolute certainty, whether it's religious or political–it doesn't have to be religious, it can be anything. This is equally destructive because it means that societies vulcanize into groups of people who can no longer talk to each other. One has to find a middle ground and that's what this book is about. The middle ground is religious, it's moral, and last but not least, it's political.
Early in your career, the secularization thesis held pretty generally in the academy; namely, that as the political support of religious institutions fell away, we finally graduated from the kindergarten of superstition and dependence on external authorities to the university of reason and autonomy. We still hear that in the culture, but you're known as the leading critic of that thesis. How did your mind change?
I don't think that I ever used the term "kindergarten of superstition" because I was a Christian then and I am a Christian now, and that suggests that all religion–Christianity included–is a kind of illusion, which I never believed. No, the change of mind had nothing to do with any theological or philosophical change; it had to do with my being a social scientist, which means you look at the evidence. It became increasingly clear to me, as indeed to most people who work in the field of studying contemporary religion, that the secularization theory was wrong, that the evidence was against it.
You used the term "post-Christian era" before. I don't think we live in a post-Christian era at all, certainly not in the United States and not in most of the world–Christianity is growing enormously in much of the world. Since I changed my mind, which is a long time ago, the obvious mistake of secularization theory has become all the more clear.
Could you describe that in terms for those not familiar with your work, such as The Sacred Canopy and A Rumor of Angels? What is the secularization thesis and why do you think it's wrong?
Basically, the secularization thesis says the more modern a society is, the less religious it will be. Some people welcomed it, which was certainly the belief of the Enlighten-ment in Europe. As reason and science progress, superstition–which they identified with religion–will decline. Except for two exceptions, this has not happened. One exception is geographical: western and central Europe are indeed quite secularized societies, and it is an interesting question of why that is so. The other exception is sociological: there is a kind of international cultural elite that is quite secular. Again, this is another interesting exception. But most of the world is as religious as it has ever been and, arguably, even more so.
In his recent book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has added another meaning of secularization; namely, the reduction of even religion to immanent, worldly felt needs. When you look at popular Christianity in America today, especially with the success of books with titles like Your Best Life Now, do you think that churches themselves to some extent are contributing to secularization in that sense?
Some are, yes, and I think particularly in mainline Protestantism there has been a tendency to do what Charles Taylor describes; in other words, to translate the Christian message from having to do with transcendent realities: with God, with life after death, with angels, and the whole religious world. They translate this into a morality where Christianity is the golden rule and nothing else, or a kind of psychotherapy where religion is good for you because it makes you more wholesome and more authentic. Perhaps worst of all, it becomes politics where religion is about a particular political agenda. All of that, I would say, is a distortion of religion generally and of the Christian gospel particularly.
So, ironically, in the attempt to make religion more relevant to a culture in the long run, it makes it more irrelevant?
Absolutely. Dean Angel, who was a rather melancholy Anglican theologian in the 1930s and 40s, put it very well: He who wants to marry the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower.
Do you think in terms of religious authority that the idea of anything standing outside of a person–whether it's the church or the Scriptures–is undermined, even in evangelical contexts, when it becomes the Spirit within?
That is a tradition actually within Christianity in general; it's not only evangelicals. Many mystics in Christianity would say something like that. I wouldn't call that secularization; it's something rather different. And I wouldn't hold to that. I'm not evangelical; I'm a Lutheran, which is not quite the same. But what I appreciate about evangelicals is that they understand that the gospel has to do with an interpretation of reality as such; it has to do with God, with redemption, with the resurrection of Christ. It's a transcendent message, cosmic in scope. And that has been much lost in mainline Protestantism.
One of your books I've found especially helpful is The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. Can you tell us what you mean by the "heretical imperative" and how this aspect of modernity makes it a little tougher to pass on the faith to others, especially to successive generations?
The title in a way is a play on words. Although I wrote this quite a few years ago, I would still say the same thing. The original word for "heresy" is from the Greek word for "choice." It means that the modern situation forces people to make choices where previously, when religion and worldview was taken for granted, they didn't have to make choices. To be a Christian was a fate, not a choice. This can be explained rather easily when you take anything at all for granted. If you take for granted that Christianity is true, you don't have to make a decision. You're a Christian the way you're an American, or you have hay fever or blonde hair. It's not something you decided. When it is no longer taken for granted that you're a Christian, or anything else in the realm of worldview and norms, you have to make decisions, and I think that's a good thing. What's also very distinctive about evangelicalism is that it puts a decision at the very heart of being a Christian. You're not born a Christian; you have to be born again to be a Christian. Now, I have a little difficulty with what evangelicals mean by being born again; it's a bit too emotional for me. But the core of the message is very clear; and having to make a decision to be a Christian is the same thing as saying, "You need faith." That I find important and good.
What are the downsides, especially in our American culture, of almost enshrining choice itself as a value regardless of the object?
That is almost inevitable when choice becomes that central in the lives of people. You're right that choice has become a kind of icon. Feminists or liberals will talk about choice when they mean abortion. The conservatives will talk about choice when they mean homeschooling or charter schools. So choice has become a sort of okay word, which has problems. But on the other hand, I don't deplore the basic fact that what previously was taken for granted now has to be freely chosen. It has to do with human freedom, and in the religious sphere, it has to do with faith. If I knew things for certain, I wouldn't need faith. I don't need faith to know that I'm sitting in Boston and you're sitting in California, and we are talking to each other. I don't need faith to know that. But to say that Christ is risen requires faith. It's not something I know. And that, I think, is a good thing.
Another phrase you've introduced into our general vocabulary is "plausibility structures." What do you mean by that?
I'm proud of coining that phrase–I like it, I embrace it, and I've said that when I die, inscribed on my heart will be the words "plausibility structures." This is an old sociological insight that I think is valid: that what we believe to be true or good depends very much on the consensus of people who surround us and who are important for us. So every statement about the world (except maybe things that are directly accessible to our senses) requires social confirmation. I don't need social confirmation to know that I have a toothache. That fact imposes itself upon me no matter who I'm talking to. But most of what I consider to be my values or my worldview depends on the social consensus of those around me, which is really another way of saying (which is not a new truth) that human beings are social beings. We've become what we are through socialization, through social processes, and we remain what we are because there are people around us, important to us, who say that's what you are.
Can you apply this idea of plausibility structures to the practical lives of Christians in families, in churches, and in the wider society? In other words, when a believer participates in a community that practices preaching, baptism, Communion, public prayer and singing, fellowship, and outreach, does this network create its own plausibility structure for successive generations to be raised in the Christian faith? What happens if we abandon these external structures and practices because we find them stifling to the individual quest?
I would say the short answer to that question is yes. You can put in general terms or sociological terms that for any statement about the world, for any value, any belief to survive over time, it requires an institution. Solitary individuals can't do this, especially when you're talking about passing something from one generation to another. Children require a community within which they can grow up and believe certain things and live in a certain way. So I think it is necessary to have a community for Christian faith. It has to be that way.
It's not something you can do over the Internet.
I doubt it. But, of course, choice remains here in an important way–especially in a society where there's religious freedom and you can choose that community. Even if you are born into Religion A, you are free to change into Religion B, or to redefine what you mean by Religion A. So choice enters into that as well. But I think the choice to be a Christian all by yourself is a very difficult one, and I would not recommend it if you can possibly find a community within which you feel comfortable.
You've written much on globalization in recent years. How has globalization affected our consciousness, especially with respect to competing religious claims?
Unless we live in a cave somewhere, we have become much more aware of how many different religious possibilities there are in the world. Again, that goes back to the heretical imperative. If you live in a mountain village where everybody around you is a Tibetan Buddhist, the idea that Tibetan Buddhism may possibly not be the ultimate truth may not even occur to you. But as soon as you come down from your mountain village into a city where you get everything under the sun living next door, you have to make a choice; and even if your choice is that you're going to be a Tibetan Buddhist for the rest of your life, that's a choice that's no longer taken for granted. I think globalization has increased the heretical imperative and continues to do so, and I wouldn't deplore that.
So everybody has to make a choice, that's the one thing that has changed for everybody, from fundamentalists to secularists?
Nearly everyone. There are some people who live in Tibetan villages on top of a mountain, but there aren't very many of those.
In 2003, you wrote Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity. How would you describe your own relationship to Christian faith and practice today?
That was my fullest statement of where I stand theologically, which is Christian in a fairly traditional sense. The meaning of Christianity can be expressed fully in one sentence: Christ is risen. The rest is commentary, which obviously can be hundreds of books and articles and statements on what that is all about. I think this is something shared by people in different Christian communities, from Eastern Orthodoxy to evangelical Protestantism and everything in between. Beyond that, I would describe myself as a Lutheran, which is my background. I have some hesitations about Lutheranism–I'm not a dogmatic Lutheran–and so I would have to say I'm on the liberal side of the Lutheran view of Christianity. The book goes into that in considerable detail.
In terms of the social construction of reality, how do all pervasive features of our life today–such as technology and the commodification of reality–shape or misshape religious communities?
In terms of what we've been discussing here, technology makes it much easier for everybody to talk to everybody else. If you want one picture of the world today, the most powerful one is somebody with a cell phone. Some years ago I was in Hong Kong and I happened to walk into a Buddhist temple. There was a guy in a business suit who held an incense stick in one hand and was talking on a cell phone in the other hand–and I don't think he was talking to the Buddha. The picture of the globalized world is that everyone talks to everyone else, and that means that people increasingly become exposed to alternative norms, values, and worldviews. Now, that can be quite disturbing, and people can get seasick from all of this. On the other hand, I think most people manage somehow and they find a community that sustains them and supports them in the choices they make–and I think that's good.
One way in which you've forever changed the landscape is this sense that it's not all theory, it's also practices. Of course, you have predecessors saying that as well, but you've really focused it for a lot of us on this sociology of knowledge. Do you think that there's a danger in thinking on the one hand that truth is only about practices–that is, I'm shaped completely by being a white middle class male growing up in Orange County–versus on the other extreme that I'm just a disembodied mind and I need to see myself as part of a context that has shaped me, not just that I have drilled down to reality but that I'm also part of a particular time and place that has shaped me? Is that really important for us as Christians to understand?
I think it's important to understand, yes. If you are a white middle class person having grown up in Orange County, obviously that shapes a lot of what you are. You are not a Tibetan Buddhist who lives in a mountain village. But on the other hand, certainly in the American situation today, whether it's in Orange County or anywhere else, that accident of birth does not determine the rest of your life. You can move out–in fact, large numbers of people move out of the background that originally shaped them. So I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Of course, we are not disembodied free minds floating in a sort of social vacuum. That's a mistake; that is not what life is really like. On the other hand, we are not robots. We don't come out of a mint of our background where we are stamped a certain way in childhood and then have to stay that way for the rest of our lives. Some truth is in between. We have a degree of freedom and the degree can be considerable.
